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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Miscellaneous Papers, by Charles Dickens
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions 
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at 
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+
+Title: Miscellaneous Papers
+
+
+Author: Charles Dickens
+
+
+
+Release Date: August 13, 2019  [eBook #1435]
+[This file was first posted June 23, 1998]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS***
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1912 Gresham Publishing Company edition (_Works of
+Charles Dickens_, _Volume_ 19) by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+                      [Picture: Public domain cover]
+
+
+
+
+
+                           MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS
+
+
+                                    BY
+                             CHARLES DICKENS
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+The Agricultural Interest (_Morning Chronicle_, March 9,           529
+1844)
+Threatening Letter to Thomas Hood from an Ancient Gentleman        532
+(_Hood’s Magazine and Comic Miscellany_, May, 1844)
+Crime and Education (_Daily News_, February 4, 1846)               538
+Capital Punishment (I–III; _Daily News_, March 9, 13, and          542
+16, 1846)
+The Spirit of Chivalry in Westminster Hall (_Douglas               560
+Jerrold’s Shilling Magazine_, August, 1845)
+In Memoriam: W. M. Thackeray (_Cornhill Magazine_,                 564
+February, 1864)
+Adelaide Anne Procter: Introduction to her _Legends and            568
+Lyrics_ (1866)
+Chauncey Hare Townshend: Explanatory Introduction to               574
+_Religious Opinions_ by the Late Reverend Chauncey Hare
+Townshend (1869)
+On Mr. Fechter’s Acting (_Atlantic Monthly_, August, 1869)         576
+
+
+
+
+THE AGRICULTURAL INTEREST
+
+
+THE present Government, having shown itself to be particularly clever in
+its management of Indictments for Conspiracy, cannot do better, we think
+(keeping in its administrative eye the pacification of some of its most
+influential and most unruly supporters), than indict the whole
+manufacturing interest of the country for a conspiracy against the
+agricultural interest.  As the jury ought to be beyond impeachment, the
+panel might be chosen among the Duke of Buckingham’s tenants, with the
+Duke of Buckingham himself as foreman; and, to the end that the country
+might be quite satisfied with the judge, and have ample security
+beforehand for his moderation and impartiality, it would be desirable,
+perhaps, to make such a slight change in the working of the law (a mere
+nothing to a Conservative Government, bent upon its end), as would enable
+the question to be tried before an Ecclesiastical Court, with the Bishop
+of Exeter presiding.  The Attorney-General for Ireland, turning his sword
+into a ploughshare, might conduct the prosecution; and Mr. Cobden and the
+other traversers might adopt any ground of defence they chose, or prove
+or disprove anything they pleased, without being embarrassed by the least
+anxiety or doubt in reference to the verdict.
+
+That the country in general is in a conspiracy against this sacred but
+unhappy agricultural interest, there can be no doubt.  It is not alone
+within the walls of Covent Garden Theatre, or the Free Trade Hall at
+Manchester, or the Town Hall at Birmingham, that the cry “Repeal the
+Corn-laws!” is raised.  It may be heard, moaning at night, through the
+straw-littered wards of Refuges for the Destitute; it may be read in the
+gaunt and famished faces which make our streets terrible; it is muttered
+in the thankful grace pronounced by haggard wretches over their felon
+fare in gaols; it is inscribed in dreadful characters upon the walls of
+Fever Hospitals; and may be plainly traced in every record of mortality.
+All of which proves, that there is a vast conspiracy afoot, against the
+unfortunate agricultural interest.
+
+They who run, even upon railroads, may read of this conspiracy.  The old
+stage-coachman was a farmer’s friend.  He wore top-boots, understood
+cattle, fed his horses upon corn, and had a lively personal interest in
+malt.  The engine-driver’s garb, and sympathies, and tastes belong to the
+factory.  His fustian dress, besmeared with coal-dust and begrimed with
+soot; his oily hands, his dirty face, his knowledge of machinery; all
+point him out as one devoted to the manufacturing interest.  Fire and
+smoke, and red-hot cinders follow in his wake.  He has no attachment to
+the soil, but travels on a road of iron, furnace wrought.  His warning is
+not conveyed in the fine old Saxon dialect of our glorious forefathers,
+but in a fiendish yell.  He never cries “ya-hip”, with agricultural
+lungs; but jerks forth a manufactured shriek from a brazen throat.
+
+Where _is_ the agricultural interest represented?  From what phase of our
+social life has it not been driven, to the undue setting up of its false
+rival?
+
+Are the police agricultural?  The watchmen were.  They wore woollen
+nightcaps to a man; they encouraged the growth of timber, by
+patriotically adhering to staves and rattles of immense size; they slept
+every night in boxes, which were but another form of the celebrated
+wooden walls of Old England; they never woke up till it was too late—in
+which respect you might have thought them very farmers.  How is it with
+the police?  Their buttons are made at Birmingham; a dozen of their
+truncheons would poorly furnish forth a watchman’s staff; they have no
+wooden walls to repose between; and the crowns of their hats are plated
+with cast-iron.
+
+Are the doctors agricultural?  Let Messrs. Morison and Moat, of the
+Hygeian establishment at King’s Cross, London, reply.  Is it not, upon
+the constant showing of those gentlemen, an ascertained fact that the
+whole medical profession have united to depreciate the worth of the
+Universal Vegetable Medicines?  And is this opposition to vegetables, and
+exaltation of steel and iron instead, on the part of the regular
+practitioners, capable of any interpretation but one?  Is it not a
+distinct renouncement of the agricultural interest, and a setting up of
+the manufacturing interest instead?
+
+Do the professors of the law at all fail in their truth to the beautiful
+maid whom they ought to adore?  Inquire of the Attorney-General for
+Ireland.  Inquire of that honourable and learned gentleman, whose last
+public act was to cast aside the grey goose-quill, an article of
+agricultural produce, and take up the pistol, which, under the system of
+percussion locks, has not even a flint to connect it with farming.  Or
+put the question to a still higher legal functionary, who, on the same
+occasion, when he should have been a reed, inclining here and there, as
+adverse gales of evidence disposed him, was seen to be a manufactured
+image on the seat of Justice, cast by Power, in most impenetrable brass.
+
+The world is too much with us in this manufacturing interest, early and
+late; that is the great complaint and the great truth.  It is not so with
+the agricultural interest, or what passes by that name.  It never thinks
+of the suffering world, or sees it, or cares to extend its knowledge of
+it; or, so long as it remains a world, cares anything about it.  All
+those whom Dante placed in the first pit or circle of the doleful
+regions, might have represented the agricultural interest in the present
+Parliament, or at quarter sessions, or at meetings of the farmers’
+friends, or anywhere else.
+
+But that is not the question now.  It is conspired against; and we have
+given a few proofs of the conspiracy, as they shine out of various
+classes engaged in it.  An indictment against the whole manufacturing
+interest need not be longer, surely, than the indictment in the case of
+the Crown against O’Connell and others.  Mr. Cobden may be taken as its
+representative—as indeed he is, by one consent already.  There may be no
+evidence; but that is not required.  A judge and jury are all that is
+needed.  And the Government know where to find _them_, or they gain
+experience to little purpose.
+
+
+
+
+THREATENING LETTER TO THOMAS HOOD
+FROM AN ANCIENT GENTLEMAN
+
+
+MR. HOOD.  SIR,—The Constitution is going at last!  You needn’t laugh,
+Mr. Hood.  I am aware that it has been going, two or three times before;
+perhaps four times; but it is on the move now, sir, and no mistake.
+
+I beg to say, that I use those last expressions advisedly, sir, and not
+in the sense in which they are now used by Jackanapeses.  There were no
+Jackanapeses when I was a boy, Mr. Hood.  England was Old England when I
+was young.  I little thought it would ever come to be Young England when
+I was old.  But everything is going backward.
+
+Ah! governments were governments, and judges were judges, in _my_ day,
+Mr. Hood.  There was no nonsense then.  Any of your seditious
+complainings, and we were ready with the military on the shortest notice.
+We should have charged Covent Garden Theatre, sir, on a Wednesday night:
+at the point of the bayonet.  Then, the judges were full of dignity and
+firmness, and knew how to administer the law.  There is only one judge
+who knows how to do his duty, now.  He tried that revolutionary female
+the other day, who, though she was in full work (making shirts at
+three-halfpence a piece), had no pride in her country, but treasonably
+took it in her head, in the distraction of having been robbed of her easy
+earnings, to attempt to drown herself and her young child; and the
+glorious man went out of his way, sir—out of his way—to call her up for
+instant sentence of Death; and to tell her she had no hope of mercy in
+this world—as you may see yourself if you look in the papers of Wednesday
+the 17th of April.  He won’t be supported, sir, I know he won’t; but it
+is worth remembering that his words were carried into every manufacturing
+town of this kingdom, and read aloud to crowds in every political
+parlour, beer-shop, news-room, and secret or open place of assembly,
+frequented by the discontented working-men; and that no milk-and-water
+weakness on the part of the executive can ever blot them out.  Great
+things like that, are caught up, and stored up, in these times, and are
+not forgotten, Mr. Hood.  The public at large (especially those who wish
+for peace and conciliation) are universally obliged to him.  If it is
+reserved for any man to set the Thames on fire, it is reserved for him;
+and indeed I am told he very nearly did it, once.
+
+But even he won’t save the constitution, sir: it is mauled beyond the
+power of preservation.  Do you know in what foul weather it will be
+sacrificed and shipwrecked, Mr. Hood?  Do you know on what rock it will
+strike, sir?  You don’t, I am certain; for nobody does know as yet but
+myself.  I will tell you.
+
+The constitution will go down, sir (nautically speaking), in the
+degeneration of the human species in England, and its reduction into a
+mingled race of savages and pigmies.
+
+That is my proposition.  That is my prediction.  That is the event of
+which I give you warning.  I am now going to prove it, sir.
+
+You are a literary man, Mr. Hood, and have written, I am told, some
+things worth reading.  I say I am told, because I never read what is
+written in these days.  You’ll excuse me; but my principle is, that no
+man ought to know anything about his own time, except that it is the
+worst time that ever was, or is ever likely to be.  That is the only way,
+sir, to be truly wise and happy.
+
+In your station, as a literary man, Mr. Hood, you are frequently at the
+Court of Her Gracious Majesty the Queen.  God bless her!  You have reason
+to know that the three great keys to the royal palace (after rank and
+politics) are Science, Literature, Art.  I don’t approve of this myself.
+I think it ungenteel and barbarous, and quite un-English; the custom
+having been a foreign one, ever since the reigns of the uncivilised
+sultans in the Arabian Nights, who always called the wise men of their
+time about them.  But so it is.  And when you don’t dine at the royal
+table, there is always a knife and fork for you at the equerries’ table:
+where, I understand, all gifted men are made particularly welcome.
+
+But all men can’t be gifted, Mr. Hood.  Neither scientific, literary, nor
+artistical powers are any more to be inherited than the property arising
+from scientific, literary, or artistic productions, which the law, with a
+beautiful imitation of nature, declines to protect in the second
+generation.  Very good, sir.  Then, people are naturally very prone to
+cast about in their minds for other means of getting at Court Favour;
+and, watching the signs of the times, to hew out for themselves, or their
+descendants, the likeliest roads to that distinguished goal.
+
+Mr. Hood, it is pretty clear, from recent records in the Court Circular,
+that if a father wish to train up his son in the way he should go, to go
+to Court: and cannot indenture him to be a scientific man, an author, or
+an artist, three courses are open to him.  He must endeavour by
+artificial means to make him a dwarf, a wild man, or a Boy Jones.
+
+Now, sir, this is the shoal and quicksand on which the constitution will
+go to pieces.
+
+I have made inquiry, Mr. Hood, and find that in my neighbourhood two
+families and a fraction out of every four, in the lower and middle
+classes of society, are studying and practising all conceivable arts to
+keep their infant children down.  Understand me.  I do not mean down in
+their numbers, or down in their precocity, but down in their growth, sir.
+A destructive and subduing drink, compounded of gin and milk in equal
+quantities, such as is given to puppies to retard their growth: not
+something short, but something shortening: is administered to these young
+creatures many times a day.  An unnatural and artificial thirst is first
+awakened in these infants by meals of salt beef, bacon, anchovies,
+sardines, red herrings, shrimps, olives, pea-soup, and that description
+of diet; and when they screech for drink, in accents that might melt a
+heart of stone, which they do constantly (I allude to screeching, not to
+melting), this liquid is introduced into their too confiding stomachs.
+At such an early age, and to so great an extent, is this custom of
+provoking thirst, then quenching it with a stunting drink, observed, that
+brine pap has already superseded the use of tops-and-bottoms; and
+wet-nurses, previously free from any kind of reproach, have been seen to
+stagger in the streets: owing, sir, to the quantity of gin introduced
+into their systems, with a view to its gradual and natural conversion
+into the fluid I have already mentioned.
+
+Upon the best calculation I can make, this is going on, as I have said,
+in the proportion of about two families and a fraction in four.  In one
+more family and a fraction out of the same number, efforts are being made
+to reduce the children to a state of nature; and to inculcate, at a
+tender age, the love of raw flesh, train oil, new rum, and the
+acquisition of scalps.  Wild and outlandish dances are also in vogue (you
+will have observed the prevailing rage for the Polka); and savage cries
+and whoops are much indulged in (as you may discover, if you doubt it, in
+the House of Commons any night).  Nay, some persons, Mr. Hood; and
+persons of some figure and distinction too; have already succeeded in
+breeding wild sons; who have been publicly shown in the Courts of
+Bankruptcy, and in police-offices, and in other commodious
+exhibition-rooms, with great effect, but who have not yet found favour at
+court; in consequence, as I infer, of the impression made by Mr. Rankin’s
+wild men being too fresh and recent, to say nothing of Mr. Rankin’s wild
+men being foreigners.
+
+I need not refer you, sir, to the late instance of the Ojibbeway Bride.
+But I am credibly informed, that she is on the eve of retiring into a
+savage fastness, where she may bring forth and educate a wild family, who
+shall in course of time, by the dexterous use of the popularity they are
+certain to acquire at Windsor and St. James’s, divide with dwarfs the
+principal offices of state, of patronage, and power, in the United
+Kingdom.
+
+Consider the deplorable consequences, Mr. Hood, which must result from
+these proceedings, and the encouragement they receive in the highest
+quarters.
+
+The dwarf being the favourite, sir, it is certain that the public mind
+will run in a great and eminent degree upon the production of dwarfs.
+Perhaps the failures only will be brought up, wild.  The imagination goes
+a long way in these cases; and all that the imagination _can_ do, will be
+done, and is doing.  You may convince yourself of this, by observing the
+condition of those ladies who take particular notice of General Tom Thumb
+at the Egyptian Hall, during his hours of performance.
+
+The rapid increase of dwarfs, will be first felt in her Majesty’s
+recruiting department.  The standard will, of necessity, be lowered; the
+dwarfs will grow smaller and smaller; the vulgar expression “a man of his
+inches” will become a figure of fact, instead of a figure of speech;
+crack regiments, household-troops especially, will pick the smallest men
+from all parts of the country; and in the two little porticoes at the
+Horse Guards, two Tom Thumbs will be daily seen, doing duty, mounted on a
+pair of Shetland ponies.  Each of them will be relieved (as Tom Thumb is
+at this moment, in the intervals of his performance) by a wild man; and a
+British Grenadier will either go into a quart pot, or be an Old Boy, or
+Blue Gull, or Flying Bull, or some other savage chief of that nature.
+
+I will not expatiate upon the number of dwarfs who will be found
+representing Grecian statues in all parts of the metropolis; because I am
+inclined to think that this will be a change for the better; and that the
+engagement of two or three in Trafalgar Square will tend to the
+improvement of the public taste.
+
+The various genteel employments at Court being held by dwarfs, sir, it
+will be necessary to alter, in some respects, the present regulations.
+It is quite clear that not even General Tom Thumb himself could preserve
+a becoming dignity on state occasions, if required to walk about with a
+scaffolding-pole under his arm; therefore the gold and silver sticks at
+present used, must be cut down into skewers of those precious metals; a
+twig of the black rod will be quite as much as can be conveniently
+preserved; the coral and bells of his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales,
+will be used in lieu of the mace at present in existence; and that bauble
+(as Oliver Cromwell called it, Mr. Hood), its value being first
+calculated by Mr. Finlayson, the government actuary, will be placed to
+the credit of the National Debt.
+
+All this, sir, will be the death of the constitution.  But this is not
+all.  The constitution dies hard, perhaps; but there is enough disease
+impending, Mr. Hood, to kill it three times over.
+
+Wild men will get into the House of Commons.  Imagine that, sir!  Imagine
+Strong Wind in the House of Commons!  It is not an easy matter to get
+through a debate now; but I say, imagine Strong Wind, speaking for the
+benefit of his constituents, upon the floor of the House of Commons! or
+imagine (which is pregnant with more awful consequences still) the
+ministry having an interpreter in the House of Commons, to tell the
+country, in English, what it really means!
+
+Why, sir, that in itself would be blowing the constitution out of the
+mortar in St. James’s Park, and leaving nothing of it to be seen but
+smoke.
+
+But this, I repeat it, is the state of things to which we are fast
+tending, Mr. Hood; and I enclose my card for your private eye, that you
+may be quite certain of it.  What the condition of this country will be,
+when its standing army is composed of dwarfs, with here and there a wild
+man to throw its ranks into confusion, like the elephants employed in war
+in former times, I leave you to imagine, sir.  It may be objected by some
+hopeful jackanapeses, that the number of impressments in the navy,
+consequent upon the seizure of the Boy-Joneses, or remaining portion of
+the population ambitious of Court Favour, will be in itself sufficient to
+defend our Island from foreign invasion.  But I tell those jackanapeses,
+sir, that while I admit the wisdom of the Boy Jones precedent, of
+kidnapping such youths after the expiration of their several terms of
+imprisonment as vagabonds; hurrying them on board ship; and packing them
+off to sea again whenever they venture to take the air on shore; I deny
+the justice of the inference; inasmuch as it appears to me, that the
+inquiring minds of those young outlaws must naturally lead to their being
+hanged by the enemy as spies, early in their career; and before they
+shall have been rated on the books of our fleet as able seamen.
+
+Such, Mr. Hood, sir, is the prospect before us!  And unless you, and some
+of your friends who have influence at Court, can get up a giant as a
+forlorn hope, it is all over with this ill-fated land.
+
+In reference to your own affairs, sir, you will take whatever course may
+seem to you most prudent and advisable after this warning.  It is not a
+warning to be slighted: that I happen to know.  I am informed by the
+gentleman who favours this, that you have recently been making some
+changes and improvements in your Magazine, and are, in point of fact,
+starting afresh.  If I be well informed, and this be really so, rely upon
+it that you cannot start too small, sir.  Come down to the duodecimo size
+instantly, Mr. Hood.  Take time by the forelock; and, reducing the
+stature of your Magazine every month, bring it at last to the dimensions
+of the little almanack no longer issued, I regret to say, by the
+ingenious Mr. Schloss: which was invisible to the naked eye until
+examined through a little eye-glass.
+
+You project, I am told, the publication of a new novel, by yourself, in
+the pages of your Magazine.  A word in your ear.  I am not a young man,
+sir, and have had some experience.  Don’t put your own name on the
+title-page; it would be suicide and madness.  Treat with General Tom
+Thumb, Mr. Hood, for the use of his name on any terms.  If the gallant
+general should decline to treat with you, get Mr. Barnum’s name, which is
+the next best in the market.  And when, through this politic course, you
+shall have received, in presents, a richly jewelled set of tablets from
+Buckingham Palace, and a gold watch and appendages from Marlborough
+House; and when those valuable trinkets shall be left under a glass case
+at your publisher’s for inspection by your friends and the public in
+general;—then, sir, you will do me the justice of remembering this
+communication.
+
+It is unnecessary for me to add, after what I have observed in the course
+of this letter, that I am not,—sir, ever your
+
+                                                          CONSTANT READER.
+
+TUESDAY, 23_rd_ _April_ 1844.
+
+_P.S._—Impress it upon your contributors that they cannot be too short;
+and that if not dwarfish, they must be wild—or at all events not tame.
+
+
+
+
+CRIME AND EDUCATION
+
+
+I OFFER no apology for entreating the attention of the readers of _The
+Daily News_ to an effort which has been making for some three years and a
+half, and which is making now, to introduce among the most miserable and
+neglected outcasts in London, some knowledge of the commonest principles
+of morality and religion; to commence their recognition as immortal human
+creatures, before the Gaol Chaplain becomes their only schoolmaster; to
+suggest to Society that its duty to this wretched throng, foredoomed to
+crime and punishment, rightfully begins at some distance from the police
+office; and that the careless maintenance from year to year, in this, the
+capital city of the world, of a vast hopeless nursery of ignorance,
+misery and vice; a breeding place for the hulks and jails: is horrible to
+contemplate.
+
+This attempt is being made in certain of the most obscure and squalid
+parts of the Metropolis, where rooms are opened, at night, for the
+gratuitous instruction of all comers, children or adults, under the title
+of RAGGED SCHOOLS.  The name implies the purpose.  They who are too
+ragged, wretched, filthy, and forlorn, to enter any other place: who
+could gain admission into no charity school, and who would be driven from
+any church door; are invited to come in here, and find some people not
+depraved, willing to teach them something, and show them some sympathy,
+and stretch a hand out, which is not the iron hand of Law, for their
+correction.
+
+Before I describe a visit of my own to a Ragged School, and urge the
+readers of this letter for God’s sake to visit one themselves, and think
+of it (which is my main object), let me say, that I know the prisons of
+London well; that I have visited the largest of them more times than I
+could count; and that the children in them are enough to break the heart
+and hope of any man.  I have never taken a foreigner or a stranger of any
+kind to one of these establishments but I have seen him so moved at sight
+of the child offenders, and so affected by the contemplation of their
+utter renouncement and desolation outside the prison walls, that he has
+been as little able to disguise his emotion, as if some great grief had
+suddenly burst upon him.  Mr. Chesterton and Lieutenant Tracey (than whom
+more intelligent and humane Governors of Prisons it would be hard, if not
+impossible, to find) know perfectly well that these children pass and
+repass through the prisons all their lives; that they are never taught;
+that the first distinctions between right and wrong are, from their
+cradles, perfectly confounded and perverted in their minds; that they
+come of untaught parents, and will give birth to another untaught
+generation; that in exact proportion to their natural abilities, is the
+extent and scope of their depravity; and that there is no escape or
+chance for them in any ordinary revolution of human affairs.  Happily,
+there are schools in these prisons now.  If any readers doubt how
+ignorant the children are, let them visit those schools and see them at
+their tasks, and hear how much they knew when they were sent there.  If
+they would know the produce of this seed, let them see a class of men and
+boys together, at their books (as I have seen them in the House of
+Correction for this county of Middlesex), and mark how painfully the full
+grown felons toil at the very shape and form of letters; their ignorance
+being so confirmed and solid.  The contrast of this labour in the men,
+with the less blunted quickness of the boys; the latent shame and sense
+of degradation struggling through their dull attempts at infant lessons;
+and the universal eagerness to learn, impress me, in this passing
+retrospect, more painfully than I can tell.
+
+For the instruction, and as a first step in the reformation, of such
+unhappy beings, the Ragged Schools were founded.  I was first attracted
+to the subject, and indeed was first made conscious of their existence,
+about two years ago, or more, by seeing an advertisement in the papers
+dated from West Street, Saffron Hill, stating “That a room had been
+opened and supported in that wretched neighbourhood for upwards of twelve
+months, where religious instruction had been imparted to the poor”, and
+explaining in a few words what was meant by Ragged Schools as a generic
+term, including, then, four or five similar places of instruction.  I
+wrote to the masters of this particular school to make some further
+inquiries, and went myself soon afterwards.
+
+It was a hot summer night; and the air of Field Lane and Saffron Hill was
+not improved by such weather, nor were the people in those streets very
+sober or honest company.  Being unacquainted with the exact locality of
+the school, I was fain to make some inquiries about it.  These were very
+jocosely received in general; but everybody knew where it was, and gave
+the right direction to it.  The prevailing idea among the loungers (the
+greater part of them the very sweepings of the streets and station
+houses) seemed to be, that the teachers were quixotic, and the school
+upon the whole “a lark”.  But there was certainly a kind of rough respect
+for the intention, and (as I have said) nobody denied the school or its
+whereabouts, or refused assistance in directing to it.
+
+It consisted at that time of either two or three—I forget which—miserable
+rooms, upstairs in a miserable house.  In the best of these, the pupils
+in the female school were being taught to read and write; and though
+there were among the number, many wretched creatures steeped in
+degradation to the lips, they were tolerably quiet, and listened with
+apparent earnestness and patience to their instructors.  The appearance
+of this room was sad and melancholy, of course—how could it be
+otherwise!—but, on the whole, encouraging.
+
+The close, low chamber at the back, in which the boys were crowded, was
+so foul and stifling as to be, at first, almost insupportable.  But its
+moral aspect was so far worse than its physical, that this was soon
+forgotten.  Huddled together on a bench about the room, and shown out by
+some flaring candles stuck against the walls, were a crowd of boys,
+varying from mere infants to young men; sellers of fruit, herbs,
+lucifer-matches, flints; sleepers under the dry arches of bridges; young
+thieves and beggars—with nothing natural to youth about them: with
+nothing frank, ingenuous, or pleasant in their faces; low-browed,
+vicious, cunning, wicked; abandoned of all help but this; speeding
+downward to destruction; and UNUTTERABLY IGNORANT.
+
+This, Reader, was one room as full as it could hold; but these were only
+grains in sample of a Multitude that are perpetually sifting through
+these schools; in sample of a Multitude who had within them once, and
+perhaps have now, the elements of men as good as you or I, and maybe
+infinitely better; in sample of a Multitude among whose doomed and sinful
+ranks (oh, think of this, and think of them!) the child of any man upon
+this earth, however lofty his degree, must, as by Destiny and Fate, be
+found, if, at its birth, it were consigned to such an infancy and
+nurture, as these fallen creatures had!
+
+This was the Class I saw at the Ragged School.  They could not be trusted
+with books; they could only be instructed orally; they were difficult of
+reduction to anything like attention, obedience, or decent behaviour;
+their benighted ignorance in reference to the Deity, or to any social
+duty (how could they guess at any social duty, being so discarded by all
+social teachers but the gaoler and the hangman!) was terrible to see.
+Yet, even here, and among these, something had been done already.  The
+Ragged School was of recent date and very poor; but he had inculcated
+some association with the name of the Almighty, which was not an oath,
+and had taught them to look forward in a hymn (they sang it) to another
+life, which would correct the miseries and woes of this.
+
+The new exposition I found in this Ragged School, of the frightful
+neglect by the State of those whom it punishes so constantly, and whom it
+might, as easily and less expensively, instruct and save; together with
+the sight I had seen there, in the heart of London; haunted me, and
+finally impelled me to an endeavour to bring these Institutions under the
+notice of the Government; with some faint hope that the vastness of the
+question would supersede the Theology of the schools, and that the Bench
+of Bishops might adjust the latter question, after some small grant had
+been conceded.  I made the attempt; and have heard no more of the subject
+from that hour.
+
+The perusal of an advertisement in yesterday’s paper, announcing a
+lecture on the Ragged Schools last night, has led me into these remarks.
+I might easily have given them another form; but I address this letter to
+you, in the hope that some few readers in whom I have awakened an
+interest, as a writer of fiction, may be, by that means, attracted to the
+subject, who might otherwise, unintentionally, pass it over.
+
+I have no desire to praise the system pursued in the Ragged Schools;
+which is necessarily very imperfect, if indeed there be one.  So far as I
+have any means of judging of what is taught there, I should individually
+object to it, as not being sufficiently secular, and as presenting too
+many religious mysteries and difficulties, to minds not sufficiently
+prepared for their reception.  But I should very imperfectly discharge in
+myself the duty I wish to urge and impress on others, if I allowed any
+such doubt of mine to interfere with my appreciation of the efforts of
+these teachers, or my true wish to promote them by any slight means in my
+power.  Irritating topics, of all kinds, are equally far removed from my
+purpose and intention.  But, I adjure those excellent persons who aid,
+munificently, in the building of New Churches, to think of these Ragged
+Schools; to reflect whether some portion of their rich endowments might
+not be spared for such a purpose; to contemplate, calmly, the necessity
+of beginning at the beginning; to consider for themselves where the
+Christian Religion most needs and most suggests immediate help and
+illustration; and not to decide on any theory or hearsay, but to go
+themselves into the Prisons and the Ragged Schools, and form their own
+conclusions.  They will be shocked, pained, and repelled, by much that
+they learn there; but nothing they can learn will be one-thousandth part
+so shocking, painful, and repulsive, as the continuance for one year more
+of these things as they have been for too many years already.
+
+Anticipating that some of the more prominent facts connected with the
+history of the Ragged Schools, may become known to the readers of _The
+Daily News_ through your account of the lecture in question, I abstain
+(though in possession of some such information) from pursuing the
+question further, at this time.  But if I should see occasion, I will
+take leave to return to it.
+
+
+
+
+CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
+
+
+I WILL take for the subject of this letter, the effect of Capital
+Punishment on the commission of crime, or rather of murder; the only
+crime with one exception (and that a rare one) to which it is now
+applied.  Its effect in preventing crime, I will reserve for another
+letter: and a few of the more striking illustrations of each aspect of
+the subject, for a concluding one.
+
+      The effect of Capital Punishment on the commission of Murder.
+
+Some murders are committed in hot blood and furious rage; some, in
+deliberate revenge; some, in terrible despair; some (but not many) for
+mere gain; some, for the removal of an object dangerous to the murderer’s
+peace or good name; some, to win a monstrous notoriety.
+
+On murders committed in rage, in the despair of strong affection (as when
+a starving child is murdered by its parent) or for gain, I believe the
+punishment of death to have no effect in the least.  In the two first
+cases, the impulse is a blind and wild one, infinitely beyond the reach
+of any reference to the punishment.  In the last, there is little
+calculation beyond the absorbing greed of the money to be got.
+Courvoisier, for example, might have robbed his master with greater
+safety, and with fewer chances of detection, if he had not murdered him.
+But, his calculations going to the gain and not to the loss, he had no
+balance for the consequences of what he did.  So, it would have been more
+safe and prudent in the woman who was hanged a few weeks since, for the
+murder in Westminster, to have simply robbed her old companion in an
+unguarded moment, as in her sleep.  But, her calculation going to the
+gain of what she took to be a Bank note; and the poor old woman living
+between her and the gain; she murdered her.
+
+On murders committed in deliberate revenge, or to remove a stumbling
+block in the murderer’s path, or in an insatiate craving for notoriety,
+is there reason to suppose that the punishment of death has the direct
+effect of an incentive and an impulse?
+
+A murder is committed in deliberate revenge.  The murderer is at no
+trouble to prepare his train of circumstances, takes little or no pains
+to escape, is quite cool and collected, perfectly content to deliver
+himself up to the Police, makes no secret of his guilt, but boldly says,
+“I killed him.  I’m glad of it.  I meant to do it.  I am ready to die.”
+There was such a case the other day.  There was such another case not
+long ago.  There are such cases frequently.  It is the commonest first
+exclamation on being seized.  Now, what is this but a false arguing of
+the question, announcing a foregone conclusion, expressly leading to the
+crime, and inseparably arising out of the Punishment of Death?  “I took
+his life.  I give up mine to pay for it.  Life for life; blood for blood.
+I have done the crime.  I am ready with the atonement.  I know all about
+it; it’s a fair bargain between me and the law.  Here am I to execute my
+part of it; and what more is to be said or done?”  It is the very essence
+of the maintenance of this punishment for murder, that it _does_ set life
+against life.  It is in the essence of a stupid, weak, or otherwise
+ill-regulated mind (of such a murderer’s mind, in short), to recognise in
+this set off, a something that diminishes the base and coward character
+of murder.  “In a pitched battle, I, a common man, may kill my adversary,
+but he may kill me.  In a duel, a gentleman may shoot his opponent
+through the head, but the opponent may shoot him too, and this makes it
+fair.  Very well.  I take this man’s life for a reason I have, or choose
+to think I have, and the law takes mine.  The law says, and the clergyman
+says, there must be blood for blood and life for life.  Here it is.  I
+pay the penalty.”
+
+A mind incapable, or confounded in its perceptions—and you must argue
+with reference to such a mind, or you could not have such a murder—may
+not only establish on these grounds an idea of strict justice and fair
+reparation, but a stubborn and dogged fortitude and foresight that
+satisfy it hugely.  Whether the fact be really so, or not, is a question
+I would be content to rest, alone, on the number of cases of revengeful
+murder in which this is well known, without dispute, to have been the
+prevailing demeanour of the criminal: and in which such speeches and such
+absurd reasoning have been constantly uppermost with him.  “Blood for
+blood”, and “life for life”, and such like balanced jingles, have passed
+current in people’s mouths, from legislators downwards, until they have
+been corrupted into “tit for tat”, and acted on.
+
+Next, come the murders done, to sweep out of the way a dreaded or
+detested object.  At the bottom of this class of crimes, there is a slow,
+corroding, growing hate.  Violent quarrels are commonly found to have
+taken place between the murdered person and the murderer: usually of
+opposite sexes.  There are witnesses to old scenes of reproach and
+recrimination, in which they were the actors; and the murderer has been
+heard to say, in this or that coarse phrase, “that he wouldn’t mind
+killing her, though he should be hanged for it”—in these cases, the
+commonest avowal.
+
+It seems to me, that in this well-known scrap of evidence, there is a
+deeper meaning than is usually attached to it.  I do not know, but it may
+be—I have a strong suspicion that it is—a clue to the slow growth of the
+crime, and its gradual development in the mind.  More than this; a clue
+to the mental connection of the deed, with the punishment to which the
+doer of that deed is liable, until the two, conjoined, give birth to
+monstrous and misshapen Murder.
+
+The idea of murder, in such a case, like that of self-destruction in the
+great majority of instances, is not a new one.  It may have presented
+itself to the disturbed mind in a dim shape and afar off; but it has been
+there.  After a quarrel, or with some strong sense upon him of irritation
+or discomfort arising out of the continuance of this life in his path,
+the man has brooded over the unformed desire to take it.  “Though he
+should be hanged for it.”  With the entrance of the Punishment into his
+thoughts, the shadow of the fatal beam begins to attend—not on himself,
+but on the object of his hate.  At every new temptation, it is there,
+stronger and blacker yet, trying to terrify him.  When she defies or
+threatens him, the scaffold seems to be her strength and “vantage
+ground”.  Let her not be too sure of that; “though he should be hanged
+for it”.
+
+Thus, he begins to raise up, in the contemplation of this death by
+hanging, a new and violent enemy to brave.  The prospect of a slow and
+solitary expiation would have no congeniality with his wicked thoughts,
+but this throttling and strangling has.  There is always before him, an
+ugly, bloody, scarecrow phantom, that champions her, as it were, and yet
+shows him, in a ghastly way, the example of murder.  Is she very weak, or
+very trustful in him, or infirm, or old?  It gives a hideous courage to
+what would be mere slaughter otherwise; for there it is, a presence
+always about her, darkly menacing him with that penalty whose murky
+secret has a fascination for all secret and unwholesome thoughts.  And
+when he struggles with his victim at the last, “though he should be
+hanged for it”, it is a merciless wrestle, not with one weak life only,
+but with that ever-haunting, ever-beckoning shadow of the gallows, too;
+and with a fierce defiance to it, after their long survey of each other,
+to come on and do its worst.
+
+Present this black idea of violence to a bad mind contemplating violence;
+hold up before a man remotely compassing the death of another person, the
+spectacle of his own ghastly and untimely death by man’s hands; and out
+of the depths of his own nature you shall assuredly raise up that which
+lures and tempts him on.  The laws which regulate those mysteries have
+not been studied or cared for, by the maintainers of this law; but they
+are paramount and will always assert their power.
+
+Out of one hundred and sixty-seven persons under sentence of Death in
+England, questioned at different times, in the course of years, by an
+English clergyman in the performance of his duty, there were only three
+who had not been spectators of executions.
+
+We come, now, to the consideration of those murders which are committed,
+or attempted, with no other object than the attainment of an infamous
+notoriety.  That this class of crimes has its origin in the Punishment of
+Death, we cannot question; because (as we have already seen, and shall
+presently establish by another proof) great notoriety and interest
+attach, and are generally understood to attach, only to those criminals
+who are in danger of being executed.
+
+One of the most remarkable instances of murder originating in mad
+self-conceit; and of the murderer’s part in the repulsive drama, in which
+the law appears at such great disadvantage to itself and to society,
+being acted almost to the last with a self-complacency that would be
+horribly ludicrous if it were not utterly revolting; is presented in the
+case of Hocker.
+
+Here is an insolent, flippant, dissolute youth: aping the man of intrigue
+and levity: over-dressed, over-confident, inordinately vain of his
+personal appearance: distinguished as to his hair, cane, snuff-box, and
+singing-voice: and unhappily the son of a working shoemaker.  Bent on
+loftier flights than such a poor house-swallow as a teacher in a
+Sunday-school can take; and having no truth, industry, perseverance, or
+other dull work-a-day quality, to plume his wings withal; he casts about
+him, in his jaunty way, for some mode of distinguishing himself—some
+means of getting that head of hair into the print-shops; of having
+something like justice done to his singing-voice and fine intellect; of
+making the life and adventures of Thomas Hocker remarkable; and of
+getting up some excitement in connection with that slighted piece of
+biography.  The Stage?  No.  Not feasible.  There has always been a
+conspiracy against the Thomas Hockers, in that kind of effort.  It has
+been the same with Authorship in prose and poetry.  Is there nothing
+else?  A Murder, now, would make a noise in the papers!  There is the
+gallows to be sure; but without that, it would be nothing.  Short of
+that, it wouldn’t be fame.  Well!  We must all die at one time or other;
+and to die game, and have it in print, is just the thing for a man of
+spirit.  They always die game at the Minor Theatres and the Saloons, and
+the people like it very much.  Thurtell, too, died very game, and made a
+capital speech when he was tried.  There’s all about it in a book at the
+cigar-shop now.  Come, Tom, get your name up!  Let it be a dashing murder
+that shall keep the wood-engravers at it for the next two months.  You
+are the boy to go through with it, and interest the town!
+
+The miserable wretch, inflated by this lunatic conceit, arranges his
+whole plan for publication and effect.  It is quite an epitome of his
+experience of the domestic melodrama or penny novel.  There is the Victim
+Friend; the mysterious letter of the injured Female to the Victim Friend;
+the romantic spot for the Death-Struggle by night; the unexpected
+appearance of Thomas Hocker to the Policeman; the parlour of the Public
+House, with Thomas Hocker reading the paper to a strange gentleman; the
+Family Apartment, with a song by Thomas Hocker; the Inquest Room, with
+Thomas Hocker boldly looking on; the interior of the Marylebone Theatre,
+with Thomas Hocker taken into custody; the Police Office with Thomas
+Hocker “affable” to the spectators; the interior of Newgate, with Thomas
+Hocker preparing his defence; the Court, where Thomas Hocker, with his
+dancing-master airs, is put upon his trial, and complimented by the
+Judge; the Prosecution, the Defence, the Verdict, the Black Cap, the
+Sentence—each of them a line in any Playbill, and how bold a line in
+Thomas Hocker’s life!
+
+It is worthy of remark, that the nearer he approaches to the gallows—the
+great last scene to which the whole of these effects have been working
+up—the more the overweening conceit of the poor wretch shows itself; the
+more he feels that he is the hero of the hour; the more audaciously and
+recklessly he lies, in supporting the character.  In public—at the
+condemned sermon—he deports himself as becomes the man whose autographs
+are precious, whose portraits are innumerable; in memory of whom, whole
+fences and gates have been borne away, in splinters, from the scene of
+murder.  He knows that the eyes of Europe are upon him; but he is not
+proud—only graceful.  He bows, like the first gentleman in Europe, to the
+turnkey who brings him a glass of water; and composes his clothes and
+hassock as carefully, as good Madame Blaize could do.  In private—within
+the walls of the condemned cell—every word and action of his waning life,
+is a lie.  His whole time is divided between telling lies and writing
+them.  If he ever have another thought, it is for his genteel appearance
+on the scaffold; as when he begs the barber “not to cut his hair too
+short, or they won’t know him when he comes out”.  His last proceeding
+but one is to write two romantic love letters to women who have no
+existence.  His last proceeding of all (but less characteristic, though
+the only true one) is to swoon away, miserably, in the arms of the
+attendants, and be hanged up like a craven dog.
+
+Is not such a history, from first to last, a most revolting and
+disgraceful one; and can the student of it bring himself to believe that
+it ever could have place in any record of facts, or that the miserable
+chief-actor in it could have ever had a motive for his arrogant
+wickedness, but for the comment and the explanation which the Punishment
+of Death supplies!
+
+It is not a solitary case, nor is it a prodigy, but a mere specimen of a
+class.  The case of Oxford, who fired at Her Majesty in the Park, will be
+found, on examination, to resemble it very nearly, in the essential
+feature.  There is no proved pretence whatever for regarding him as mad;
+other than that he was like this malefactor, brimful of conceit, and a
+desire to become, even at the cost of the gallows (the only cost within
+his reach) the talk of the town.  He had less invention than Hocker, and
+perhaps was not so deliberately bad; but his attempt was a branch of the
+same tree, and it has its root in the ground where the scaffold is
+erected.
+
+Oxford had his imitators.  Let it never be forgotten in the consideration
+of this part of the subject, how they were stopped.  So long as attempts
+invested them with the distinction of being in danger of death at the
+hangman’s hands, so long did they spring up.  When the penalty of death
+was removed, and a mean and humiliating punishment substituted in its
+place, the race was at an end, and ceased to be.
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+We come, now, to consider the effect of Capital Punishment in the
+prevention of crime.
+
+Does it prevent crime in those who attend executions?
+
+There never is (and there never was) an execution at the Old Bailey in
+London, but the spectators include two large classes of thieves—one class
+who go there as they would go to a dog-fight, or any other brutal sport,
+for the attraction and excitement of the spectacle; the other who make it
+a dry matter of business, and mix with the crowd solely to pick pockets.
+Add to these, the dissolute, the drunken, the most idle, profligate, and
+abandoned of both sexes—some moody ill-conditioned minds, drawn thither
+by a fearful interest—and some impelled by curiosity; of whom the greater
+part are of an age and temperament rendering the gratification of that
+curiosity highly dangerous to themselves and to society—and the great
+elements of the concourse are stated.
+
+Nor is this assemblage peculiar to London.  It is the same in country
+towns, allowing for the different statistics of the population.  It is
+the same in America.  I was present at an execution in Rome, for a most
+treacherous and wicked murder, and not only saw the same kind of
+assemblage there, but, wearing what is called a shooting-coat, with a
+great many pockets in it, felt innumerable hands busy in every one of
+them, close to the scaffold.
+
+I have already mentioned that out of one hundred and sixty-seven convicts
+under sentence of death, questioned at different times in the performance
+of his duty by an English clergyman, there were only three who had not
+been spectators of executions.  Mr. Wakefield, in his _Facts relating to
+the Punishment of Death_, goes into the working, as it were, of this sum.
+His testimony is extremely valuable, because it is the evidence of an
+educated and observing man, who, before having personal knowledge of the
+subject and of Newgate, was quite satisfied that the Punishment of Death
+should continue, but who, when he gained that experience, exerted himself
+to the utmost for its abolition, even at the pain of constant public
+reference in his own person to his own imprisonment.  “It cannot be
+egotism”, he reasonably observes, “that prompts a man to speak of himself
+in connection with Newgate.”
+
+“Whoever will undergo the pain,” says Mr. Wakefield, “of witnessing the
+public destruction of a fellow-creature’s life, in London, must be
+perfectly satisfied that in the great mass of spectators, the effect of
+the punishment is to excite sympathy for the criminal and hatred of the
+law. . . .  I am inclined to believe that the criminals of London, spoken
+of as a class and allowing for exceptions, take the same sort of delight
+in witnessing executions, as the sportsman and soldier find in the
+dangers of hunting and war. . . I am confident that few Old Bailey
+Sessions pass without the trial of a boy, whose first thought of crime
+occurred whilst he was witnessing an execution. . . .  And one grown man,
+of great mental powers and superior education, who was acquitted of a
+charge of forgery, assured me that the first idea of committing a forgery
+occurred to him at the moment when he was accidentally witnessing the
+execution of Fauntleroy.  To which it may be added, that Fauntleroy is
+said to have made precisely the same declaration in reference to the
+origin of his own criminality.”
+
+But one convict “who was within an ace of being hanged”, among the many
+with whom Mr. Wakefield conversed, seems to me to have unconsciously put
+a question which the advocates of Capital Punishment would find it very
+difficult indeed to answer.  “Have you often seen an execution?” asked
+Mr. Wakefield.  “Yes, often.”  “Did it not frighten you?”  “No.  _Why
+should it_?”
+
+It is very easy and very natural to turn from this ruffian, shocked by
+the hardened retort; but answer his question, why should it?  Should he
+be frightened by the sight of a dead man?  We are born to die, he says,
+with a careless triumph.  We are not born to the treadmill, or to
+servitude and slavery, or to banishment; but the executioner has done no
+more for that criminal than nature may do tomorrow for the judge, and
+will certainly do, in her own good time, for judge and jury, counsel and
+witnesses, turnkeys, hangman, and all.  Should he be frightened by the
+manner of the death?  It is horrible, truly, so horrible, that the law,
+afraid or ashamed of its own deed, hides the face of the struggling
+wretch it slays; but does this fact naturally awaken in such a man,
+terror—or defiance?  Let the same man speak.  “What did you think then?”
+asked Mr. Wakefield.  “Think?  Why, I thought it was a—shame.”
+
+Disgust and indignation, or recklessness and indifference, or a morbid
+tendency to brood over the sight until temptation is engendered by it,
+are the inevitable consequences of the spectacle, according to the
+difference of habit and disposition in those who behold it.  Why should
+it frighten or deter?  We know it does not.  We know it from the police
+reports, and from the testimony of those who have experience of prisons
+and prisoners, and we may know it, on the occasion of an execution, by
+the evidence of our own senses; if we will be at the misery of using them
+for such a purpose.  But why should it?  Who would send his child or his
+apprentice, or what tutor would send his scholars, or what master would
+send his servants, to be deterred from vice by the spectacle of an
+execution?  If it be an example to criminals, and to criminals only, why
+are not the prisoners in Newgate brought out to see the show before the
+debtors’ door?  Why, while they are made parties to the condemned sermon,
+are they rigidly excluded from the improving postscript of the gallows?
+Because an execution is well known to be an utterly useless, barbarous,
+and brutalising sight, and because the sympathy of all beholders, who
+have any sympathy at all, is certain to be always with the criminal, and
+never with the law.
+
+I learn from the newspaper accounts of every execution, how Mr.
+So-and-so, and Mr. Somebody else, and Mr. So-forth shook hands with the
+culprit, but I never find them shaking hands with the hangman.  All kinds
+of attention and consideration are lavished on the one; but the other is
+universally avoided, like a pestilence.  I want to know why so much
+sympathy is expended on the man who kills another in the vehemence of his
+own bad passions, and why the man who kills him in the name of the law is
+shunned and fled from?  Is it because the murderer is going to die?  Then
+by no means put him to death.  Is it because the hangman executes a law,
+which, when they once come near it face to face, all men instinctively
+revolt from?  Then by all means change it.  There is, there can be, no
+prevention in such a law.
+
+It may be urged that Public Executions are not intended for the benefit
+of those dregs of society who habitually attend them.  This is an
+absurdity, to which the obvious answer is, So much the worse.  If they be
+not considered with reference to that class of persons, comprehending a
+great host of criminals in various stages of development, they ought to
+be, and must be.  To lose sight of that consideration is to be
+irrational, unjust, and cruel.  All other punishments are especially
+devised, with a reference to the rooted habits, propensities, and
+antipathies of criminals.  And shall it be said, out of Bedlam, that this
+last punishment of all is alone to be made an exception from the rule,
+even where it is shown to be a means of propagating vice and crime?
+
+But there may be people who do not attend executions, to whom the general
+fame and rumour of such scenes is an example, and a means of deterring
+from crime.
+
+Who are they?  We have seen that around Capital Punishment there lingers
+a fascination, urging weak and bad people towards it, and imparting an
+interest to details connected with it, and with malefactors awaiting it
+or suffering it, which even good and well-disposed people cannot
+withstand.  We know that last-dying speeches and Newgate calendars are
+the favourite literature of very low intellects.  The gallows is not
+appealed to as an example in the instruction of youth (unless they are
+training for it); nor are there condensed accounts of celebrated
+executions for the use of national schools.  There is a story in an old
+spelling-book of a certain Don’t Care who was hanged at last, but it is
+not understood to have had any remarkable effect on crimes or executions
+in the generation to which it belonged, and with which it has passed
+away.  Hogarth’s idle apprentice is hanged; but the whole scene—with the
+unmistakable stout lady, drunk and pious, in the cast; the quarrelling,
+blasphemy, lewdness, and uproar; Tiddy Doll vending his gingerbread, and
+the boys picking his pocket—is a bitter satire on the great example; as
+efficient then, as now.
+
+Is it efficient to prevent crime?  The parliamentary returns demonstrate
+that it is not.  I was engaged in making some extracts from these
+documents, when I found them so well abstracted in one of the papers
+published by the committee on this subject established at Aylesbury last
+year, by the humane exertions of Lord Nugent, that I am glad to quote the
+general results from its pages:
+
+    “In 1843 a return was laid on the table of the House of the
+    commitments and executions for murder in England and Wales during the
+    thirty years ending with December 1842, divided into five periods of
+    six years each.  It shows that in the last six years, from 1836 to
+    1842, during which there were only 50 executions, the commitments for
+    murder were fewer by 61 than in the six years preceding with 74
+    executions; fewer by 63 than in the six years ending 1830 with 75
+    executions; fewer by 56 than in the six years ending 1824 with 94
+    executions; and fewer by 93 than in the six years ending 1818 when
+    there was no less a number of executions than 122.  But it may be
+    said, perhaps, that in the inference we draw from this return, we are
+    substituting cause for effect, and that in each successive cycle, the
+    number of murders decreased in consequence of the example of public
+    executions in the cycle immediately preceding, and that it was for
+    that reason there were fewer commitments.  This might be said with
+    some colour of truth, if the example had been taken from two
+    successive cycles _only_.  But when the comparative examples adduced
+    are of no less than _five_ successive cycles, and the result
+    gradually and constantly progressive in the same direction, the
+    relation of facts to each other is determined beyond all ground for
+    dispute, namely, that the number of these crimes has diminished in
+    consequence of the diminution of the number of executions.  More
+    especially when it is also remembered that it was _immediately after_
+    the first of these cycles of five years, when there had been the
+    greatest number of executions and the greatest number of murders,
+    that the greatest number of persons were suddenly cast loose upon the
+    country, without employ, by the reduction of the Army and Navy; that
+    then came periods of great distress and great disturbance in the
+    agricultural and manufacturing districts; and _above all_, that it
+    was during the subsequent cycles that the most important mitigations
+    were effected in the law, and that the Punishment of Death was taken
+    away not only for crimes of stealth, such as cattle and horse
+    stealing and forgery, of which crimes corresponding statistics show
+    likewise a corresponding decrease, but for the crimes of violence
+    too, _tending to murder_, such as are many of the incendiary
+    offences, and such as are highway robbery and burglary.  But another
+    return, laid before the House at the same time, bears upon our
+    argument, if possible, still more conclusively.  In table 11 we have
+    _only_ the years which have occurred since 1810, in which _all_
+    persons convicted of murder suffered death; and, compared with these
+    an _equal_ number of years in which the _smallest_ proportion of
+    persons convicted were executed.  In the first case there were 66
+    persons convicted, all of whom underwent the penalty of death; in the
+    second 83 were convicted, of whom 31 only were executed.  Now see how
+    these two very different methods of dealing with the crime of murder
+    affected the commission of it _in the years immediately following_.
+    The number of commitments for murder, in the four years immediately
+    following those in which all persons convicted were executed, was
+    270.
+
+    “In the four years immediately following those in which little more
+    than one-third of the persons convicted were executed, there were but
+    222, being 48 less.  If we compare the commitments in the following
+    years with those in the first years, we shall find that, immediately
+    after the examples of unsparing execution, the crime _increased
+    nearly 13 per cent._, and that after commutation was the practice and
+    capital punishment the exception, it _decreased 17 per cent._
+
+    “In the same parliamentary return is an account of the commitments
+    and executions in London and Middlesex, _spread over a space of_ 32
+    _years_, ending in 1842, divided into two cycles of 16 years each.
+    In the first of these, 34 persons were _convicted_ of murder, _all of
+    whom were executed_.  In the second, 27 were _convicted_, and only 17
+    executed.  The _commitments_ for murder during the latter long
+    period, with 17 executions, were _more than one half_ fewer than they
+    had been in the former _long_ period with _exactly double the number
+    of executions_.  This appears to us to be as conclusive upon our
+    argument as any statistical illustration can be upon any argument
+    professing to place successive events in the relation of cause and
+    effect to each other.  How justly then is it said in that able and
+    useful periodical work, now in the course of publication at Glasgow,
+    under the name of the _Magazine of Popular Information on Capital and
+    Secondary Punishment_, ‘the greater the number of executions, the
+    greater the number of murders; the smaller the number of executions,
+    the smaller the number of murders.  The lives of her Majesty’s
+    subjects are less safe with a hundred executions a year than with
+    fifty; less safe with fifty than with twenty-five.’”
+
+Similar results have followed from rendering public executions more and
+more infrequent, in Tuscany, in Prussia, in France, in Belgium.  Wherever
+capital punishments are diminished in their number, there, crimes
+diminish in their number too.
+
+But the very same advocates of the punishment of Death who contend, in
+the teeth of all facts and figures, that it does prevent crime, contend
+in the same breath against its abolition because it does not!  “There are
+so many bad murders,” say they, “and they follow in such quick
+succession, that the Punishment must not be repealed.”  Why, is not this
+a reason, among others, _for_ repealing it?  Does it not go to show that
+it is ineffective as an example; that it fails to prevent crime; and that
+it is wholly inefficient to stay that imitation, or contagion, call it
+what you please, which brings one murder on the heels of another?
+
+One forgery came crowding on another’s heels in the same way, when the
+same punishment attached to that crime.  Since it has been removed,
+forgeries have diminished in a most remarkable degree.  Yet within five
+and thirty years, Lord Eldon, with tearful solemnity, imagined in the
+House of Lords as a possibility for their Lordships to shudder at, that
+the time might come when some visionary and morbid person might even
+propose the abolition of the punishment of Death for forgery.  And when
+it was proposed, Lords Lyndhurst, Wynford, Tenterden, and Eldon—all Law
+Lords—opposed it.
+
+The same Lord Tenterden manfully said, on another occasion and another
+question, that he was glad the subject of the amendment of the laws had
+been taken up by Mr. Peel, “who had not been bred to the law; for those
+who were, were rendered dull, by habit, to many of its defects!”  I would
+respectfully submit, in extension of this text, that a criminal judge is
+an excellent witness against the Punishment of Death, but a bad witness
+in its favour; and I will reserve this point for a few remarks in the
+next, concluding, Letter.
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+The last English Judge, I believe, who gave expression to a public and
+judicial opinion in favour of the punishment of Death, is Mr. Justice
+Coleridge, who, in charging the Grand Jury at Hertford last year, took
+occasion to lament the presence of serious crimes in the calendar, and to
+say that he feared that they were referable to the comparative
+infrequency of Capital Punishment.
+
+It is not incompatible with the utmost deference and respect for an
+authority so eminent, to say that, in this, Mr. Justice Coleridge was not
+supported by facts, but quite the reverse.  He went out of his way to
+found a general assumption on certain very limited and partial grounds,
+and even on those grounds was wrong.  For among the few crimes which he
+instanced, murder stood prominently forth.  Now persons found guilty of
+murder are more certainly and unsparingly hanged at this time, as the
+Parliamentary Returns demonstrate, than such criminals ever were.  So how
+can the decline of public executions affect that class of crimes?  As to
+persons committing murder, and yet not found guilty of it by juries, they
+escape solely because there are many public executions—not because there
+are none or few.
+
+But when I submit that a criminal judge is an excellent witness against
+Capital Punishment, but a bad witness in its favour, I do so on more
+broad and general grounds than apply to this error in fact and deduction
+(so I presume to consider it) on the part of the distinguished judge in
+question.  And they are grounds which do not apply offensively to judges,
+as a class; than whom there are no authorities in England so deserving of
+general respect and confidence, or so possessed of it; but which apply
+alike to all men in their several degrees and pursuits.
+
+It is certain that men contract a general liking for those things which
+they have studied at great cost of time and intellect, and their
+proficiency in which has led to their becoming distinguished and
+successful.  It is certain that out of this feeling arises, not only that
+passive blindness to their defects of which the example given by my Lord
+Tenterden was quoted in the last letter, but an active disposition to
+advocate and defend them.  If it were otherwise; if it were not for this
+spirit of interest and partisanship; no single pursuit could have that
+attraction for its votaries which most pursuits in course of time
+establish.  Thus legal authorities are usually jealous of innovations on
+legal principles.  Thus it is described of the lawyer in the Introductory
+Discourse to the Description of Utopia, that he said of a proposal
+against Capital Punishment, “‘this could never be so established in
+England but that it must needs bring the weal-public into great jeopardy
+and hazard’, and as he was thus saying, he shaked his head, and made a
+wry mouth, and so he held his peace”.  Thus the Recorder of London, in
+1811, objected to “the capital part being taken off” from the offence of
+picking pockets.  Thus the Lord Chancellor, in 1813, objected to the
+removal of the penalty of death from the offence of stealing to the
+amount of five shillings from a shop.  Thus, Lord Ellenborough, in 1820,
+anticipated the worst effects from there being no punishment of death for
+stealing five shillings worth of wet linen from a bleaching ground.  Thus
+the Solicitor General, in 1830, advocated the punishment of death for
+forgery, and “the satisfaction of thinking” in the teeth of mountains of
+evidence from bankers and other injured parties (one thousand bankers
+alone!) “that he was deterring persons from the commission of crime, by
+the severity of the law”.  Thus, Mr. Justice Coleridge delivered his
+charge at Hertford in 1845.  Thus there were in the criminal code of
+England, in 1790, one hundred and sixty crimes punishable with death.
+Thus the lawyer has said, again and again, in his generation, that any
+change in such a state of things “must needs bring the weal-public into
+jeopardy and hazard”.  And thus he has, all through the dismal history,
+“shaked his head, and made a wry mouth, and held his peace”.  Except—a
+glorious exception!—when such lawyers as Bacon, More, Blackstone,
+Romilly, and—let us ever gratefully remember—in later times Mr. Basil
+Montagu, have striven, each in his day, within the utmost limits of the
+endurance of the mistaken feeling of the people or the legislature of the
+time, to champion and maintain the truth.
+
+There is another and a stronger reason still, why a criminal judge is a
+bad witness in favour of the punishment of Death.  He is a chief actor in
+the terrible drama of a trial, where the life or death of a fellow
+creature is at issue.  No one who has seen such a trial can fail to know,
+or can ever forget, its intense interest.  I care not how painful this
+interest is to the good, wise judge upon the bench.  I admit its painful
+nature, and the judge’s goodness and wisdom to the fullest extent—but I
+submit that his prominent share in the excitement of such a trial, and
+the dread mystery involved, has a tendency to bewilder and confuse the
+judge upon the general subject of that penalty.  I know the solemn pause
+before the verdict, the bush and stifling of the fever in the court, the
+solitary figure brought back to the bar, and standing there, observed of
+all the outstretched heads and gleaming eyes, to be next minute stricken
+dead as one may say, among them.  I know the thrill that goes round when
+the black cap is put on, and how there will be shrieks among the women,
+and a taking out of some one in a swoon; and, when the judge’s faltering
+voice delivers sentence, how awfully the prisoner and he confront each
+other; two mere men, destined one day, however far removed from one
+another at this time, to stand alike as suppliants at the bar of God.  I
+know all this, I can imagine what the office of the judge costs in this
+execution of it; but I say that in these strong sensations he is lost,
+and is unable to abstract the penalty as a preventive or example, from an
+experience of it, and from associations surrounding it, which are and can
+be, only his, and his alone.
+
+Not to contend that there is no amount of wig or ermine that can change
+the nature of the man inside; not to say that the nature of a judge may
+be, like the dyer’s hand, subdued to what it works in, and may become too
+used to this punishment of death to consider it quite dispassionately;
+not to say that it may possibly be inconsistent to have, deciding as calm
+authorities in favour of death, judges who have been constantly
+sentencing to death;—I contend that for the reasons I have stated alone,
+a judge, and especially a criminal judge, is a bad witness for the
+punishment but an excellent witness against it, inasmuch as in the latter
+case his conviction of its inutility has been so strong and paramount as
+utterly to beat down and conquer these adverse incidents.  I have no
+scruple in stating this position, because, for anything I know, the
+majority of excellent judges now on the bench may have overcome them, and
+may be opposed to the punishment of Death under any circumstances.
+
+I mentioned that I would devote a portion of this letter to a few
+prominent illustrations of each head of objection to the punishment of
+Death.  Those on record are so very numerous that selection is extremely
+difficult; but in reference to the possibility of mistake, and the
+impossibility of reparation, one case is as good (I should rather say as
+bad) as a hundred; and if there were none but Eliza Fenning’s, that would
+be sufficient.  Nay, if there were none at all, it would be enough to
+sustain this objection, that men of finite and limited judgment do
+inflict, on testimony which admits of doubt, an infinite and irreparable
+punishment.  But there are on record numerous instances of mistake; many
+of them very generally known and immediately recognisable in the
+following summary, which I copy from the _New York Report_ already
+referred to.
