truth of the tale, and without assigning any reason, wrote to Mr. Breckenridge a curt letter of dismissal, and immediately employed George ——­ to conduct the further defence.  This gentleman, surpassed by no man in Kentucky as a logician, lawyer, and orator, was inferior to the discarded attorney in that great requisite of a jury-lawyer, personal popularity, besides laboring under the disadvantage of being new to the case, and having but a short time to make himself acquainted with its details.  Personal pique and professional punctilio, of course, withheld his predecessor from affording any further assistance or advice in a business from which he had been so summarily dismissed.  We cannot now measure accurately the effect of this change of counsel; we only know, that, at the time, it was considered most disastrous by those having the best opportunities of judging.

But if Mr. ——­ went into the cause under this disadvantage, he was spurred on by the consideration that in his client he was defending a friend:  for they had been friends in youth, and, though long separated, the tie had never been interrupted.  Hence he threw himself into the case with an ardor which money could never have inspired, and in the course of the few remaining days had succeeded in mastering all its essential points.

The interest excited by this second trial was as deep and far more widely spread than by the first.  Few proceedings of the kind in Kentucky ever called together a crowd at once so large and intelligent, a great proportion being lawyers, who had been induced to attend by the desire to witness what it was expected would be one of the most brilliant efforts of an eminent member of their fraternity.

The principal difference between the two trials was, that, on this occasion, the testimony of the sister-in-law was much damaged by the exposure both of her exaggerations and suppressions of important facts touching the incident at the breakfast-table.  Having incautiously allowed herself to be drawn into particularizing so minutely as to fix the exact date, and so positively as to render retraction impossible, she was, to her own evident discomfiture, flatly contradicted by more than one of those present on that occasion, who described the scene as it actually occurred.  Of course, after such a revelation of untruthfulness, her whole testimony became liable to suspicion, the more violent that the falsehood was plainly intentional.  Moreover, the defendant was now provided with evidence of the constant and intolerable provocations to which he had been subjected during the whole of his married life.  Of this, however, the most moderate and guarded use was to be made; because, while it was necessary, by exposing the true character and habitual violence of his wife, to relieve the prisoner of that load of public indignation which had been excited against him on account of his alleged brutality, it was even more important that no strong resentment