He turned quickly back, and looking me in the face, without the slightest anger said, "An execrable villain if you like--not a remorseless one! Her death alone sits near, and troubles my to all else hardened conscience. And let me tell you, reverend sir," he continued, resuming his former bitterness as he addressed the chaplain--"let me tell you that it was not the solemn words of the judge the other day, but her pale, reproachful image, standing suddenly beside me in the dock, just as she looked when I passed my last deception on her, that caused the tremor and affright, complacently attributed by that grave functionary to his own sepulchral eloquence. After all, her death can not be exclusively laid to my charge. Those who tried her would not believe her story, and yet it was true as death. Had they not been so confident in their own unerring wisdom, they might have doomed her to some punishment short of the scaffold, and could now have retrieved their error. But I am weary, and would, I repeat, be alone. Farewell!" He threw himself on the rude pallet, and we silently withdrew. A paper embodying Justin Arnold's declaration was forwarded to the secretary of state, and duly acknowledged, accompanied by an official expression of mild regret that it had not been in time to save the life of Jane Eccles. No further notice was taken of the matter, and the record of the young woman's judicial sacrifice still doubtless encumbers the archives of the Home Office, forming, with numerous others of like character, the dark, sanguine background upon which the achievements of the great and good men who have so successfully purged the old Draco code that now a faint vestige only of the old barbarism remains, stand out in bright relief and changeless lustre. MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. (_Continued from page 543._) BOOK IV.--INITIAL CHAPTER:--COMPRISING MR. CAXTON'S OPINIONS ON THE MATRIMONIAL STATE, SUPPORTED BY LEARNED AUTHORITIES. "It was no bad idea of yours, Pisistratus," said my father, graciously, "to depict the heightened affections and the serious intentions of Signior Riccabocca by a single stroke--_He left off his spectacles!_ Good." "Yet," quoth my uncle, "I think Shakspeare represents a lover as falling into slovenly habits, neglecting his person, and suffering his hose to be ungartered, rather than paying that attention to his outer man which induces Signor Riccabocca to leave off his spectacles, and look as handsome as nature will permit him." "There are different degrees and many phases of the passion," replied my father. "Shakspeare is speaking of an ill-treated, pining, woebegone lover, much aggrieved by the cruelty of his mistress--a lover who has found it of no avail to smarten himself up, and has fallen despondently into the opposite extreme. Whereas Signor Riccabocca has nothing to complain of in the barbarity of Miss Jemima." "Indeed he has not!" cried Blanche, tossing her head--"forward creature!"