that darling brother, the playmate of my infancy, the companion of my youthful sports, in whom my heart’s blood circulates, and with whom my love is entwined. And how did he present himself? And how did he bear our presence? I say, like Socrates in his cell; I say, like Sidney in the Tower; I say, like Calas before the wheel. He preserves a cheerful, an undaunted, an English heart and spirit, and I am proud of him even in his death doom. Your lordship has not crushed or trampled my brother’s soul. He maintains his energy and his hope in justice, not indeed from men, for he was condemned long since, but in the course of events, in the discoveries of science, in the confession or conviction of those perjured witnesses against him; or, these all failing, in the God of truth. Though I never doubted his innocence, yet did I resolve to make all certain and positive before I hazarded this letter. I fell on my knees before him. I implored him by our past love and kindred, by our early recollections and hopes, by our common faith, by all the duties which he owed to man and God, to disburthen his conscience if he were guilty, and not to enter before the presence of his Creator with a falsehood upon his lips. I adjured him to say if he were guilty or not guilty. Oh, my lord! he did not wince; he did not change his noble composure; he spoke and looked all innocence. Calmly, earnestly, and solemnly he answered, and the seriousness of his words went into our hearts with the fullest persuasion of his perfect guiltlessness of blood; the most complete reliance on that dying tongue which never spoke falsely to one of us, but to whose language we listened ever with full assurance in its integrity and its faith. Under these circumstances, therefore, I make no apology for addressing your lordship. A great, a majestic duty is now imposed on you. If you shrink from executing it you are undone. There are but seven days between this and the irrevocable hour of death. All your repentance, all your shame will be unavailing if that dread sentence be rashly carried into effect. I ask you not to recommend a pardon for my brother--for that, I know, you will not do; but I ask you--for in you it lies--to obtain a respite for him till his guilt or innocence be demonstrated to the satisfaction of the world. Bear in mind that my brother’s counsel offered fearlessly at the trial that an experiment should be made. Bear in mind that some of the most able chemical analysts in the world have declared upon their oaths that if strychnia were administered it can be found; that the Attorney-General himself, to a certain extent, repudiated Dr. Taylor, and supported himself by Mr. Herapath’s supposition that strychnia was there, though Taylor could not find it; bear in mind that Taylor’s theory of the absorption and decomposition of strychnia was never heard of until this trial; that it was hit upon by him to bolster up his