The Lay of Mr Colt. [The story of Mr Colt, of which our Lay contains merely the sequel, is this: A New York printer, of the name of Adams, had the effrontery to call upon him one day for payment of an account, which the independent Colt settled by cutting his creditor's head to fragments with an axe. He then packed his body in a box, and sprinkling it with salt, despatched it to a packet bound for New Orleans. Suspicions having been excited, he was seized and tried before Judge Kent. The trial is, perhaps, the most disgraceful upon the records of any country. The ruffian's mistress was produced in court, and examined, in disgusting detail, as to her connection with Colt, and his movements during the days and nights succeeding the murder. The head of the murdered man was bandied to and fro in the court, handed up to the jury, and commented on by witnesses and counsel; and to crown the horrors of the whole proceeding, the wretch's own counsel, a Mr Emmet, commencing the defence with a cool admission that his client took the life of Adams, and following it up by a detail of the whole circumstances of this most brutal murder in the first person, as though he himself had been the murderer, ended by telling the jury, that his client was "_entitled to the sympathy_ of a jury of his country," as "a young man just entering into life, _whose prospects, probably, have been permanently blasted_." Colt was found guilty; but a variety of exceptions were taken to the charge by the judge, and after a long series of appeals, which _occupied more than a year from the date of conviction_, the sentence of death was ratified by Governor Seward. The rest of Colt's story is told in our ballad.] STREAK THE FIRST. * * * * And now the sacred rite was done, and the marriage-knot was tied, And Colt withdrew his blushing wife a little way aside; "Let's go," he said, "into my cell; let's go alone, my dear; I fain would shelter that sweet face from the sheriff's odious leer. The jailer and the hangman, they are waiting both for me,-- I cannot bear to see them wink so knowingly at thee! Oh, how I loved thee, dearest! They say that I am wild, That a mother dares not trust me with the weasand of her child; They say my bowie-knife is keen to sliver into halves The carcass of my enemy, as butchers slay their calves. They say that I am stern of mood, because, like salted beef, I packed my quartered foeman up, and marked him 'prime tariff;' Because I thought to palm him on the simple-souled John Bull, And clear a small percentage on the sale at Liverpool; It may be so, I do not know--these things, perhaps, may be; But surely I have always been a gentleman to thee! Then come, my love, into my cell, short bridal space is ours,-- Nay, sheriff, never con thy watch--I guess there's good two hours. We'll shut the prison doors and keep the gaping world at bay, For love is long as 'tarnity, though I must die to-day!"