At last Mr. Furnival rises: "Gentlemen of the jury," he said, "I never rose to plead a client's cause with more confidence than I now feel in pleading that of my friend, Lady Mason." And after three hours he closes his great speech with this touching bit: "And now I shall leave my client's case in your hands. As to the verdict which you will give, I have no apprehension. You know as well as I do that she has not been guilty of this terrible crime. That you will so pronounce I do not for a moment doubt. But I do hope that the verdict will be accompanied by some expression on your part which may show to the world at large how great has been the wickedness displayed in the accusation."
And Trollope adds: "And yet as he sat down he knew that she had been guilty! To his ear her guilt had never been confessed; but yet he knew that it was so, and knowing that, he had been able to speak as though her innocence were a thing of course. That those witnesses had spoken the truth he also knew, and yet he had been able to hold them up to the execration of all around them as though they had committed the worst of crimes from the foulest of motives! And more than this, stranger than this, worse than this,--when the legal world knew,--as the legal world soon did know,--that all this had been so, the legal world found no fault with Mr. Furnival, conceiving that he had done his duty by his client in a manner becoming an English barrister and an English gentleman."
I have frequently heard people say that they would like to attend a trial. It is not worth while: trials are either shocking or stupid; the best way to see a trial is to read "Orley Farm."
Those of us who love Trollope love him for those very qualities which cause fatigue in others. Our lives, it may be, are fairly strenuous; it is hardly necessary for us to have our feelings wrung of an evening. When the day is done and I settle down in my arm-chair by the crackling wood fire, I am no longer inclined to problems, real or imaginary. I suppose the average man does his reading with what comfort he may after dinner; it is the time for peace--and Trollope. It may be that the reader falls asleep. What matter? Better this, I should say, than that he should be kept awake by the dissection of a human soul. This vivisection business is too painful. No, give me those long descriptions of house-parties, those chapters made up of dinner conversations, of endless hunting scenes, of editorials from newspapers, of meetings of the House, of teas on the Terrace, and above all, give me the clergy--not in real life for a minute, but in the pages of Trollope.