CONTENTS OF VOL I. PREFACE. THE favourable reception which the "Romance of the Forum" has already met with, induces the production of a second series under the same title. The subject is one which may well be expanded: its interest, it is trusted, will increase in consequence of further extension. Not only is the truth often more wonderful than fiction, but it has greater variety also. The novelist, the romancist, and the poet, however able, find it hard, if not impossible, to avoid, in later efforts, a close resemblance to their prior works. Not so with these real records of waywardness and litigation. They never repeat themselves. The assertion may be safely ventured that each crime or cause narrated here displays some strange circumstance peculiar to itself-some startling novelty occurring in that instance only. Tam multæ scelerum facies. There has indeed been no difficulty to secure for these, as for the prior volumes, marvels in multifarious abundance. The present series strictly continues the plan of the former. The same care has been devoted to selection; the same attention to arrangement, illustration, and elucidation; the same caution as to the removal and omission of all matter of an improper or indelicate nature. The author has had, as usual, he is sorry to say, his labours increased from the sad want of any correct or authentic reports of English domestic trials. As usual, too, he has found the reverse with regard to foreign records. Such works as "The New Pitaval," in Germany, the 66 Répertoire Général des Causes Célèbres," of M. B. Saint Edme, in France, and the account of the Webster trial by Dr. Stone, in America,to all of which the author, in the following pages, is much indebted-reflect high credit on the juridical literature of those respective countries. Not to books, however, only, but to the assistance and advice of legal friends, the author owes a great deal in the formation of these volumes. He would, in praying those friends to accept his cordial thanks, be glad to name them all, but hesitates to do so without leave. Yet, two, of particular service to him, he must take upon himself to gratefully mention. One of |