[19] The trials of Lovett, Collins, Vincent, and others, are reported briefly in the 9th volume of Carrington & Payne's reports. The legal points raised on the trials chiefly make up the reports. THOMAS COOPER is another original genius, who has forced his way into sunlight through the thick shell of British caste. Eating the bitter bread of poverty during childhood, he contrived, by means that throw fiction into the shade, to gratify a native taste for reading, drawing, and music. Laboring on a shoemaker's bench from the age of fifteen to twenty-three, he snatched from toil the opportunity to acquire a respectable knowledge of the Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and French languages, and of Algebra and Geometry--to commit to memory considerable portions of Shakspeare and Milton--to peruse the works of Hooker, Cudworth, Stillingfleet, Warburton, and Paley--and to compose some poetry and essays of his own. This he did by robbing sleep of its wonted hours, and while his miserable wages afforded a pittance barely sufficient to keep him and his mother from starving. At the age of twenty-three, he dropped his awl and hammer, and emerged into the world. For ten years he buffeted a sea of troubles, dividing his time between teaching country schools and writing for newspapers; now accumulating a choice library of 500 volumes, and then parting with it, volume by volume, for bread. In 1841, while engaged as a reporter for the _Leicestershire Mercury_, he was directed to report a Chartist lecture. It was the first he had heard, and its principles found an echo in his bosom. He commenced a lecturing tour in support of the Charter, visiting, among other places, the Staffordshire potteries. While in that region, in 1842, occurred those serious disturbances which for weeks tossed the Midland counties on a wild tempest of riots. At first, the object was to raise the wages of the operatives by a general "strike." Demagogues fanned the flame, till it broke loose in arson, pillage, and other violent acts, resulting in a few instances in loss of life. Cooper was arrested, and finally arraigned on four indictments for riot, sedition, and arson. He was tried, and, though acquitted on the more serious charge, was convicted of the minor offenses, against every principle of law or reason. He was sentenced to two years and three months' imprisonment. One of the trials lasted ten days. Cooper defended himself with great ability, proving no unworthy antagonist for Sir William Follett. The barbarous treatment he received in prison gave him rheumatism, neuralgia, and other diseases; but it gave to the world "The Purgatory of Suicides." This poem appeared soon after his liberation, in 1845, having been composed in Stafford jail. It was highly eulogized in the Eclectic, Britannia, and other literary periodicals, and met with immediate success. In the preface, the author proudly says: