Mr. Williams, the well-known solicitor, was
placed in the dock with his two maid-servants
to stand their trial. It lasted five days, and
threw the whole neighbourhood into a fever of
excitement. The prosecution seemed to make
the case yet more conclusive. A respectable
gentleman, collector of the district, proved
emphatically that on the 7th of May—the date
of the forged will, he had scarcely quitted the
side of the testator a moment. Various
servants of the household swore that the solicitor
had not been near the house on that day.
Indeed, taking the whole case for the prosecution
together, and recalling the awkward
diamond ring incident, the reasonable dislike
of the deceased, the affection for the son, and
the strange behaviour of the accused, the Welsh
jury could hardly have hesitated, and the
present jury of readers must heartily endorse such
a view. Yet the prisoner seems to have been
innocent, and was triumphantly acquitted!

Even during the course of the prosecution,
a fact or two had dropped out that seemed to
point in the same direction. The old testator had
been heard to speak affectionately of his absent
daughter Lauretta, uttering a wish that he could
leave her two thousand pounds instead of two
hundred; but when the defence was opened,
the obscurities began to clear away. Nothing
could be more convincing. A brother clergy-
man stated solemnly that the old man had
expressed a wish to him to make the solicitor
his executor, because he was sure he would
take care of his poor daughter. He had
repeated this remark to the prisoner, on whom it
seemed to come as no surprise; it was by his
advice, he explained, that the prisoner had
studiously kept back the will; through fear, it
would seem, that the scandal and awkwardness
that would follow from two being produced
together. Then appeared a coachman, who,
in the most explicit terms, swore not only to
the driving of his master to the castle on the
day when the last will was executed, but that
they had met the prosecutor and a friend
coming away from the castle. Finally, the two
attesting witnesses, the maid-servants, were
brought up, and in that satisfactory way
which is so hard to describe, but which carries
conviction to the minds of judge, jury, lawyers,
and perhaps a crowd, detailed the whole
circumstance of the execution of the will, and
the result was the breaking-down of the charge,
and acquittal of the prisoner. A curious feature
in this case is the perfect surprise; for, as was
before noticed, when the prosecution had
closed, the conviction seemed a certain and
foregone conclusion; and the jury might have
turned round, as the phrase runs, in their box,
though equity would of course have coerced them
barely to tolerate a hopeless defence. The
outraged solicitor, who, indeed, could not have had
solicitor's flesh and blood had he acted otherwise,
at once brought his action for a malicious
prosecution, and the judge tried, by anticipation,
to check any eagerness of the jury in his
favour, by warning them that they must
consider whether the prosecutor had not most
reasonable inducement to act as he did.  They
found a verdict for three hundred pounds
damages.

Sir Bernard Burke, in the latest edition of
his agreeable Vicissitudes, has touched on some
of those oddities of the more remarkable will-
makers. One instance given by him shows in
what a freak, and at the same time what a vicious
freak, the will-maker can indulge himself, solely
to convey the idea of his power. He thinks
if he should allow his property to go in the
regular course that he makes no figure; but,
with a stroke of his pen to give away an estate,
that is a sort of omnipotence. Thus the last
Earl of Harcourt, when settling his affairs, did
not think of charity or hospital, but turned to
some old chronicle, where he found that his
ancestors had broken away from the old French
tree of Harcourt, about seven hundred years
before. The English sapling would grow no
more; and he deliberately sought out the
influential Marquis D'Harcourt, in France,
seeking a most substantial bond to reunite the
two houses, separated since the twelfth century.
The French nobleman must have been amazed
to hear that he had been selected as heir to a
noble estate at Windsor, with a bonus of some
eighty thousand pounds to buy an addition.

THE BRIDGEWATER CASE.

Will making furnishes us with yet another
reflection, namely, that gigantic disposers of
property, with the best professional aid that
money can procure, miscarry in their intentions
much more frequently than less ambitious
distributors. It may be that the great booty
to be disposed of causes an excess of care and
precaution, or that its very size invites a
contest. It is to be considered also that the man
who has "made his money," the millionnaire, is
inclined to become lofty, and arrogant almost,
in forecasting the future. As he has done so
much alive, he wishes to project his behests
into the future, and after his death, direct
very despotically what he has earned so hardly.
Hence he is betrayed into mistakes, and the
courts seem to take pleasure in passing a slight
on the impotent efforts of one who, they
think, ought to have now done with the world.
The Thellusson case was a good instance of
this checkmating; and the Bridgewater
arrangement, after drifting about among the
boulders and rocks of law, had very nearly
been broken up.

The well-known Duke of Bridgewater, who,
with such noble perseverance and energy,
assisted also by the genius of Brindley, made
his canal, lived to reap his reward in a splendid
income. This was supposed to amount to
nearly one hundred thousand a year, and at the
least, to seventy or eighty thousand. As the
duke grew old there were many speculations as
to who was chosen as the fortunate heir, and it
was believed that one had recommended
himself to the duke, and been selected for the
happy distinction. This was Sir Tatton Sykes.
Sir B. Burke mentions how this gentleman
lost the prospect of such good fortune; and