 and manly, totally unmixed with imbecility and confusion, while at
the same time there was such an uncontending frankness in his countenance, that
a superficial observer would have supposed he must have been the prey of the
first plausible knavery that was practised against him. Great reason have I to
remember him with affection! He was the most ardent, and I had almost said the
last of my friends. Nor did I remain in this respect in his debt. There was
indeed a great congeniality, if I may presume to say so, in our characters,
except that I cannot pretend to rival the originality and self-created vigour of
his mind, or to compare with, what the world has scarcely surpassed, the
correctness and untainted purity of his conduct. He heard my story, as far as I
thought proper to disclose it, with interest, he examined it with sincere
impartiality, and, if at first any doubt remained upon his mind, a frequent
observation of me in my most unguarded moments taught him in no long time to
place an unreserved confidence in my innocence.
    He talked of the injustice of which we were mutual victims without
bitterness, and delighted to believe that the time would come when the
possibility of such intolerable oppression would be extirpated. But this, he
said, was a happiness reserved for posterity; it was too late for us to reap the
benefit of it. It was some consolation to him that he could not tell the period
in his past life which the best judgment of which he was capable would teach him
to spend better. He could say, with as much reason as most men, he had
discharged his duty. But he foresaw that he should not survive his present
calamity. This was his prediction, while yet in health. He might be said in a
certain sense to have a broken heart. But, if that phrase were in any way
applicable to him, sure never was despair more calm, more full of resignation
and serenity.
    At no time in the whole course of my adventures was I exposed to a shock
more severe than I received from this man's death. The circumstances of his fate
presented themselves to my mind in their full complication of iniquity. From him
and the execrations with which I loaded the government that could be the
instrument of his tragedy, I turned to myself. I beheld the catastrophe of
Brightwel with envy. A thousand times I longed that my corse had laid in death,
instead of his. I was only reserved, as I persuaded myself, for unutterable woe.
In a few days he would have been acquitted
