I can more easily imagine a man being able to preserve the memory of all his sensations during some tremendous operation of surgery than to recall the varied tortures of his mind in the progress of a long and eventful trial. Certain incidents will impress themselves more powerfully than others, not always those of the deepest importance,—far from it; the veriest trifles—a stern look of the presiding judge, a murmur in the court—will live in the recollection for long years after the great events of the scene; and a casual glance, a half-uttered word, become texts of sorrow for many a day to come.

I could myself be better able to record my sensations throughout a long fever than tell of the emotions which I suffered in the three days of that trial. I awake occasionally from a dream full of every circumstance all sharply defined, clear, and distinct. My throbbing temples and moist brow evidence the agonies I have gone through; my nerves still tingle with the torture; but with the first moments of wakefulness the memory is gone!—the sense of pain alone remains; but the cause fades away in dim indistinctness, and my heart throbs with gratitude at last to know it was but a dream, and has passed away.

But there are days, too, when all these memories are revived; and I could recount, even to the slightest circumstance, the whole progress of the case, from the moment when a doorkeeper drew aside a heavy curtain to let me pass into the court, to the dreadful instant when—But I cannot go on; already are images and forms crowding around me. To continue this theme would be to call up spirits of torture to the bedside, or the lonely chamber where, friendless and solitary, I sit as I write these lines.

I owe it to him whose patience and sympathy may have carried him so far as my listener, to complete this much of the story of my life; happily a few words will now suffice to do so.

A newspaper of “Old Dublin,” a great authority in those days, the “Morning Advertiser,” informed its readers on a certain day of February that the interesting events of a recent trial should be its apology for any deficiency in its attention to foreign news, or even the domestic occurrences of the country, since the editor could not but participate in the intense anxiety felt by all classes of his fellow-citizens in the progress of one of the most remarkable cases ever submitted before a jury.

After a brief announcement of the trial, he proceeds:

“Mr. Foxley opened the plaintiff's case, in the absence of Serjeant Hanchett; and certainly even the distinguished leader of the Western Circuit never exceeded in clearness, accuracy, or close reasoning the admirable statement then delivered,—a statement which, while supported by a vast variety of well-known incident, may yet vie with romance for the strangeness of the events it records.

“Probably, with a view of enlisting public sympathy in his client's behalf, not impossibly also to give a semblance of consistency to a narrative wherein any individual incident might have startled credulity, the learned counsel gave a brief history of the claimant from his birth; and certainly a stranger tale it would be hard to conceive. Following all the vicissitudes of fortune, fighting to-day in the ranks of the revolutionists in Paris, we find him to-morrow the bearer of important despatches from crowned heads to the members of the exiled family of France. Ever active, ever employed, and ever faithful to his trust, this extraordinary youth became mixed up with great events, and conversant with great people everywhere. If a consciousness that he was a man of birth, and with just claims to station and property, often sustained him in moments of difficulty, there were also times when this thought suggested his very saddest reflections. He saw himself poor, and almost unfriended; he knew the scarcely passable barriers the law erects against all pretenders, whatever the justice of their demands; he was aware that his adversary would have all the benefit which vast resources and great wealth can command. No wonder, then, if he felt faint-hearted and dispirited! Another and a very different train of reasoning may, possibly, have also had its influence on his mind.

“This boy grew up to manhood in the midst of all the startling theories of the French Revolution. He had imbibed the doctrines of equality and universal brotherhood; he had been taught that a state was a family, and its population were the children, amongst whom no inequality of condition should prevail. To sue for the restitution of his own was, then, but a sorry recognition of the principles he professed. The society of the time enjoined the theory that property was a mere usurpation; and I say it is by no means improbable that, educated in such opinions, he should have deemed the prosecution of such a suit a direct falsification of his professions. The world, however, changed.

“After the Revolution came the reaction of order. To the guillotine succeeded the court-martial; then the Consulate, then the Empire. All the external forms of society underwent a less change than did the very nature of men themselves.

“Wearied of anarchy, they sought the repose of a despotism. With monarchy, too, came back all the illusions of pomp and splendor, all the tastes that wealth fosters and wealth alone confers. Carew, who had never bewailed his condition when a 'sansculottes,' now saw himself degraded in the midst of the new movement. He knew that he had been born to fortune and high estate. He had heard of the vast domains of his ancestry, from his cradle. He had got off by heart the names of townlands and baronies that all belonged to his family; and though, at the time he learned the lesson, the more stern teaching of democracy instilled the maxim that 'all property was a wrong,' yet now another impression had gained currency in the world, and he saw that even for the purposes of public utility, and the benefit of society, a man was powerless who was poor.

“Alas, however, for his prospects! every document, every letter, every scrap of writing that could have authenticated his claim was gone. Of the very nature of these papers he scarcely retains a recollection himself; he only knows that Madame de Gabriac, whose name I have already introduced to your notice, deemed them all-sufficient, if only backed by one essential document,—the certificate of his father's marriage with his mother. To obtain this had been the great object of her whole life.

“With a heroic devotion to the cause of her friend's orphan child, she had travelled over Europe in every direction, and during times of the greatest peril and disturbance. Accompanied by one trusty companion, Mr. Raper, she had never wearied in her pursuit.

“Probably, if the occasion permitted, the story I could tell of her efforts in this cause would surprise you not less than that of my client himself. Enough that I say that she stooped to poverty and privation of the very severest kind; she toiled, and labored, and suffered for years long; and, when having exhausted every resource the Old World seemed to offer to her search, she set out for the New! Since that she has not been heard of. The solicitors with whom she had corresponded have long since ceased to receive tidings of her. The belief in her death was so complete that her father, a well-known citizen of Dublin, who died two years back, bequeathed his vast fortune to various charitable institutions, alleging his childless condition as the cause.

“I have told you how, originally, my client, then a mere boy, became separated from her he had ever regarded as his mother; I have traced him through some, but far from the whole, of the strange incidents of his eventful career; and it now only remains that I should speak of the extraordinary accident by which he came upon the clew to his long sought-for, long despaired-of, inheritance.

“A short statement will suffice here, since the witnesses I mean to call before you will amply elucidate this part of my case. It was while travelling with despatches to the North of Europe my client formed acquaintance with a certain Count Ysaffich, at that time himself employed in the diplomatic service; and though at the period a warm friendship grew up between them, it was not till after the lapse of many years that the Count came to know that a large mass of papers—copies of documents drawn out by Raper, and which had come into the Count's hands in a manner I shall relate to you—actually bore reference to his former acquaintance,—the casual intimate of a journey.

“These two men, thrown together by one of the most extraordinary chances of fortune, sit down to recount their lives to each other. Beside the fire of an humble chalet, in a forest, Carew hears again the story he had once listened to in his infancy; the very tale his dear mother had repeated to him in the midst of the Alps, he now hears from the lips of one almost a stranger. Names once familiar, but long forgotten, come back to him. The very sounds thrilled through his heart like as the notes of the Swiss melody awaken in the far-away wanderer thoughts of home and fatherland. In an instant he throws off the apathy of his former life, he ceases to be the sport and plaything of fortune, and devotes himself heart and soul to the restitution of the ancient name of his house and the long dormant honors of a distinguished family.

“We cannot,” writes the journalist, “undertake at this late hour to follow the learned counsel into the minute enumeration he went into, of small circumstances of proof, memoranda of conversations, scraps of letters, allusions in the course of correspondence, and so on; the object of which was to show that although the late Walter Carew had some secret reason of his own for maintaining a mystery about his marriage, that of the fact of the marriage there could be no doubt,—nor of the legitimacy of him who claimed to be his heir; neither are we able to enter upon the intricate question of establishing the identity of the present claimant; suffice it to say that he succeeded in connecting him with a number of events from the days of his earliest childhood to a comparatively recent period, all corroboratory of his assumption; the possession of the seal and arms of his family, his name, and, above all, the unmistakable traits of family resemblance, being wonderful evidences in his favor. Indeed, we are not aware of a more dramatic incident in the administration of justice than our court presented yesterday, when, at the close of his seven hours' speech, full of all its details, narrative and legal, the able counsel suddenly paused, and, in a voice of subdued accent, asked if there chanced at that moment to be present in the court any of those who once enjoyed the friendship or even the acquaintance of the late Walter Carew. He was one, continued he, not easily to be forgotten, even by a casual observer. His tall and manly figure, the type at once of dignity and strength, his bold, high forehead, his deep-set blue eyes, soft as a child's in their expression, or sparkling like the orbs of an eagle; his mouth more characteristic than all, since, though marked by an air of pride, it never moved without an expression of genial kindliness and good-humor,—the traits that we love to think eminently national; the mingled nature of daring intrepidity with a careless ease; the dash of almost reckless courage with a still milder gayety,—these were all his. Are there not some here, is there not even one who can recall them? And if there be, let him look there! and he pointed to the gallery beside the jury-box, at the end of which was seated a young man, pale and sickly-looking, it is true, but whose countenance at once corroborated the picture. The vast multitude that filled the body of the court, crowding every avenue and space, and even invading the seats reserved for the Bar, rose as one man, and turned to gaze on the living evidence of the description. It would be difficult to conceive a more striking scene enacted within walls where the solemnity of the law usually represses every semblance of popular emotion; nor was it till after several seconds had elapsed that the judges were enabled to recall the Court to the observance of the rigid propriety of the justice-seat.

“Himself exhausted by his efforts, and really overborne by feeling, the counsel was unable to continue his address, and the Court, willingly granting an indulgence that his exertions amply deserved, adjourned till to-morrow, when at ten o'clock this remarkable case will be resumed; though it is believed, from the number of witnesses to be examined, and the necessary length of 'the reply,' the trial cannot be completed before Saturday evening.”