Paul Clifford — CompleteLytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
General
Paul Clifford — Complete
Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
Brigands and robbers -- Fiction
We need scarcely add that Brandon set every engine and channel of
justice in motion for the discovery of his son. All the especial
shrewdness and keenness of his own character, aided by his professional
experience, he employed for years in the same pursuit. Every research
was wholly in vain; not the remotest vestige towards discovery could
be traced until were found (we have recorded when) some of the articles
that had been stolen. Fate treasured in her gloomy womb, altogether
undescried by man, the hour and the scene in which the most ardent wish
of William Brandon was to be realized.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
O Fortuna, viris invida fortibus
Quam non aqua bonis praemia dividis.
SENECA.
............
And as a hare, whom hounds and horns pursue,
Pants to the place from whence at first he flew.
............
Here, to the houseless child of want,
My door is open still.
GOLDSMITH.
Slowly for Lucy waned the weeks of a winter which to her was the most
dreary portion of life she had ever passed. It became the time for the
judge to attend one of those periodical visitations so fraught with
dread and dismay to the miserable inmates of the dark abodes which the
complex laws of this country so bounteously supply,--those times of
great hilarity and eating to the legal gentry,--
“Who feed on crimes and fatten on distress,
And wring vile mirth from suffering's last excess.”
Ah! excellent order of the world, which it is so wicked to disturb! How
miraculously beautiful must be that system which makes wine out of
the scorching tears of guilt; and from the suffocating suspense,
the agonized fear, the compelled and self-mocking bravery, the awful
sentence, the despairing death-pang of one man, furnishes the smirking
expectation of fees, the jovial meeting, and the mercenary holiday to
another! “Of Law, nothing less can be said than that her seat is the
bosom of God.”--[Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity.]--To be sure not;
Richard Hooker, you are perfectly right. The divinity of a sessions and
the inspiration of the Old Bailey are undeniable!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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