to heaven," But a few minutes, Maria! and we are there!" On the scaffold she again bade her farewell, again repeating "Dear Maria! but one minute now, and we are together with God." But when she knelt down and her neck was bared for the stroke, the unhappy girl lost all self-command, and with a loud and piercing shriek she bade them hold and not murder the innocent. "She is innocent! I have borne false witness! I alone am the murderess!" She rolled herself now at the feet of the executioner, and now at those of the clergymen, and conjured them to stop the execution, declaring that the whole story had been invented by herself; that she had never brought forth, much less destroyed an infant; that for her friend's sake she made this discovery; that for herself she wished to die, and would die gladly, if they would take away her friend, and promise to free her soul from the dreadful agony of having murdered her friend by false witness. The executioner asked Harlin, if there were any truth in what Maria Schöning had said. The heroine answered with manifest reluctance: "Most assuredly she hath said the truth: I confessed myself guilty, because I wished to die and thought it best for both of us; and now that my hope is on the moment of its accomplishment, I cannot be supposed to declare myself innocent for the sake of saving my life ;but any wretchedness is to be endured rather than that poor creature should be hurried out of the world in a state of despair."

The outcry of the attending populace prevailed to suspend the execution: a report was sent to the assembled magistrates, and in the meantime one of the priests reproached the widow in bitter words for her former false confession. What," she replied sternly, but without anger, "what would the truth have availed? Before I

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perceived my friend's purpose I did deny it: my assurance was pronounced an impudent lie: I was already bound for the torture, and so bound that the sinews of my hands started, and one of their worships in the large white peruke, threatened that he would have me stretched till the sun shone through me ;-and that then I should cry out, Yes, when it was too late." The priest was hardhearted or superstitious enough to continue his reproofs, to which the noble woman condescended no further answer. The other clergyman, however, was both more rational and more humane. He succeeded in silencing his colleague, and the former half of the long hour, which the magistrates took in making speeches on the improbability of the tale instead of re-examining the culprits in person, he employed in gaining from the widow a connected account of all the circumstances, and in listening occasionally to Maria's passionate descriptions of all her friend's goodness and magnanimity. For she had gained an influx of life and spirit from the assurance in her mind, both that she had now rescued Harlin from death and was about to expiate the guilt of her purpose by her own execution. For the latter half of the time the clergyman remained in silence, lost in thought, and momently expecting the return of the messenger. All that during the deep silence of this interval could be heard, was one exclamation of Harlin to her unhappy friend-"Oh! Maria! Maria! couldst thou but have kept up thy courage for another minute, we should have been now in heaven!" The messenger came back with an order from the magistrates-to proceed with the execution! With re-animated countenance Harlin placed her neck on the block and her head was severed from her body amid a general shriek from the crowd. The executioner fainted after the blow, and the under hang

man was ordered to take his place. He was not wanted. Maria was already gone: her body was found as cold as ' if she had been dead for some hours. The flower had been snapt in the storm, before the scythe of violence could come near it.

ESSAY II.

The history of times representeth the magnitude of actions and the public faces and deportment of persons, and passeth over in silence the smaller passages and motions of men and matters. But such being the workmanship of God, as he doth hang the greatest weight upon the smallest wires, maxima e minimis suspendens; it comes therefore to pass, that such histories do rather set forth the pomp of business than the true and inward resorts thereof. But lives, if they be well written, propounding to themselves a person to represent in whom actions both greater and smaller, public and private, have a commixture, must of necessity contain a more true, native, and lively representation.— BACON.*

MANKIND in general are so little in the habit of looking steadily at their own meaning, or of weighing the words by which they express it, that the writer, who is careful to do both, will sometimes mislead his readers through the very excellence which qualifies him to be their instructor: and this with no other fault on his part, than the modest mistake of supposing in those, to whom he addresses himself, an intellect as watchful as his own. The inattentive reader adopts as unconditionally true, or perhaps rails at his author for having stated as such, what upon examination would be found to have been duly limited, and would so have been understood, if opaque spots and false refractions were as rare in the mental as in the bodily eye. The motto, for instance, to this paper has more than once served as an excuse and authority for huge volumes of biographical minutiæ,

* Advancement of Learning, B. ii.-Ed.

which render the real character almost invisible, like clouds of dust on a portrait, or the counterfeit frankincense which smoke-blacks the favourite idol of a Roman Catholic village. Yet Lord Bacon, by the expressions 'public faces' and 'propounding to themselves a person,' evidently confines the biographer to such facts as are either susceptible of some useful general inference, or tend to illustrate those qualities which distinguished the subject of them from ordinary men; while the passage in the general was meant to guard the historian against considering as trifles, all that might appear so to those who recognize no greatness in the mind, and can conceive no dignity in any incident, which does not act on their senses by its external accompaniments, or on their curiosity by its immediate consequences. Things apparently insignificant are recommended to our notice, not for their own sakes, but for their bearings or influences on things of importance: in other words, when they are insignificant in appearance only.

An inquisitiveness into the minutest circumstances and casual sayings of eminent contemporaries is indeed quite natural; but so are all our follies, and the more natural they are, the more caution should we exert in guarding against them. To scribble trifles even on the perishable glass of an inn window, is the mark of an idler; but to engrave them on the marble monument, sacred to the memory of the departed great, is something worse than idleness. The spirit of genuine biography is in nothing more conspicuous than in the firmness with which it withstands the cravings of worthless curiosity, as distinguished from the thirst after useful knowledge. For, in the first place, such anecdotes as derive their whole and sole interest from the great name of the person concerning whom they are related, and neither illustrate his general