she never could marry. In fact, the object of her fondness was Spencer Cowper, who was already married. She at length wrote to him in language which she never would have used if her intellect had not been disordered. He, like an honest man, took no advantage of her unhappy state of mind, and did his best to avoid her. His prudence mortified her to such a degree that on one occasion she went into fits. It was necessary, however, that he should see her when he came to Hertford at the spring assizes of 1699, for he had been intrusted with some money which was due to her on mortgage. He called on her for this purpose late one evening, and delivered a bag of gold to her. She pressed him to be the guest of her family, but he excused himself and retired. The next morning she was found dead among the stakes of a mill-dam on the stream called the Priory River. That she had destroyed herself there could be no reasonable doubt. The coroner's inquest found that she had drowned herself while in a state of mental derangement. But the family was unwilling to admit that she had shortened her own life, and looked about for somebody who might be accused of murdering her. The last person who could be proved to have been in her company was Spencer Cowper. It chanced that two attorneys and a scrivener, who had come down from town to the Hertford assizes, had been overheard, on that unhappy night, talking over their wine about the charms and flirtations of the handsome Quaker girl, in the light way in which such subjects are sometimes discussed even at the circuit tables and mess tables of our more refined generation. Some wild words, susceptible of a double meaning, were used about the way in which she had jilted one lover, and the way in which another lover would punish her for her coquetry. On no better grounds than these, her relations imagined that Spencer Cowper had, with the assistance of these three retainers of the law, strangled her, and thrown her corpse into the water. There was absolutely no evidence of the crime. There was no evidence that any one of the accused had any motive to commit such a crime; there was no evidence that Spencer Cowper had any connection with the persons who were said to be his accomplices. One of these persons, indeed, he had never seen. But no story is too absurd to be imposed on minds blind ed by religious and political fanaticism. "The Quakers and the Tories joined to raise a formidable clamour. The Quakers had, in those days, no scruples about capital punishments. They would, indeed, as Spencer Cowper said bitterly, but too truly, rather send four innocent men to the gallows than let it be believed that one who had their light within her had committed suicide. The Tories exulted in the prospect of winning two seats from the Whigs. The whole kingdom was divided between Stouts and Cowpers. At the summer assizes Hertford was crowded with anxious faces from London," and from parts of England more distant than London. The prosecution was conducted with a malignity and unfairness which to us seem almost incredible; and, unfortunately, the dullest and most ignorant judge of the twelve was on the bench. Cowper defended himself and those who were said to be his accompli ces with admirable ability and self-possession. His brother, much more distressed than himself, sate near him through the long agony of that day. The case against the prisoners rested chiefly on the vulgar error that a human body found, as this girl's body had been found, floating in water, must have been thrown into the water while still alive. To prove this doctrine, the counsel for the Crown called medical practitioners, of whom nothing is now known except that some of them had been active against the Whigs at Hertford elections. To confirm the evidence of these gentlemen, two or three sailors were put into the witness box. On the other side appeared an array of men of science whose names are still remembered. Among them was William Cowper,-not a kinsman of the defendant, but the most celebrated anatomist that England had then produced. He was, indeed, the founder of a dynasty illustrious in the history of science; for he was the teacher of William Cheselden, and William Cheselden was the teacher of John Hunter. On the same side appeared Samuel Garth, who, among the physicians of the capital, had no rival except Radcliffe, and Hans Sloane, the founder of the magnificent museum which is one of the glories of our country. The attempt of the prosecutors to make the superstitions of the forecastle evidence for the purpose of taking away the lives of men, was treated by these philosophers with just disdain. The stupid judge asked Garth what he could say in answer to the testimony of the seamen. 'My Lord,' replied Garth, 'I say that they are mistaken. I will find seamen in abundance to swear that they have known whistling raise the wind.' The jury found the prisoners Not Guilty, and the report carried back to London by persons who had been present at the trial was, that everybody applauded the verdict, and that even the Stouts seemed to be convinced of their error. It is certain, however, that the malevolence of the defeated party soon revived in all its energy. The lives of the four men who had just been absolved were again attacked by means of the most absurd and odious proceeding known to our old law, the appeal of murder. This attack too failed. Every artifice of chicane was at length exhausted; and nothing was left to the disappointed sect and the disappointed faction except to calumniate those whom it had been found impossible to murder. In a succession of libels, Spencer Cowper was held up to the execration of the public. But the public did him justice. He rose to high eminence in his profession; he at length took his seat, with general applause, on the judicial bench, and there distinguished himself by the humanity which he never failed to show to unhappy men who stood, as he had stood, at the bar. Many who seldom trouble themselves about pedigrees may be interested by learning that he was the grandfather of that excellent man and excellent poet, William Cowper, whose writings have long been peculiarly loved and prized by the members of the religious community which, under a strong delusion, sought to slay his innocent progenitor.