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professed lover of hers, he thought it would have looked ill-natured and ungallant for him to propose it, but that he should have acceded to it most heartily, though he believes he should have recommended a cold iron." The Duchess claimed the benefit of the peerage, under the statute of the first of Edward the Sixth, and was accordingly discharged without punishment. The subsequent history of the eccentric Duchess is well known.

One of the most remarkable trials which have taken place in Westminster Hall, or perhaps in any country or age, was that of Warren Hastings, who was arraigned on the 12th of February 1788, for alleged tyranny over the native princes and the dusky population of Hindoostan. Few men have ever conferred greater services on their country, or have been more deserving of its gratitude. This great man had recently returned from his dominion over the vast empire of the East, followed by the blessings of thousands, and leaving behind him a name which was revered, even where it had been most dreaded. When he reached his native country, he was still in the prime of life; eager to take that share in the great political struggles of the day, for which his genius so well adapted him, and expecting that his brilliant services in the East would be repaid with those honours and rewards which they so well merited. But a different fate awaited him. He had scarcely set his foot in England, when he found himself a proscribed man; assailed in all quarters as a tyrant

and despot, and compelled to oppose himself, almost alone and unsupported, to an united and powerful party, at the head of whom were arrayed the giant intellects of Burke, Sheridan, and Charles James Fox. The trial, or rather persecution, of Warren Hastings lasted no less than nine years; and, when the verdict of acquittal was at length pronounced, it was when the vigour of life had passed away, and when, having expended his fortune in the struggle, he found himself, comparatively speaking, a ruined man.

The celebrated trial scene of Warren Hastings, in Westminster Hall, has been graphically and beautifully painted by Mr. Macaulay.

"The place," he says, "was worthy of such a trial. It was the great hall of William Rufus, the hall which had resounded with acclamations at the inauguration of thirty kings, the hall which had witnessed the just sentence of Bacon, and the just absolution of Somers, the hall where the eloquence of Strafford had for a moment awed and melted a victorious party inflamed with just resentment, the hall where Charles had confronted the high court of justice with the placid courage which has half redeemed his fame. Neither military nor civil pomp was wanting. The avenues

* This is more poetical than true. The proceedings, both against Bacon and Somers, took place, not in Westminster Hall, but in the old House of Lords. We have merely mentioned these facts, lest, in our notices of the Hall, we might be supposed to have omitted two such remarkable events in its past history, as the trials of these two celebrated men.

were lined with grenadiers. The streets were kept clear by cavalry. The peers, robed in velvet and ermine, were marshalled by the heralds under garter-king-at-arms. The judges in their vestments of state attended to give advice on points of law. Near an hundred and seventy lords, three fourths of the Upper House, as the Upper House then was, walked in solemn order from their usual place of assembling to the tribunal. The junior baron present led the way, George Elliot Lord Heathfield, recently ennobled for his memorable defence of Gibraltar against the fleets and armies of France and Spain. The long procession was closed by the Duke of Norfolk, Earl Marshal of the realm, by the great dignitaries, and by the brothers and sons of the King. Last of all came the Prince of Wales, conspicuous by his fine person and noble bearing. The grey old walls were hung with scarlet. The long galleries were crowded by an audience such as has rarely excited the fears or the emulation of an orator. There were gathered together from all parts of a great, free, enlightened, and prosperous empire, grace and female loveliness, wit and learning, the representatives of every science and of every art. There were seated round the Queen the fair-haired young daughters of the House of Brunswick. There the ambassadors of great kings and commonwealths gazed with admiration on a spectacle which no other country in the world could present. There Siddons, in the prime of her majestic beauty, looked with emotion on a scene

surpassing all the imitations of the stage. There the historian of the Roman Empire thought of the days when Cicero pleaded the cause of Sicily against Verres, and when, before a senate which still retained some show of freedom, Tacitus thundered against the oppressor of Africa. There were seen, side by side, the greatest painter and the greatest scholar of the age. The spectacle had allured Reynolds from that easel which has preserved to us the thoughtful foreheads of so many writers and statesmen, and the sweet smiles of so many noble matrons. It had induced Parr to suspend his labours in that dark and profound mine from which he had extracted a vast treasure of erudition, a treasure too often buried in the earth, too often paraded with injudicious and inelegant ostentation, but still precious, massive, and splendid. There appeared the voluptuous charms of her to whom the heir of the throne had in secret plighted his faith. There too was she, the beautiful mother of a beautiful race, the Saint Cecilia, whose delicate features lighted up by love and music, art has rescued from the common decay. There were the members of that brilliant society, which quoted, criticized, and exchanged repartees under the rich peacock-hangings of Mrs. Montague. And there the ladies, whose lips, more persuasive than those of Fox himself, had carried the Westminster election against palace and treasury, shone round Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. The sergeants made proclamation, Hastings advanced to the bar and bent his knee.

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culprit, indeed, was not unworthy of that great presence; he had ruled an extensive and populous country, and made laws and treaties, had sent forth armies, had set up and pulled down princes; and in his high place he had so borne himself, that all had feared him, most had loved him, and that hatred itself could deny him no title to glory except virtue. He looked like a great man, and not like a bad man. A person small and emaciated, yet deriving dignity from a carriage which, while it indicated deference to the court, indicated also habitual self-possession and self-respect, a high and intellectual forehead, a brow pensive but not gloomy, a mouth of inflexible decision, a face pale and wan but serene, on which was written, as legibly as under the picture in the council-chamber at Calcutta, Mens æqua in arduis; such was the aspect with which the great proconsul presented himself to his judges."

The only other event of any interest associated with Westminster Hall;-the last occasion also on which it presented the striking splendour of ancient times,—-was the coronation of George the Fourth, which was solemnized on the 1st of August, 1820. At the magnificent banquet, the King sat on a gorgeous throne, on a raised dais, immediately under the great window at the south end of the Hall. At long ranges of tables were seated the guests, including the peers, and the knights of the different Orders, in their robes; every ceremonial was followed which had been in use in the days

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