+
+    “There have been cases in which groans have been heard in the
+    apartment of the crime, which have attracted the steps of those on
+    whose testimony the case has turned—when, on proceeding to the spot,
+    they have found a man bending over the murdered body, a lantern in
+    the left hand, and the knife yet dripping with the warm current in
+    the blood-stained right, with horror-stricken countenance, and lips
+    which, in the presence of the dead, seem to refuse to deny the crime
+    in the very act of which he is thus surprised—and yet the man has
+    been, many years after, when his memory alone could be benefited by
+    the discovery, ascertained not to have been the real murderer!  There
+    have been cases in which, in a house in which were two persons alone,
+    a murder has been committed on one of them—when many additional
+    circumstances have fastened the imputation upon the other—and when,
+    all apparent modes of access from without, being closed inward, the
+    demonstration has seemed complete of the guilt for which that other
+    has suffered the doom of the law—yet suffered _innocently_!  There
+    have been cases in which a father has been found murdered in an
+    outhouse, the only person at home being a son, sworn by a sister to
+    have been dissolute and undutiful, and anxious for the death of the
+    father, and succession to the family property—when the track of his
+    shoes in the snow is found from the house to the spot of the murder,
+    and the hammer with which it was committed (known as his own), found,
+    on a search, in the corner of one of his private drawers, with the
+    bloody evidence of the deed only imperfectly effaced from it—and yet
+    the son has been innocent!—the sister, years after, on her death-bed,
+    confessing herself the fratricide as well as the parricide.  There
+    have been cases in which men have been hung on the most positive
+    testimony to identity (aided by many suspicious circumstances), by
+    persons familiar with their appearance, which have afterwards proved
+    grievous mistakes, growing out of remarkable personal resemblance.
+    There have been cases in which two men have been seen fighting in a
+    field—an old enmity existing between them—the one found dead, killed
+    by a stab from a pitchfork known as belonging to the other, and which
+    that other had been carrying, the pitch-fork lying by the side of the
+    murdered man—and yet its owner has been afterwards found not to have
+    been the author of the murder of which it had been the instrument,
+    the true murderer sitting on the jury that tried him.  There have
+    been cases in which an innkeeper has been charged by one of his
+    servants with the murder of a traveller, the servant deposing to
+    having seen his master on the stranger’s bed, strangling him, and
+    afterwards rifling his pockets—another servant deposing that she saw
+    him come down at that time at a very early hour in the morning, steal
+    into the garden, take gold from his pocket, and carefully wrapping it
+    up bury it in a designated spot—on the search of which the ground is
+    found loose and freshly dug, and a sum of thirty pounds in gold found
+    buried according to the description—the master, who confessed the
+    burying of the money, with many evidences of guilt in his hesitation
+    and confusion, has been hung of course, and proved innocent only too
+    late.  There have been cases in which a traveller has been robbed on
+    the highway of twenty guineas, which he had taken the precaution to
+    mark—one of these is found to have been paid away or changed by one
+    of the servants of the inn which the traveller reaches the same
+    evening—the servant is about the height of the robber, who had been
+    cloaked and disguised—his master deposes to his having been recently
+    unaccountably extravagant and flush of gold—and on his trunk being
+    searched the other nineteen marked guineas and the traveller’s purse
+    are found there, the servant being asleep at the time, half-drunk—he
+    is of course convicted and hung, for the crime of which his master
+    was the author!  There have been cases in which a father and daughter
+    have been overheard in violent dispute—the words “_barbarity_”,
+    “_cruelly_”, and “_death_”, being heard frequently to proceed from
+    the latter—the former goes out locking the door behind him—groans are
+    overheard, and the words, “_cruel father_, _thou art the cause of my
+    death_!”—on the room being opened she is found on the point of death
+    from a wound in her side, and near her the knife with which it had
+    been inflicted—and on being questioned as to her owing her death to
+    her father, her last motion before expiring is an expression of
+    assent—the father, on returning to the room, exhibits the usual
+    evidences of guilt—he, too, is of course hung—and it is not till
+    nearly a year afterwards that, on the discovery of conclusive
+    evidence that it was a suicide, the vain reparation is made, to his
+    memory by the public authorities, of—waving a pair of colours over
+    his grave in token of the recognition of his innocence.”
+
+More than a hundred such cases are known, it is said in this Report, in
+English criminal jurisprudence.  The same Report contains three striking
+cases of supposed criminals being unjustly hanged in America; and also
+five more in which people whose innocence was not afterwards established
+were put to death on evidence as purely circumstantial and as doubtful,
+to say the least of it, as any that was held to be sufficient in this
+general summary of legal murders.  Mr. O’Connell defended, in Ireland,
+within five and twenty years, three brothers who were hanged for a murder
+of which they were afterwards shown to have been innocent.  I cannot find
+the reference at this moment, but I have seen it stated on good
+authority, that but for the exertions, I think of the present Lord Chief
+Baron, six or seven innocent men would certainly have been hanged.  Such
+are the instances of wrong judgment which are known to us.  How many more
+there may be in which the real murderers never disclosed their guilt, or
+were never discovered, and where the odium of great crimes still rests on
+guiltless people long since resolved to dust in their untimely graves, no
+human power can tell.
+
+The effect of public executions on those who witness them, requires no
+better illustration, and can have none, than the scene which any
+execution in itself presents, and the general Police-office knowledge of
+the offences arising out of them.  I have stated my belief that the study
+of rude scenes leads to the disregard of human life, and to murder.
+Referring, since that expression of opinion, to the very last trial for
+murder in London, I have made inquiry, and am assured that the youth now
+under sentence of death in Newgate for the murder of his master in Drury
+Lane, was a vigilant spectator of the three last public executions in
+this City.  What effects a daily increasing familiarity with the
+scaffold, and with death upon it, wrought in France in the Great
+Revolution, everybody knows.  In reference to this very question of
+Capital Punishment, Robespierre himself, before he was
+
+                         “in blood stept in so far”,
+
+warned the National Assembly that in taking human life, and in displaying
+before the eyes of the people scenes of cruelty and the bodies of
+murdered men, the law awakened ferocious prejudices, which gave birth to
+a long and growing train of their own kind.  With how much reason this
+was said, let his own detestable name bear witness!  If we would know how
+callous and hardened society, even in a peaceful and settled state,
+becomes to public executions when they are frequent, let us recollect how
+few they were who made the last attempt to stay the dreadful
+Monday-morning spectacles of men and women strung up in a row for crimes
+as different in their degree as our whole social scheme is different in
+its component parts, which, within some fifteen years or so, made human
+shambles of the Old Bailey.
+
+There is no better way of testing the effect of public executions on
+those who do not actually behold them, but who read of them and know of
+them, than by inquiring into their efficiency in preventing crime.  In
+this respect they have always, and in all countries, failed.  According
+to all facts and figures, failed.  In Russia, in Spain, in France, in
+Italy, in Belgium, in Sweden, in England, there has been one result.  In
+Bombay, during the Recordership of Sir James Macintosh, there were fewer
+crimes in seven years without one execution, than in the preceding seven
+years with forty-seven executions; notwithstanding that in the seven
+years without capital punishment, the population had greatly increased,
+and there had been a large accession to the numbers of the ignorant and
+licentious soldiery, with whom the more violent offences originated.
+During the four wickedest years of the Bank of England (from 1814 to
+1817, inclusive), when the one-pound note capital prosecutions were most
+numerous and shocking, the number of forged one-pound notes discovered by
+the Bank steadily increased, from the gross amount in the first year of
+£10,342, to the gross amount in the last of £28,412.  But in every branch
+of this part of the subject—the inefficiency of capital punishment to
+prevent crime, and its efficiency to produce it—the body of evidence (if
+there were space to quote or analyse it here) is overpowering and
+resistless.
+
+I have purposely deferred until now any reference to one objection which
+is urged against the abolition of capital punishment: I mean that
+objection which claims to rest on Scriptural authority.
+
+It was excellently well said by Lord Melbourne, that no class of persons
+can be shown to be very miserable and oppressed, but some supporters of
+things as they are will immediately rise up and assert—not that those
+persons are moderately well to do, or that their lot in life has a
+reasonably bright side—but that they are, of all sorts and conditions of
+men, the happiest.  In like manner, when a certain proceeding or
+institution is shown to be very wrong indeed, there is a class of people
+who rush to the fountainhead at once, and will have no less an authority
+for it than the Bible, on any terms.
+
+So, we have the Bible appealed to in behalf of Capital Punishment.  So,
+we have the Bible produced as a distinct authority for Slavery.  So,
+American representatives find the title of their country to the Oregon
+territory distinctly laid down in the Book of Genesis.  So, in course of
+time, we shall find Repudiation, perhaps, expressly commanded in the
+Sacred Writings.
+
+It is enough for me to be satisfied, on calm inquiry and with reason,
+that an Institution or Custom is wrong and bad; and thence to feel
+assured that IT CANNOT BE a part of the law laid down by the Divinity who
+walked the earth.  Though every other man who wields a pen should turn
+himself into a commentator on the Scriptures—not all their united
+efforts, pursued through our united lives, could ever persuade me that
+Slavery is a Christian law; nor, with one of these objections to an
+execution in my certain knowledge, that Executions are a Christian law,
+my will is not concerned.  I could not, in my veneration for the life and
+lessons of Our Lord, believe it.  If any text appeared to justify the
+claim, I would reject that limited appeal, and rest upon the character of
+the Redeemer, and the great scheme of His Religion, where, in its broad
+spirit, made so plain—and not this or that disputed letter—we all put our
+trust.  But, happily, such doubts do not exist.  The case is far too
+plain.  The Rev. Henry Christmas, in a recent pamphlet on this subject,
+shows clearly that in five important versions of the Old Testament (to
+say nothing of versions of less note) the words, “by man”, in the
+often-quoted text, “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be
+shed”, do not appear at all.  We know that the law of Moses was delivered
+to certain wandering tribes in a peculiar and perfectly different social
+condition from that which prevails among us at this time.  We know that
+the Christian Dispensation did distinctly repeal and annul certain
+portions of that law.  We know that the doctrine of retributive justice
+or vengeance, was plainly disavowed by the Saviour.  We know that on the
+only occasion of an offender, liable by the law to death, being brought
+before Him for His judgment, it was _not_ death.  We know that He said,
+“Thou shalt not kill”.  And if we are still to inflict capital punishment
+because of the Mosaic law (under which it was not the consequence of a
+legal proceeding, but an act of vengeance from the next of kin, which
+would surely be discouraged by our later laws if it were revived among
+the Jews just now) it would be equally reasonable to establish the
+lawfulness of a plurality of wives on the same authority.
+
+Here I will leave this aspect of the question.  I should not have treated
+of it at all in the columns of a newspaper, but for the possibility of
+being unjustly supposed to have given it no consideration in my own mind.
+
+In bringing to a close these letters on a subject, in connection with
+which there is happily very little that is new to be said or written, I
+beg to be understood as advocating the total abolition of the Punishment
+of Death, as a general principle, for the advantage of society, for the
+prevention of crime, and without the least reference to, or tenderness
+for any individual malefactor whomsoever.  Indeed, in most cases of
+murder, my feeling towards the culprit is very strongly and violently the
+reverse.  I am the more desirous to be so understood, after reading a
+speech made by Mr. Macaulay in the House of Commons last Tuesday night,
+in which that accomplished gentleman hardly seemed to recognise the
+possibility of anybody entertaining an honest conviction of the inutility
+and bad effects of Capital Punishment in the abstract, founded on inquiry
+and reflection, without being the victim of “a kind of effeminate
+feeling”.  Without staying to inquire what there may be that is
+especially manly and heroic in the advocacy of the gallows, or to express
+my admiration of Mr. Calcraft, the hangman, as doubtless one of the most
+manly specimens now in existence, I would simply hint a doubt, in all
+good humour, whether this be the true Macaulay way of meeting a great
+question?  One of the instances of effeminacy of feeling quoted by Mr.
+Macaulay, I have reason to think was not quite fairly stated.  I allude
+to the petition in Tawell’s case.  I had neither hand nor part in it
+myself; but, unless I am greatly mistaken, it did pretty clearly set
+forth that Tawell was a most abhorred villain, and that the House might
+conclude how strongly the petitioners were opposed to the Punishment of
+Death, when they prayed for its non-infliction even in such a case.
+
+
+
+
+THE SPIRIT OF CHIVALRY IN WESTMINSTER HALL
+
+
+“OF all the cants that are canted in this canting world,” wrote Sterne,
+“kind Heaven defend me from the cant of Art!”  We have no intention of
+tapping our little cask of cant, soured by the thunder of great men’s
+fame, for the refreshment of our readers: its freest draught would be
+unreasonably dear at a shilling, when the same small liquor may be had
+for nothing, at innumerable ready pipes and conduits.
+
+But it is a main part of the design of this Magazine to sympathise with
+what is truly great and good; to scout the miserable discouragements that
+beset, especially in England, the upward path of men of high desert; and
+gladly to give honour where it is due, in right of Something achieved,
+tending to elevate the tastes and thoughts of all who contemplate it, and
+prove a lasting credit to the country of its birth.
