The counsel, in the mean time, went on. The following is a translation of his speech:—
"My lord, and gentlemen of the jury.
"It is with feelings of considerable diffidence and hesitation, that I rise to address you, after the flood of eloquence that has poured from my learned brother. I, gentlemen, am not gifted with such an enviable facility of speech; nor is my imagination endowed with that creative power he has so forcibly displayed. I cannot, gentlemen, like him
Uprear the club of Hercules—For what?
To crush a butterfly, or brain a gnat.
Nor have I the least intention of drawing either Neptune or Pluto from the quiet nap they have been taking for so many centuries—to assist in our debate. I assure you, also, gentlemen, that I shall neither disturb the ocean from its rocky bed, nor make Nature stand aghast.—No, my lord and gentlemen, my intentions are perfectly pacific, and your harassed imaginations may repose tranquilly upon my speech, after the tumultuous one of my learned brother, as the way-worn traveller rests peaceably upon the soft green turf, after having been tossed about upon the heaving billows of the tempestuous ocean.
'Tis sweet to rest from dread of danger free,
And mark the billows of the foaming sea;
'Tis sweet, a little skiff to safely urge
Through the tempestuous ocean's boiling surge;
To hear the pattering rains against the roof,
And feel your hospitable mansion proof.
But sweeter far the troubled mind's repose
When of a speech like this, it hears the close.
When I listened to the powerful exordium of my learned friend—and I did listen to him with the most profound attention—I confess my imagination was too highly excited to be satisfied with so lame and impotent a conclusion.—'What!' cried I, 'have the laws of nature been reversed—have demons been disturbed in their infernal revels, and witches called from their dusky caverns, merely because a beautiful woman has excited a tender passion in the breast of a youthful stranger? Is this so extraordinary an occurrence that it should create such excessive wonder? Are our hearts so dead to beauty that such a catastrophe should occasion surprise? Forbid it, Heaven! No! whilst our hearts still throb in our bosoms, may they ever beat responsive to the attractions of the fair! May we never become insensible to the charms of the loveliest objects of creation! May we ever own their witchery, and bend beneath their magic sway! Or man, degraded man! would soon sink below the level of the brutes. View man as he degenerates when secluded from the influence of female society;—is he not rough, brutal, and unpolished? Does he not want all those winning graces and those delicate attentions that form so undeniably the charm and solace of life? In proportion as our sensibility, as our goodness, and all the best feelings of our nature are awakened, we become susceptible of love. It is indeed, excessive sensibility, and a kindly feeling to our fellow-creatures, that creates it. Does there exist a generous or noble mind that has not felt this passion? No, not one! there is, indeed, something generous and ennobling in it. We cannot prefer the welfare of another to our own, nor be completely absorbed in another's being, with the devotedness of true love, without becoming purified in our ideas, and raised from that disgusting selfishness which is ever the inspirer of base and mean actions.
Yes, love indeed is light from Heaven,
A spark of that immortal fire,
With angels shared, by Alla given,
To lift from earth our low desire.
Devotion wafts the mind above,
But Heaven itself descends in love.
And from this heavenly, this inspiring feeling, shall my unfortunate client be debarred? Hear me, ye shades of heroic lovers, who, though dying for the hopeless object of your passion, have still exclaimed, with the enthusiastic devotion of a modern poet—
Lead on, lead on, though horrors wait
In awful fury round thy gate!
And danger, death, and grim despair,
Forbid my hopeless passage there!
If love, still smiling, beckon on,
The path is passed, the gate is won!