In such incidental bearings the moral may doubtless be more obvious than in the delineation of the darker and rarer crime which forms the staple of my narrative.

For in extraordinary guilt we are slow to recognize ordinary warnings,--we say to the peaceful conscience, "This concerns thee not!" whereas at each instance of familiar fault and commonplace error we own a direct and sensible admonition.

Yet in the portraiture of gigantic crime, poets have rightly found their sphere and fulfilled their destiny of teachers.

Those terrible truths which appall us in the guilt of Macbeth or the villany of Iago, have their moral uses not less than the popular infirmities of Tom Jones, or the every-day hypocrisy of Blifil.

Incredible as it may seem, the crimes herein related took place within the last seventeen years.