Touched with the solemn harmonies of night, Down do we lie our spirits to repair, And, fresh ourselves, make morning fresh and fair; Sleep too our Father gave to soften death's affright: In sleep we lapse and lose ourselves away, And thus each night our death do we rehearse. O, at the last may we the oblivion pierce Of death, as aye of sleep, and rise unto the day. MODERN STATE TRIALS.[10] PART V.--THE ROMANCE OF FORGERY--_Concluded_. [10] _Modern State Trials_: Revised and Illustrated, with Essays and Notes. By WILLIAM C. TOWNSEND, Esq., M.A., Q.C., Recorder of Macclesfield. In 2 vols. 8vo. Longman Co., 1850. "ALEXANDER HUMPHREYS, or Alexander, _pretending_ to be Earl of Stirling," said Lord Meadowbank,[11] addressing his prisoner, on his being first placed at the bar, "you have been served with an indictment charging you with the crimes of forgery, and of feloniously using and uttering as genuine, certain documents therein described, and alleged to have been forged and fabricated, you knowing them to be so. Are you guilty, or not guilty?" [11] The duty here performed by the President of the Court is in England discharged by an officer of the Court called the Clerk of Arraigns. "Not guilty, my Lord," replied the prisoner, standing beside his friend Colonel D'Aguilar. But now occurs the question--how was he to be tried?--as a peer of Scotland, or as a commoner? If as a peer, the court before whom he stood was incompetent to try him; for he was entitled, by the Treaty of Union, as a peer of Scotland, to be tried as peers of Great Britain are tried--viz., in the Court of the Lord High Steward; and the mode of procedure is that prescribed in 1825 by Statute 6 Geo. iv. c. 66, which required the Scottish judges to be summoned and to sit with the English judges, and according to the law of Scotland, [pp. 5, 6.] This privilege, however, as will be presently seen, the prisoner waived. Then came another question: was he to be tried as a "_landed_ man?"--by which is meant a landed proprietor. It is a very ancient privilege of landed men, by the Scotch law, that they should be tried only by their peers--_i.e._, their brother landed proprietors. In process of time, however, this right has been so far modified as to entitle the prisoner to a _majority_ only of his landed brethren. This right also, as will shortly be seen, the prisoner waived--having probably no pretence to the possession of any lands in Scotland, except such as he claimed as Earl of Stirling. To meet any possible difficulty, however, on this score, two lists of assize had been prepared--respectively consisting of "_landed men_" and common jurors, and "_special_ jurors" and common Jurors: the former to be adopted "if the said Alexander Humphreys claimed, and was entitled to, the privilege of a landed man;" the latter, "if he did _not_ claim, or was _not_ entitled to, the privilege of a landed man."