* "Though Spencer Cowper had escaped with life and honour, the Tories had carried their point. They had secured against the next election the support of the Quakers of Hertford; and the consequence was, that the borough was lost to the family and to the party which had lately predominated there."" Notwithstanding the fact that Lord Macaulay has given so large a space to this case, he has read it with more than ordinary carelessness. He says: "The case against the prisoner rested chiefly on the vulgar error that a human body found, as this poor girl's body had been found, floating in the water, must have been thrown into the water while still alive." The argument was exactly the reverse. It was urged that the fact of her body floating proved that she was thrown into the water after she was dead; and it was sought to be inferred that she had been strangled-that if, as was argued on behalf of the prisoner, she had drowned herself, her body would have been filled with water, and would have sunk. The evidence as to whether the body did in fact float or sink was, as we have seen, contradictory. The post-mortem examination was delayed so long that the medical testimony had really no foundation of facts to rest upon. At the trial an attempt was made on the part of the prisoner, to establish the insanity of the girl; but nothing more was proved than might be easily shown to have occurred in the case of any love-sick girl who was, or fancied herself, the victim of an unrequited passion. Lord Macaulay's treatment of this evidence is amusing. Three of the circumstances on which he relies to prove her insanity are,-1st, That "she sometimes hinted a dislike of the sect to which she belonged" (rather an Lord Macaulay); 2d, That “she comodd proof of insanity, in the mouth of plained that a canting waterman, who was one of the brethren, had held forth against her at a meeting "(which happened to be true, and seems to be a tolerably reasonable ground of annoyance); and, 3d, That "to two or three of her associates she owned she was in love." (Alas for all young ladies from sixteen upwards, in white satin, and their confidantes in white linen, if this is to be taken as a proof of insanity!) But when Lord Macaulay comes to the facts connected with Cowper's writing to announce his intention of staying at the house, his dining there, his return in the evening, and his mys "It is curious that all Cowper's biographers with whom I am acquaintedHayley, Southey, Grimshawe, Chalmers-mention the judge, the common ancestor of the poet, of his first love, Theodora Cowper, and of Lady Hesketh, but that none of these biographers makes the faintest allusion to the Hertford trial, the most remarkable event in the history of the family; nor do I believe that any allusion to that trial can be found in any of the poet's numerous letters." Vol. v. p. 238. : and retiring." He and the girl disappeared together. In the morning he is at other lodgings in the town, and she a corpse in the mill-dam. terious disappearance at night simultaneously with the girl, he condenses them into the following words -"He, like an honest man, took no advantage of her unhappy state of For the charge that Lord Macmind, and did his best to avoid aulay makes that "the prosecution her" (it was, to say the least, an was conducted with a malignity and odd mode of avoiding her that he unfairness which to us seem almost inadopted). "It was necessary, how- credible," we cannot discover the ever, that he should see her when he slightest ground. Certainly none is came to Hertford at the spring as to be found in the very ample and desizes of 1699, for he had been intrust-tailed report in the State Trials. ed with some money which was due Indeed, a far greater latitude was to her on mortgage. He called on allowed to the prisoner in his deher, for this purpose, late one evening, fence than would be permitted at and delivered a bag of gold to the present day. What authority her." (The "bag "exists only in Lord Macaulay may have had for Lord Macaulay's imagination-the describing Hatsell, who presided at "gold" was the petty sum of six the trial, as "the dullest and most pounds and a few odd shillings, ignorant judge of the twelve," we which Cowper had received for her know not. He seems to have tried as interest on a sum of £200 which the case with strict impartiality and he had placed out on mortgage on very fair ability, and his charge to the her behalf, and the payment of jury was decidedly in favour of the which certainly did not make it prisoners. necessary that he should be with her from two till four, and again from nine till half-past ten at night.) "She pressed him," adds Macaulay, to be the guest of the family, but he excused himself and retired." Lord We have frequently had occasion to remark upon the caution which ought to be observed before relying upon Lord Macaulay's marks of quotation. An amusing instance of this occurs in the passage we have just cited. A sailor of the It is worth while, as a matter of name of Clement deponed that he philological curiosity, to enumerate had frequently observed that when over again the facts which one of a corpse was thrown into the sea it the greatest masters of the English floated, whereas, if a man fell into language can compress into the the water and was drowned, his phrase he excused himself and re- body sank as soon as life was extired." Cowper went to the house tinct. In confirmation of this, he on his arrival in the town, dined cited his own experience at the there with the family, left at four, fight off Beachy Head, where the returned at nine, supped, wrote his bodies of the men who were killed letters, was present whilst his bed and floated about, and at a shipwreck, his bedroom fire were ordered where between five and six hundred and the maid was sent up to warm men were drowned, whose bodies his bed; sat alone until half - past sank. This evidence was curious, ten o'clock at night with a girl who and if it had been proved whether he knew was violently in love with Sarah Stout's body floated or sank, him, and who had been in the habit would have been valuable. The of addressing