"Thus has Gerard described his emotions; his father ordered him to quit the room, and he went to brood upon the fate impending over him. On the morrow early he was bid prepare to attend the House of Lords. His father did not appear; he thought that the boy was terrified, and would make no further resistance. Gerard, indeed, obeyed in silence. He disdained to argue with strangers and hirelings; he had an idea that if he openly rebelled he might be carried by force, and his proud heart swelled at the idea of compulsion. He got into the carriage, and, as he went, Mr. Carter, who was with him, thought it advisable to explain the forms, and give some instructions. Gerard listened with composure, nay, asked a question or two concerning the preliminaries; he was told of the oath that would be administered; and how the words he spoke after taking that oath would be implicitly believed, and that he must be careful to say nothing that was not strictly true. The colour, not an indignant blush, but a suffusion as of pleasure, mantled over his cheeks as this was explained. "They arrived; they were conducted into some outer room to await the call of the peers. What tortures the boy felt as strangers came up, some to speak, and others to gaze; all of indignation, resolution, grief, and more than manhood's struggles that tore his bosom during the annoying delays that always protract this sort of scenes, none cared to scan. He was there unresisting, apparently composed; if now his cheek flushed, and now his lips withered into paleness; if now the sense of suffocation rose in his throat, and now tears rushed into his eyes, as the image of his sweet mother passed across his memory, none regarded, none cared. When I have thought of the spasms and throes which his tender and highwrought soul endured during this interval, I often wonder his heart-strings did not crack, or his reason for ever unsettle; as it is, he has not yet escaped the influence of that hour; it shadows his life with eclipse, it comes whispering agony to him, when otherwise he might forget. Some author has described the effect of misfortune on the virtuous as the crushing of perfumes, so to force them to give forth their fragrance. Gerard is all nobleness, all virtue, all tenderness; do we owe any part of his excellence to this hour of anguish? If so, I may be consoled; but I can never think of it without pain. He says himself, 'Yes! without these sharp goadings, I had not devoted my whole life to clearing my mother's fame.' Is this devotion a good? As yet no apparent benefit has sprung from it.