+
+Upon the walls of Westminster Hall, there hangs, at this time, such a
+Something.  A composition of such marvellous beauty, of such infinite
+variety, of such masterly design, of such vigorous and skilful drawing,
+of such thought and fancy, of such surprising and delicate accuracy of
+detail, subserving one grand harmony, and one plain purpose, that it may
+be questioned whether the Fine Arts in any period of their history have
+known a more remarkable performance.
+
+It is the cartoon of Daniel Maclise, “executed by order of the
+Commissioners”, and called The Spirit of Chivalry.  It may be left an
+open question, whether or no this allegorical order on the part of the
+Commissioners, displays any uncommon felicity of idea.  We rather think
+not; and are free to confess that we should like to have seen the
+Commissioners’ notion of the Spirit of Chivalry stated by themselves, in
+the first instance, on a sheet of foolscap, as the ground-plan of a model
+cartoon, with all the commissioned proportions of height and breadth.
+That the treatment of such an abstraction, for the purposes of Art,
+involves great and peculiar difficulties, no one who considers the
+subject for a moment can doubt.  That nothing is easier to render it
+absurd and monstrous, is a position as little capable of dispute by
+anybody who has beheld another cartoon on the same subject in the same
+Hall, representing a Ghoule in a state of raving madness, dancing on a
+Body in a very high wind, to the great astonishment of John the Baptist’s
+head, which is looking on from a corner.
+
+Mr. Maclise’s handling of the subject has by this time sunk into the
+hearts of thousands upon thousands of people.  It is familiar knowledge
+among all classes and conditions of men.  It is the great feature within
+the Hall, and the constant topic of discourse elsewhere.  It has awakened
+in the great body of society a new interest in, and a new perception and
+a new love of, Art.  Students of Art have sat before it, hour by hour,
+perusing in its many forms of Beauty, lessons to delight the world, and
+raise themselves, its future teachers, in its better estimation.  Eyes
+well accustomed to the glories of the Vatican, the galleries of Florence,
+all the mightiest works of art in Europe, have grown dim before it with
+the strong emotions it inspires; ignorant, unlettered, drudging men, mere
+hewers and drawers, have gathered in a knot about it (as at our back a
+week ago), and read it, in their homely language, as it were a Book.  In
+minds, the roughest and the most refined, it has alike found quick
+response; and will, and must, so long as it shall hold together.
+
+For how can it be otherwise?  Look up, upon the pressing throng who
+strive to win distinction from the Guardian Genius of all noble deeds and
+honourable renown,—a gentle Spirit, holding her fair state for their
+reward and recognition (do not be alarmed, my Lord Chamberlain; this is
+only in a picture); and say what young and ardent heart may not find one
+to beat in unison with it—beat high with generous aspiration like its
+own—in following their onward course, as it is traced by this great
+pencil!  Is it the Love of Woman, in its truth and deep devotion, that
+inspires you?  See it here!  Is it Glory, as the world has learned to
+call the pomp and circumstance of arms?  Behold it at the summit of its
+exaltation, with its mailed hand resting on the altar where the Spirit
+ministers.  The Poet’s laurel-crown, which they who sit on thrones can
+neither twine or wither—is _that_ the aim of thy ambition?  It is there,
+upon his brow; it wreathes his stately forehead, as he walks apart and
+holds communion with himself.  The Palmer and the Bard are there; no
+solitary wayfarers, now; but two of a great company of pilgrims, climbing
+up to honour by the different paths that lead to the great end.  And
+sure, amidst the gravity and beauty of them all—unseen in his own form,
+but shining in his spirit, out of every gallant shape and earnest
+thought—the Painter goes triumphant!
+
+Or say that you who look upon this work, be old, and bring to it grey
+hairs, a head bowed down, a mind on which the day of life has spent
+itself, and the calm evening closes gently in.  Is its appeal to you
+confined to its presentment of the Past?  Have you no share in this, but
+while the grace of youth and the strong resolve of maturity are yours to
+aid you?  Look up again.  Look up where the spirit is enthroned, and see
+about her, reverend men, whose task is done; whose struggle is no more;
+who cluster round her as her train and council; who have lost no share or
+interest in that great rising up and progress, which bears upward with it
+every means of human happiness, but, true in Autumn to the purposes of
+Spring, are there to stimulate the race who follow in their steps; to
+contemplate, with hearts grown serious, not cold or sad, the striving in
+which they once had part; to die in that great Presence, which is Truth
+and Bravery, and Mercy to the Weak, beyond all power of separation.
+
+It would be idle to observe of this last group that, both in execution
+and idea, they are of the very highest order of Art, and wonderfully
+serve the purpose of the picture.  There is not one among its
+three-and-twenty heads of which the same remark might not be made.
+Neither will we treat of great effects produced by means quite powerless
+in other hands for such an end, or of the prodigious force and _colour_
+which so separate this work from all the rest exhibited, that it would
+scarcely appear to be produced upon the same kind of surface by the same
+description of instrument.  The bricks and stones and timbers of the Hall
+itself are not facts more indisputable than these.
+
+It has been objected to this extraordinary work that it is too
+elaborately finished; too complete in its several parts.  And Heaven
+knows, if it be judged in this respect by any standard in the Hall about
+it, it will find no parallel, nor anything approaching to it.  But it is
+a design, intended to be afterwards copied and painted in fresco; and
+certain finish must be had at last, if not at first.  It is very well to
+take it for granted in a Cartoon that a series of cross-lines, almost as
+rough and apart as the lattice-work of a garden summerhouse, represents
+the texture of a human face; but the face cannot be _painted_ so.  A
+smear upon the paper may be understood, by virtue of the context gained
+from what surrounds it, to stand for a limb, or a body, or a cuirass, or
+a hat and feathers, or a flag, or a boot, or an angel.  But when the time
+arrives for rendering these things in colours on a wall, they must be
+grappled with, and cannot be slurred over in this wise.  Great
+misapprehension on this head seems to have been engendered in the minds
+of some observers by the famous cartoons of Raphael; but they forget that
+these were never intended as designs for fresco painting.  They were
+designs for tapestry-work, which is susceptible of only certain broad and
+general effects, as no one better knew than the Great Master.  Utterly
+detestable and vile as the tapestry is, compared with the immortal
+Cartoons from which it was worked, it is impossible for any man who casts
+his eyes upon it where it hangs at Rome, not to see immediately the
+special adaptation of the drawings to that end, and for that purpose.
+The aim of these Cartoons being wholly different, Mr. Maclise’s object,
+if we understand it, was to show precisely what he meant to do, and knew
+he could perform, in fresco, on a wall.  And here his meaning is; worked
+out; without a compromise of any difficulty; without the avoidance of any
+disconcerting truth; expressed in all its beauty, strength, and power.
+
+To what end?  To be perpetuated hereafter in the high place of the chief
+Senate-House of England?  To be wrought, as it were, into the very
+elements of which that Temple is composed; to co-endure with it, and
+still present, perhaps, some lingering traces of its ancient Beauty, when
+London shall have sunk into a grave of grass-grown ruin,—and the whole
+circle of the Arts, another revolution of the mighty wheel completed,
+shall be wrecked and broken?
+
+Let us hope so.  We will contemplate no other possibility—at present.
+
+
+
+
+IN MEMORIAM
+W. M. THACKERAY
+
+
+IT has been desired by some of the personal friends of the great English
+writer who established this magazine, {564} that its brief record of his
+having been stricken from among men should be written by the old comrade
+and brother in arms who pens these lines, and of whom he often wrote
+himself, and always with the warmest generosity.
+
+I saw him first nearly twenty-eight years ago, when he proposed to become
+the illustrator of my earliest book.  I saw him last, shortly before
+Christmas, at the Athenæum Club, when he told me that he had been in bed
+three days—that, after these attacks, he was troubled with cold
+shiverings, “which quite took the power of work out of him”—and that he
+had it in his mind to try a new remedy which he laughingly described.  He
+was very cheerful, and looked very bright.  In the night of that day
+week, he died.
+
+The long interval between those two periods is marked in my remembrance
+of him by many occasions when he was supremely humorous, when he was
+irresistibly extravagant, when he was softened and serious, when he was
+charming with children.  But, by none do I recall him more tenderly than
+by two or three that start out of the crowd, when he unexpectedly
+presented himself in my room, announcing how that some passage in a
+certain book had made him cry yesterday, and how that he had come to
+dinner, “because he couldn’t help it”, and must talk such passage over.
+No one can ever have seen him more genial, natural, cordial, fresh, and
+honestly impulsive, than I have seen him at those times.  No one can be
+surer than I, of the greatness and the goodness of the heart that then
+disclosed itself.
+
+We had our differences of opinion.  I thought that he too much feigned a
+want of earnestness, and that he made a pretence of under-valuing his
+art, which was not good for the art that he held in trust.  But, when we
+fell upon these topics, it was never very gravely, and I have a lively
+image of him in my mind, twisting both his hands in his hair, and
+stamping about, laughing, to make an end of the discussion.
+
+When we were associated in remembrance of the late Mr. Douglas Jerrold,
+he delivered a public lecture in London, in the course of which, he read
+his very best contribution to Punch, describing the grown-up cares of a
+poor family of young children.  No one hearing him could have doubted his
+natural gentleness, or his thoroughly unaffected manly sympathy with the
+weak and lowly.  He read the paper most pathetically, and with a
+simplicity of tenderness that certainly moved one of his audience to
+tears.  This was presently after his standing for Oxford, from which
+place he had dispatched his agent to me, with a droll note (to which he
+afterwards added a verbal postscript), urging me to “come down and make a
+speech, and tell them who he was, for he doubted whether more than two of
+the electors had ever heard of him, and he thought there might be as many
+as six or eight who had heard of me”.  He introduced the lecture just
+mentioned, with a reference to his late electioneering failure, which was
+full of good sense, good spirits, and good humour.
+
+He had a particular delight in boys, and an excellent way with them.  I
+remember his once asking me with fantastic gravity, when he had been to
+Eton where my eldest son then was, whether I felt as he did in regard of
+never seeing a boy without wanting instantly to give him a sovereign?  I
+thought of this when I looked down into his grave, after he was laid
+there, for I looked down into it over the shoulder of a boy to whom he
+had been kind.
+
+These are slight remembrances; but it is to little familiar things
+suggestive of the voice, look, manner, never, never more to be
+encountered on this earth, that the mind first turns in a bereavement.
+And greater things that are known of him, in the way of his warm
+affections, his quiet endurance, his unselfish thoughtfulness for others,
+and his munificent hand, may not be told.
+
+If, in the reckless vivacity of his youth, his satirical pen had ever
+gone astray or done amiss, he had caused it to prefer its own petition
+for forgiveness, long before:—
+
+    I’ve writ the foolish fancy of his brain;
+    The aimless jest that, striking, hath caused pain;
+    The idle word that he’d wish back again.
+
+In no pages should I take it upon myself at this time to discourse of his
+books, of his refined knowledge of character, of his subtle acquaintance
+with the weaknesses of human nature, of his delightful playfulness as an
+essayist, of his quaint and touching ballads, of his mastery over the
+English language.  Least of all, in these pages, enriched by his
+brilliant qualities from the first of the series, and beforehand accepted
+by the Public through the strength of his great name.
+
+But, on the table before me, there lies all that he had written of his
+latest and last story.  That it would be very sad to any one—that it is
+inexpressibly so to a writer—in its evidences of matured designs never to
+be accomplished, of intentions begun to be executed and destined never to
+be completed, of careful preparation for long roads of thought that he
+was never to traverse, and for shining goals that he was never to reach,
+will be readily believed.  The pain, however, that I have felt in
+perusing it, has not been deeper than the conviction that he was in the
+healthiest vigour of his powers when he wrought on this last labour.  In
+respect of earnest feeling, far-seeing purpose, character, incident, and
+a certain loving picturesqueness blending the whole, I believe it to be
+much the best of all his works.  That he fully meant it to be so, that he
+had become strongly attached to it, and that he bestowed great pains upon
+it, I trace in almost every page.  It contains one picture which must
+have cost him extreme distress, and which is a masterpiece.  There are
+two children in it, touched with a hand as loving and tender as ever a
+father caressed his little child with.  There is some young love as pure
+and innocent and pretty as the truth.  And it is very remarkable that, by
+reason of the singular construction of the story, more than one main
+incident usually belonging to the end of such a fiction is anticipated in
+the beginning, and thus there is an approach to completeness in the
+fragment, as to the satisfaction of the reader’s mind concerning the most
+interesting persons, which could hardly have been better attained if the
+writer’s breaking-off had been foreseen.
