My favorite poets, novelists, and historians have failed to interest me.

I devoured the Trials with breathless delight; beginning of course with the murder in which I felt a family interest.

Prepared to find my grandfather a ruffian, I confess I was surprised by the discovery that he was also a fool.

The officers of justice had no merit in tracing the crime to him; his own stupidity delivered him into their hands.

I read the evidence twice over, and put myself in his position, and saw the means plainly by which he might have set discovery at defiance.
"In the Preface to the Trials I found an allusion, in terms of praise, to a work of the same kind, published in the French language.