"In setting forth, under a condensed form," says Mr Townsend,[3] "this and the other most interesting trials of our time, it has been the object of the editor to free the work from dry severity by introducing the '_loci lætiores_' of the advocates, the salient parts of cross-examination--those little passages of arms between the rival combatants which diversified the arena, the painting of the forensic scene, the poetry of action of these legal dramas. He has sought to give the expressed spirit of eloquence and law, upon occasions which peculiarly called them forth; pruning what was redundant, rejecting superfluities, weeding out irrelevant matter, but omitting no incident or episode that all intelligent witness would have been disappointed at not hearing." We present the ensuing paragraph, which immediately follows the preceding, because it will afford us an opportunity of making a remark which is applicable to the entire structure of the work before us. "In the extracts here given from some of the most celebrated speeches of modern days, the editor has also had the great advantage of the last corrections of the speakers themselves, and has thus been enabled to preserve the _ipsissima verba_, by which minds were captivated and verdicts won; those treasures of oratory which would have gladdened the old age of Erskine, could he have seen how his talisman had been passed from hand to hand, and the mantle of his inspiration caught. The vivid appeals of Whiteside, the magnificent defence of Cockburn, the persuasive imagery of Talfourd, will exist as ®kthêmata heis aehi®--trophies of forensic eloquence, beacon lights it may be, in the midst of that prosaic mistiness which has begun to creep around our courts."