Note 122 — Chapter VI · (continued 2)

“It is very difficult,” said the learned Judge, “to say what the exasperated feelings of a female placed in such a situation as this woman was might not lead her to do. And here it is that the correspondence becomes of the utmost importance, as shewing what feelings she cherished about that time, what state and disposition of mind she was in, and whether there was any trace of moral sense or propriety to be found in her letters, or whether they did not exhibit such a degree of ill-regulated, disordered, distempered, and licentious feelings, as shew that the writer was quite capable of compassing any end by which she could avoid exposure and disgrace, and of cherishing any feeling of revenge which such treatment might excite in her mind, driven nearly to madness by the thought of what might follow the revelation of this correspondence. We have heard a good deal said by the Dean of Faculty as to the character of this person: we have no evidence on the subject, except what these letters exhibit, and no witness to character is brought; and certainly these letters exhibit as extraordinary a frame of mind and of passion as perhaps ever appeared in a court of justice. Can you be surprised, that after such letters as those of the 29th April and 3rd May (inviting him in very plain terms to meet her for that purpose at the garden gate of the country house), that on the 6th May, three days afterwards, he got possession of her person? On the 7th she again writes, and in that letter is there the slightest appearance of grief, of repentance, of remorse? It is the letter of a girl rejoicing in what had passed, and alluding to it particularly in terms which I will not read, for perhaps they were never previously committed to paper, as having passed between man and woman. There could be no doubt of the state of degraded and unholy feeling into which she had sunk, probably not the less so if it was produced by his undermining and corruption.”