found guilty, and sentenced to death.
Compare this case with that of Curtis, and compare
the verdicts.

The recent murder of Margaret Fahey, at
Warrington; of John Bunker, in Devonshire;
the poisoning case of Ann Averment, of
Leverington; and the suspected poisoning of
the five children of Robert James Holworthy,
of Wymeswold; are cases with which all
newspaper readers are acquainted.

But, perhaps the most striking of all these
rural atrocities, and the one which presents
the greatest variety of features, as displaying
the depravity and cunning that haunt the
fields, is the murder of the Reverend Mr.
Hollest of Frimley. A man beloved by his
parishioners, dwelling in a peaceful parsonage-
house, surrounded by lawn and garden, and
grove and green commons—- a man whose
office as a pastor might have induced some
reverent feeling, and whose ministry among
the poor might have been expected to gain
some consideration for his person and his
dwelling is the victim. To his parsonage-
house, at dead of night, come a party of armed
burglars, who, after due consultation and a
little refreshment of bread and cheese under a
cypress tree in his garden, break into his
abode, and proceed to display the results of
their country education. Having a considerable
contempt for the common rustic fare of
bread and cheese, they coolly commence
by making a proper repast, more befitting
persons of their calling and importance in
the district. They regale themselves with
beef, bread, and butter, and whatever else the
larder chances to afford: together with wine
and spirits. One of their gang having been
left in the garden as a sentinel under the
cypress tree, they send out to him a decanter
full of wine, and an umbrella, as some rain
is falling; so, what with the foliage of the
tree, and these additional luxuries of civilisation,
it is to be hoped that his comforts are
sufficiently attended to by his considerate
comrades. After supper, they proceed
upstairs, enter the clergyman's bedroom, and in
result, the clergyman is murdered. After this,
we hear of retreats to various agreeable rural
localities, until between the " Wheatsheaf"
and the "Rose," where some of the gentlemen
take tea, they are arrested. A reward is
offered to any of them who will give evidence
against the others, the man who fired the
shot being excepted;—- and accordingly a man "with a calm countenance," who has
previously been arrested on various charges of
felony and atrocity, but who has always
most cunningly escaped, steps forth, and
impeaches the others. He himself is an innocent
country hawker; he does not know what is
the meaning of an " accomplice;" he does
not know what is meant by " peaching;" he
did not know what he was going to the
clergyman's house for; he did not know why
they had pistols; he thought they might
intend to shoot sparrows with them; he does
not know why he has the nickname of the
" Flyman;" he believes his father (who was
" sent away " when he was very young) was
named Trowler; he knows nothing whatever
about the highway robbery for which he (the
Flyman) was tried some time ago; he does
not know what " chuck " means, nor that he
ever made use of the word—- if he said it, he
said it; but, certainly if the bills are acted
upon, which offer one hundred and fifty pounds
to any of the parties who will turn evidence,
and also Her Majesty's most gracious pardon
—- of course he expects the pardon; and if he
were to get the reward, of course he should
have it, &c.

Here is a country hawker, and "what not"—-
of whose life much has passed in fields, and
hamlets or villages; can the worst streets of
London produce anything to beat this specimen
of low cunning and depravity?

We have adverted to this midnight murder
at the peaceful parsonage of a country clergyman,
as about the most shocking in its moral
features of any of the late visits of the red-
handed descendants of Cain to our fields. It
is not least shocking, as it strikes us, in the
closing scene, when the murderers have
become Pet Prisoners, and graciously declare
that they die " forgiving everybody "—-  placing,
we presume, the names of Mrs. Hollest and
her fatherless children, numbers one, two, and
three, on the list of their Christian clemency.

Words of forgiveness were spoken in the
shadow of the Cross; but not (as we remember)
by the two thieves.

One other crime has lately been committed
in the country, which by its direct perversion of
the strongest instincts of nature—- the maternal
—- must be considered to "top the climax."
Maria Clarke, of Wingfield, in Suffolk, left Pelham
Workhouse (where, we believe, she had
been confined), in the expectation of being
married to a labouring man, to whom she was
attached. He knew nothing of the birth of her
child. Suddenly (or she says suddenly) the
thought crossed her that when he became
aware of the circumstance he would not marry
her, and she immediately resolved on making
away with the infant. She took a spade, and
going into a meadow,—- but let her own
confession tell the tale. " I took the spade—- went
into the meadow—- dug a hole—- and laid my
child in." She appears, in the first instance,
to have deluded herself, as to the legal
consequences she incurred, with some half-delirious
sophistry about not directly murdering the
child, but only getting rid of it out of the
way. " I then covered the child over with
earth." But the child screams, and then all
other human feeling vanishes in terror for
herself. " To stifle its screams," says she, " I
stamped upon the sod. When the child was
covered up with the earth, I heard it cry!"
Can anything ever yet recorded of crime,
exceed this? We think not. It has been
shown that Maria Clarke had recently had
a peculiarly distracting class of fever, and