the most passionate judge felt, no doubt, that it was so; letters to him under a feigned name, and when Garth swore that "it was and then-" abiit-excessit-evasit impossible the body should have erupit." His departure only an- floated," and boldly stated his benounced by the slamming-to of the lief that "all dead bodies fall to the street-door. This is Lord Macau- bottom unless they be prevented by lay's notion of "excusing himself some extraordinary tumour,"* he 13 Stale Trials, 1157. and also many trees of divers sorts, and stones." A remarkable illustration of the prevalence of this pagan deification of the powers of nature may be seen in that wellknown cycle of romance which is associated with Arthur and his Round Table, where a fanciful Christianity is strangely blended with the imagery of an eastern fairy-tale where the Archbishop of Canterbury sings the mass in one chapter, and the wicked Queen Morgaine turns the whole company into stones in the next. These relics of paganism hang about us still, embodied in our language, even in such semi-religious terms as Easter, Lent, Yule, Beltane, &c., and exercising an influence, far more powerful perhaps than we are aware of, in some of our rustic superstitions. Within the present generation children have been passed through a cleft ash tree for the cure of fits, a genuine vestige of Saxon heathendom. The "Devil's claw" has left its mark elsewhere besides on the wall of St. Pancras. -to adapt the idol temples to Christ- tains, groves, ellens (elder trees), ian worship, to change the idol sacri fices into feasts of dedication, and, in short, to make the transition to the purer faith as little abrupt as might be, it was not only that complaisant genealogists placed Woden in the scriptural pedigree as a descendant of Adam or zealots like Boniface thought that it was enough to set up a saint's image instead of a mythological idol-there was abundant heathenism besides, which held its ground side by side with a form of Christian belief. There was a necessity for perpetual warnings against pagan observances, auguries, phylacteries, and incantations;" Odo's canons allude to "magical illusions ;" offerings to the devil were common enough to warrant a specific enactment against them in the Dooms" of Wiltræd; the homilies of Elfric speak of the heathen superstitions still common at burials; King Edgar, with all his forty-seven monasteries, is more than suspected of an attempt to bring Woden into fashion again; and Dunstan's canons call upon the priests to extinguish heathenism, especially "the worship of foun 6 JUDICIAL PUZZLES.-SPENCER COWPER'S CASE. Ar the summer assizes at Hertford, on the 16th of July, 1699, a young barrister, rising into eminence in his profession, the son of a baronet of ancient family, who was one of the representatives, and the brother cf a King's Counsel, who was the other representative of the town in Parliament, held up his hand at the bar to answer a charge of murder. It was not for blood, shed in an angry brawl-it was not for vindicating his honour by his sword in defiance of the law, that Spencer Cowper was arraigned. He was accused of having deliberately murdered a woman, whose only fault was having loved him too devotedly, and trusted him too implicitly. He was called upon to plead to a charge which, if proved, would not only consign his body to the gibbet, but his name to eternal infamy. cham, receive a stronger confirmation than from the story of poor Sarah Stout. Stormy passions beat under the dove-coloured bodice, and flashed from the eyes which were shaded by the close white cap and poke bonnet of the Quakeress. Her whole heart and soul were given to Spencer Cowper. A man of sense and honour would, under such circumstances, at once have broken off the connection, and saved the girl, at the cost of some present suffering, from future guilt and misery. A man of weak determination and kind feelings might have got hopelessly involved in attempting to avoid inflicting pain. Cowper did neither. He carried on a clandestine correspondence with her under feigned names, and received letters from her breathing the most ardent passion, which he displayed amongst his profligate associates. He introduced a friend to her as a suitor, and then betrayed to that friend the secrets which, above all others, a man of honour is bound to guard with the strictest fidelity. He behaved as ill as a man could do under the circumstances. Sarah Stout was the only daughter of a Quaker malster in the town of Hertford. Her father was an active and influential supporter of the Cowpers at the elections, and the kind of intimacy which ordinarily takes place under such circumstances arose between the fa- On the morning of Monday the milies. Attentions highly flattering 13th of March, the first day of the no doubt to their vanity, were paid spring assizes of 1699, Spencer Cowto the wife and daughter of the per arrived in Hertford, travelling tradesman by the ladies of the ba- (as was then the custom of the bar) ronet's family; and an intimacy on horseback. He went direct to arose between Spencer Cowper and the house of Mrs. Stout, where he was Sarah, which did not cease when expected, in consequence of a letter she was left an orphan upon the which had been written, announcing death of her father, and he became his intended visit. He was asked the husband of another woman. He to alight, but declined to do so, as managed the little fortune which he wished to show himself in the had been bequeathed to her; he town. He promised, however, to occasionally took up his abode send his horse, and to come himself (whether as a guest or a lodger to dinner. This promise he kept, does not appear) at her mother's house, when business called him to Hertford; and be unhappily inspired her with a violent, and, as the event proved, a fatal passion. Never did the truth of the proverb, "Cucullus non facit monachum," or rather, in this case, mona and having dined with Mrs. Stout and her daughter, he left the house about four o'clock, saying that he had business in the town, but that he would return in the evening. At nine he returned, asked for pen, ink, and paper, to write to his wife, and had his supper. Mrs. Stout, |