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ficial evidence ? The same observation will apply to the incongruities of manner and mental culture on which the long and trying ^ cross-examination of the Attorney-General so persistently dwelt. We are not even suggesting an opinion either way, but merely pointing out some of the many perplexing peculiarities which belong to the case, and which keep public curiosity and attention for ever on the stretch. The case for the claimant has, therefore, been supported by an exhibition of such a variety of kinds of evidence as to embrace nearly all subjects of individual and human interest. Lawyers and soldiers, young ladies and old wives, sailors and doctors, travellers and stockbrokers, the physiologist, the anatomist, the photographer, the painter, the hairdresser from Clonmel, and Captain Burton from the Passes of the Andes—the laundress who washed the shirts years ago, and the nominal defendant, who saw the claimant for the first time the other day—all these, and a whole host of others, have been summoned, to embrace in their collective testimony every incident, feature, and possi • bility of a human character and career. On Wednesday it was proposed that the inquiry should enter into the realms of psychology and even of metaphysics. It seemed possible that not merely might the jury have been called upon to decide between the authority of rival professors of the art of mnemonics, but even that the great dispute about Intuition and Experience—between the Idealists and the Sensationalists—might have found a new arena and a new audience in the Tichborne case. We may look for a revival of the keenest sensation on the 15th of January, when the case for the defendants is to be opened. Nothing could be more important for the plaintiff than to keep on calling witness after witness who should acknowledge a belief in his identity. But it is possible that to the highly stimulated palate of the public all this had a lack' of fresh and piquant relish. Now that we are going to hear the other side, we may be sure that every ear will be on the stretch once more. It is due in any case to this trial to say -that for the seventy days which it has already occupied it knew and tolerated no rival in popular attention. Those were evil times for the sensation novelist, whose three volumes were forced into unequal competition with the morning papers and the Tichborne trial. Some humourist has told of an evening he spent at the old Coburg Theatre, and how the attention of the audience, at a most thrilling moment of the drama, was wholly withdrawn from a sword combat of six on the stage to watch a genuine fight between two sailors in the pit. In something of the same fashion has the reality of the Tichborne case triumphed over the wildest mysteries of the romancist. We pity the writer of fiction whose sensation romance has to appear on the 16th of January next, the day when the morning papers come out with the first reports of the adjourned Tichborne trial.—Daily Neivs.
Newspaper Details
Sun and Central Press
London, Middlesex, GB
Sat, Dec 23, 1871
Page 5
Full Page
Clipped by
University O.
IA, USA 24 Jan 2025
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