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idiosyncrasy of the individual man of genius. In ninety-nine cases from
the hundred I would abide by its decision. But it is important that we
find no palpable traces of suggestion. The opinion must be rigorously
the public's own; and the distinction is often exceedingly difficult
to perceive and to maintain. In the present instance, it appears to me
that this 'public opinion' in respect to a gang, has been superinduced
by the collateral event which is detailed in the third of my extracts.
All Paris is excited by the discovered corpse of Marie, a girl young,
beautiful and notorious. This corpse is found, bearing marks of
violence, and floating in the river. But it is now made known that, at
the very period, or about the very period, in which it is supposed that
the girl was assassinated, an outrage similar in nature to that endured
by the deceased, although less in extent, was perpetuated, by a gang
of young ruffians, upon the person of a second young female. Is it
wonderful that the one known atrocity should influence the popular
judgment in regard to the other unknown? This judgment awaited
direction, and the known outrage seemed so opportunely to afford it!
Marie, too, was found in the river; and upon this very river was this
known outrage committed. The connexion of the two events had about it so
much of the palpable, that the true wonder would have been a failure
of the populace to appreciate and to seize it. But, in fact, the one
atrocity, known to be so committed, is, if any thing, evidence that the
other, committed at a time nearly coincident, was not so committed.
It would have been a miracle indeed, if, while a gang of ruffians were
perpetrating, at a given locality, a most unheard-of wrong, there should
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