people getting into one hall; yet, in all this hurry we walked in tranquilly. When they were all seated, and the king-at-arms had commanded silence on pain of imprisonment (which however was very ill observed) the gentleman of the black rod was commanded to bring in his prisoner. Elizabeth, calling herself Duchess dowager of Kingston, walked in, led by black rod and Mr. La Roche, curtseying profoundly to her judges. The peers made her a slight bow. The prisoner was dressed in deep mourning; a black hood on her head, her hair modestly dressed and powdered, a black silk sacque with crape trimmings, black gauze, deep ruffles, and black gloves. The counsel spoke about her an hour and a quarter each. Dunning's manner is insufferably bad, coughing and spitting at every three words, but his sense and his expression pointed to the last degree; he made her grace shed bitter tears. The fair victim had four virgins in white behind the bar. She imitated her great predecessor, Mrs. Ruda, and affected to write very often, though I plainly perceived she only wrote as they do their love epistles on the stage, without forming a letter. The Duchess has but small remain of that beauty of which kings and princes were once so enamored. She looked much like Mrs. Pritchard. She is large and ill-shape; there is nothing white but her face, and had it not been for that, she would have looked like a bale of bombazeen. There was a great deal of ceremony, a great deal of splendor, and a great deal of nonsense; they adjourned upon the most foolish pretenses imaginable, and did nothing with such an air of business as was truly ridiculous. I forgot to tell you the Duchess was taken ill, but performed it badly." The writer adds in a subsequent letter: "I have the great satisfaction of telling you, that Elizabeth, calling herself Duchess Dowager of Kingston, was this very after

noon undignified and unduchessed, and very narrowly escaped being burned in the hand. If you have been half so much interested against this unprincipled, artful, licentious woman as I have, you will be rejoiced at it as I am. Lord Camden breakfasted with us. He is very angry that she was not burned in the hand; he says, as he was once a 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 career 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 Hindostan. Few men have ever conferred greater services on their native 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 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 honors 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 a 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 vigor 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 were lined with grenadiers. The streets were kept clear by cavalry. The peers, robed in velvet and ermine, were marshaled by the heralds under garter-king-at-arms. The judges in their vestments of state attended to give advice on points of law. Near a 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

1 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 notice of the hall, we might be supposed to have omitted two such memorable events in its past history as the trials of these two celebrated men.

Elliott, Lord Heathfield, recently ennobled for his memorable defense 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 every art. There were seated round the queen the fairhaired 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 labors 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 ofted paraded with injudicious and inelegant ostentation, but still precious, massive and splendid. There appeared the