These are hard words; and, if deserved, must condemn Henry of Monmouth. That they are not deserved; that he was not guilty of this offence (p. 285) against God and his father; that the page which records it condemns itself, and is contradictory to our undisputed public records; that the manuscript which contains the charge carries with it no authority whatever; and that the inference which has lately been fastened upon the original report is altogether inconsistent with the acknowledged facts of the case, are points which the Author believes he has established beyond further controversy in the Appendix; and to that dissertation he again with confidence refers the reader. But every reader whose verdict is worth receiving, will agree that our abhorrence of a crime should only increase our care and circumspection that no innocent person stand charged with it. If Henry were guilty, his character must remain branded with an indelible stain, in the estimation of every parent and every child, incomparably more disgraceful than those "vicious gaieties" with which poets and historiographers have delighted to stamp his memory.--At a time when disease was paralysing all a father's powers of body and mind, and hurrying him prematurely to the grave, that a first-born son, instead of devoting himself, and all his heart, and all his faculties, to his parent; strengthening his feeble hands, supporting his faltering steps, guiding his erring counsels, bearing his heavy burden, protecting him from the machinations of the malicious and designing, cheering his drooping spirits, making (as far as in him lay) his (p. 286) last days on earth days of peace, and comfort, and calm preparation for the change to which he was hastening;--instead of this, that a son, who had always professed respect and affection for his father, should thrust the most painful thorn of all into the side of a sinking, broken down, dying man, is so abhorrent from every feeling, not only of a truly noble and generous spirit, but of mere ordinary humanity,--is so utterly "unprincipled," "unfilial," and "unnatural,"--that though in such a case we might hope, after a life of sincere Christian penitence, the stain might have been removed from his conscience; yet, in the estimation of the wise and good, he could never have obtained the name of "the most excellent and most gracious flower of Christian chivalry."