All Wapping with one voice claims the Claimant as her
own. Such is the sum of the evidence heard this week, during which the big trial has dragged its slow yet lively length along, inter- minably interesting. It is to be regretted that part of the youth of George Eliot was not spent at Wapping, for surely a place richer in all the native flesh-and-blood originalities of English character can hardly be conceived. As we hear the witnesses we feel how the genius of the place inspired Mr. Hawkins, in the memorably humorous passage of his speech in which he described the Claimant's visit to it on his return from Australia. The first Wapping witness was Miss Loder, formerly the affianced of Arthur Orton, who, when asked did she know the defendant, said (with a faint smile), "Yes," and, questioned if he was the same young man who used to walk with her, replied, "Quite the same, only stouter." This stoutness, as a characteristic tendency of the Ortons in general, and of Arthur in particular, which led to his being known in his youth by the outrageous nickname of " bullocky Orton," formed what may be called the piece de re- sistance of the Wapping evidence. All the witnesses stood to their identification of him by that innocent personal peculiarity which a little timely attention to the precepts of Mr. Banting might so easily have corrected. 'The Wapping evidence is all highly humorous, alas ! and the Claimant appears to enjoy it quite as much as the judges, the jury, the bar, and the universe. It is a tragedy of drollery.
