Enter the slow-moving, hooded-faced, down-looking plaintiffs.—­

And first the widow, with a sorrowful countenance, though half-veiled, pitying her daughter more than herself.  The people, the women especially, who on this occasion will be five-sixths of the spectators, reproaching her—­You’d have the conscience, would you, to have five such brave gentlemen as these hanged for you know not what?

Next comes the poor maid—­who, perhaps, has been ravished twenty times before; and had not appeared now, but for company-sake; mincing, simpering, weeping, by turns; not knowing whether she should be sorry or glad.

But every eye dwells upon Miss!—­See, see, the handsome gentleman bows to her!

To the very ground, to be sure, I shall bow; and kiss my hand.

See her confusion! see! she turns from him!—­Ay! that’s because it is in open court, cries an arch one!—­While others admire her—­Ay! that’s a girl worth venturing one’s neck for!

Then we shall be praised—­even the judges, and the whole crowded bench, will acquit us in their hearts! and every single man wish he had been me! —­the women, all the time, disclaiming prosecution, were the case to be their own.  To be sure, Belford, the sufferers cannot put half so good a face upon the matter as we.

Then what a noise will this matter make!—­Is it not enough, suppose us moving from the prison to the sessions-house,* to make a noble heart thump it away most gloriously, when such an one finds himself attended to his trial by a parade of guards and officers, of miens and aspects warlike and unwarlike; himself of their whole care, and their business! weapons in their hands, some bright, some rusty, equally venerable for their antiquity and inoffensiveness! others of more authoritative demeanour, strutting before with fine painted staves! shoals of people following, with a Which is he whom the young lady appears against?—­ Then, let us look down, look up, look round, which way we will, we shall see all the doors, the shops, the windows, the sign-irons, and balconies, (garrets, gutters, and chimney-tops included,) all white-capt, black-hooded, and periwigg’d, or crop-ear’d up by the immobile vulgus:  while the floating street-swarmers, who have seen us pass by at one place, run with stretched-out necks, and strained eye-balls, a roundabout way, and elbow and shoulder themselves into places by which we have not passed, in order to obtain another sight of us; every street continuing to pour out its swarms of late-comers, to add to the gathering snowball; who are content to take descriptions of our persons, behaviour, and countenances, from those who had the good fortune to have been in time to see us.

* Within these few years past, a passage has been made from the prison to the sessions-house, whereby malefactors are carried into court without going through the street.  Lovelace’s triumph on their supposed march shows the wisdom of this alteration.