+
+The last line he wrote, and the last proof he corrected, are among these
+papers through which I have so sorrowfully made my way.  The condition of
+the little pages of manuscript where Death stopped his hand, shows that
+he had carried them about, and often taken them out of his pocket here
+and there, for patient revision and interlineation.  The last words he
+corrected in print were, “And my heart throbbed with an exquisite bliss”.
+GOD grant that on that Christmas Eve when he laid his head back on his
+pillow and threw up his arms as he had been wont to do when very weary,
+some consciousness of duty done and Christian hope throughout life humbly
+cherished, may have caused his own heart so to throb, when he passed away
+to his Redeemer’s rest!
+
+He was found peacefully lying as above described, composed, undisturbed,
+and to all appearance asleep, on the twenty-fourth of December 1863.  He
+was only in his fifty-third year; so young a man that the mother who
+blessed him in his first sleep blessed him in his last.  Twenty years
+before, he had written, after being in a white squall:
+
+    And when, its force expended,
+    The harmless storm was ended,
+    And, as the sunrise splendid
+       Came blushing o’er the sea;
+    I thought, as day was breaking,
+    My little girls were waking,
+    And smiling, and making
+       A prayer at home for me.
+
+Those little girls had grown to be women when the mournful day broke that
+saw their father lying dead.  In those twenty years of companionship with
+him they had learned much from him; and one of them has a literary course
+before her, worthy of her famous name.
+
+On the bright wintry day, the last but one of the old year, he was laid
+in his grave at Kensal Green, there to mingle the dust to which the
+mortal part of him had returned, with that of a third child, lost in her
+infancy years ago.  The heads of a great concourse of his fellow-workers
+in the Arts were bowed around his tomb.
+
+
+
+
+ADELAIDE ANNE PROCTER
+INTRODUCTION TO HER “LEGENDS AND LYRICS”
+
+
+IN the spring of the year 1853, I observed, as conductor of the weekly
+journal _Household Words_, a short poem among the proffered
+contributions, very different, as I thought, from the shoal of verses
+perpetually setting through the office of such a periodical, and
+possessing much more merit.  Its authoress was quite unknown to me.  She
+was one Miss Mary Berwick, whom I had never heard of; and she was to be
+addressed by letter, if addressed at all, at a circulating library in the
+western district of London.  Through this channel, Miss Berwick was
+informed that her poem was accepted, and was invited to send another.
+She complied, and became a regular and frequent contributor.  Many
+letters passed between the journal and Miss Berwick, but Miss Berwick
+herself was never seen.
+
+How we came gradually to establish, at the office of _Household Words_,
+that we knew all about Miss Berwick, I have never discovered.  But we
+settled somehow, to our complete satisfaction, that she was governess in
+a family; that she went to Italy in that capacity, and returned; and that
+she had long been in the same family.  We really knew nothing whatever of
+her, except that she was remarkably business-like, punctual,
+self-reliant, and reliable: so I suppose we insensibly invented the rest.
+For myself, my mother was not a more real personage to me, than Miss
+Berwick the governess became.
+
+This went on until December, 1854, when the Christmas number, entitled
+_The Seven Poor Travellers_, was sent to press.  Happening to be going to
+dine that day with an old and dear friend, distinguished in literature as
+Barry Cornwall, I took with me an early proof of that number, and
+remarked, as I laid it on the drawing-room table, that it contained a
+very pretty poem, written by a certain Miss Berwick.  Next day brought me
+the disclosure that I had so spoken of the poem to the mother of its
+writer, in its writer’s presence; that I had no such correspondent in
+existence as Miss Berwick; and that the name had been assumed by Barry
+Cornwall’s eldest daughter, Miss Adelaide Anne Procter.
+
+The anecdote I have here noted down, besides serving to explain why the
+parents of the late Miss Procter have looked to me for these poor words
+of remembrance of their lamented child, strikingly illustrates the
+honesty, independence, and quiet dignity, of the lady’s character.  I had
+known her when she was very young; I had been honoured with her father’s
+friendship when I was myself a young aspirant; and she had said at home,
+“If I send him, in my own name, verses that he does not honestly like,
+either it will be very painful to him to return them, or he will print
+them for papa’s sake, and not for their own.  So I have made up my mind
+to take my chance fairly with the unknown volunteers.”
+
+Perhaps it requires an editor’s experience of the profoundly unreasonable
+grounds on which he is often urged to accept unsuitable articles—such as
+having been to school with the writer’s husband’s brother-in-law, or
+having lent an alpenstock in Switzerland to the writer’s wife’s nephew,
+when that interesting stranger had broken his own—fully to appreciate the
+delicacy and the self-respect of this resolution.
+
+Some verses by Miss Procter had been published in the _Book of Beauty_,
+ten years before she became Miss Berwick.  With the exception of two
+poems in the _Cornhill Magazine_, two in _Good Words_, and others in a
+little book called _A Chaplet of Verses_ (issued in 1862 for the benefit
+of a Night Refuge), her published writings first appeared in _Household
+Words_, or _All the Year Round_.  The present edition contains the whole
+of her _Legends and Lyrics_, and originates in the great favour with
+which they have been received by the public.
+
+Miss Procter was born in Bedford Square, London, on the 30th of October,
+1825.  Her love of poetry was conspicuous at so early an age, that I have
+before me a tiny album made of small note-paper, into which her favourite
+passages were copied for her by her mother’s hand before she herself
+could write.  It looks as if she had carried it about, as another little
+girl might have carried a doll.  She soon displayed a remarkable memory,
+and great quickness of apprehension.  When she was quite a young child,
+she learned with facility several of the problems of Euclid.  As she grew
+older, she acquired the French, Italian, and German languages; became a
+clever pianoforte player; and showed a true taste and sentiment in
+drawing.  But, as soon as she had completely vanquished the difficulties
+of any one branch of study, it was her way to lose interest in it, and
+pass to another.  While her mental resources were being trained, it was
+not at all suspected in her family that she had any gift of authorship,
+or any ambition to become a writer.  Her father had no idea of her having
+ever attempted to turn a rhyme, until her first little poem saw the light
+in print.
+
+When she attained to womanhood, she had read an extraordinary number of
+books, and throughout her life she was always largely adding to the
+number.  In 1853 she went to Turin and its neighbourhood, on a visit to
+her aunt, a Roman Catholic lady.  As Miss Procter had herself professed
+the Roman Catholic Faith two years before, she entered with the greater
+ardour on the study of the Piedmontese dialect, and the observation of
+the habits and manners of the peasantry.  In the former, she soon became
+a proficient.  On the latter head, I extract from her familiar letters
+written home to England at the time, two pleasant pieces of description.
+
+
+
+A BETROTHAL
+
+
+“We have been to a ball, of which I must give you a description.  Last
+Tuesday we had just done dinner at about seven, and stepped out into the
+balcony to look at the remains of the sunset behind the mountains, when
+we heard very distinctly a band of music, which rather excited my
+astonishment, as a solitary organ is the utmost that toils up here.  I
+went out of the room for a few minutes, and, on my returning, Emily said,
+‘Oh!  That band is playing at the farmer’s near here.  The daughter is
+_fiancée_ to-day, and they have a ball.’  I said, ‘I wish I was going!’
+‘Well,’ replied she, ‘the farmer’s wife did call to invite us.’  ‘Then I
+shall certainly go,’ I exclaimed.  I applied to Madame B., who said she
+would like it very much, and we had better go, children and all.  Some of
+the servants were already gone.  We rushed away to put on some shawls,
+and put off any shred of black we might have about us (as the people
+would have been quite annoyed if we had appeared on such an occasion with
+any black), and we started.  When we reached the farmer’s, which is a
+stone’s throw above our house, we were received with great enthusiasm;
+the only drawback being, that no one spoke French, and we did not yet
+speak Piedmontese.  We were placed on a bench against the wall, and the
+people went on dancing.  The room was a large whitewashed kitchen (I
+suppose), with several large pictures in black frames, and very smoky.  I
+distinguished the Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, and the others appeared
+equally lively and appropriate subjects.  Whether they were Old Masters
+or not, and if so, by whom, I could not ascertain.  The band were seated
+opposite us.  Five men, with wind instruments, part of the band of the
+National Guard, to which the farmer’s sons belong.  They played really
+admirably, and I began to be afraid that some idea of our dignity would
+prevent me getting a partner; so, by Madame B.’s advice, I went up to the
+bride, and offered to dance with her.  Such a handsome young woman!  Like
+one of Uwins’s pictures.  Very dark, with a quantity of black hair, and
+on an immense scale.  The children were already dancing, as well as the
+maids.  After we came to an end of our dance, which was what they called
+a Polka-Mazourka, I saw the bride trying to screw up the courage of her
+_fiancé_ to ask me to dance, which after a little hesitation he did.  And
+admirably he danced, as indeed they all did—in excellent time, and with a
+little more spirit than one sees in a ball-room.  In fact, they were very
+like one’s ordinary partners, except that they wore earrings and were in
+their shirt-sleeves, and truth compels me to state that they decidedly
+smelt of garlic.  Some of them had been smoking, but threw away their
+cigars when we came in.  The only thing that did not look cheerful was,
+that the room was only lighted by two or three oil-lamps, and that there
+seemed to be no preparation for refreshments.  Madame B., seeing this,
+whispered to her maid, who disengaged herself from her partner, and ran
+off to the house; she and the kitchenmaid presently returning with a
+large tray covered with all kinds of cakes (of which we are great
+consumers and always have a stock), and a large hamper full of bottles of
+wine, with coffee and sugar.  This seemed all very acceptable.  The
+_fiancée_ was requested to distribute the eatables, and a bucket of water
+being produced to wash the glasses in, the wine disappeared very
+quickly—as fast as they could open the bottles.  But, elated, I suppose,
+by this, the floor was sprinkled with water, and the musicians played a
+Monferrino, which is a Piedmontese dance.  Madame B. danced with the
+farmer’s son, and Emily with another distinguished member of the company.
+It was very fatiguing—something like a Scotch reel.  My partner was a
+little man, like Perrot, and very proud of his dancing.  He cut in the
+air and twisted about, until I was out of breath, though my attempts to
+imitate him were feeble in the extreme.  At last, after seven or eight
+dances, I was obliged to sit down.  We stayed till nine, and I was so
+dead beat with the heat that I could hardly crawl about the house, and in
+an agony with the cramp, it is so long since I have danced.”
+
+
+
+A MARRIAGE
+
+
+“The wedding of the farmer’s daughter has taken place.  We had hoped it
+would have been in the little chapel of our house, but it seems some
+special permission was necessary, and they applied for it too late.  They
+all said, “This is the Constitution.  There would have been no difficulty
+before!” the lower classes making the poor Constitution the scapegoat for
+everything they don’t like.  So as it was impossible for us to climb up
+to the church where the wedding was to be, we contented ourselves with
+seeing the procession pass.  It was not a very large one, for, it
+requiring some activity to go up, all the old people remained at home.
+It is not etiquette for the bride’s mother to go, and no unmarried woman
+can go to a wedding—I suppose for fear of its making her discontented
+with her own position.  The procession stopped at our door, for the bride
+to receive our congratulations.  She was dressed in a shot silk, with a
+yellow handkerchief, and rows of a large gold chain.  In the afternoon
+they sent to request us to go there.  On our arrival we found them
+dancing out of doors, and a most melancholy affair it was.  All the
+bride’s sisters were not to be recognised, they had cried so.  The mother
+sat in the house, and could not appear.  And the bride was sobbing so,
+she could hardly stand!  The most melancholy spectacle of all to my mind
+was, that the bridegroom was decidedly tipsy.  He seemed rather affronted
+at all the distress.  We danced a Monferrino; I with the bridegroom; and
+the bride crying the whole time.  The company did their utmost to enliven
+her by firing pistols, but without success, and at last they began a
+series of yells, which reminded me of a set of savages.  But even this
+delicate method of consolation failed, and the wishing good-bye began.
+It was altogether so melancholy an affair that Madame B. dropped a few
+tears, and I was very near it, particularly when the poor mother came out
+to see the last of her daughter, who was finally dragged off between her
+brother and uncle, with a last explosion of pistols.  As she lives quite
+near, makes an excellent match, and is one of nine children, it really
+was a most desirable marriage, in spite of all the show of distress.
+Albert was so discomfited by it, that he forgot to kiss the bride as he
+had intended to do, and therefore went to call upon her yesterday, and
+found her very smiling in her new house, and supplied the omission.  The
+cook came home from the wedding, declaring she was cured of any wish to
+marry—but I would not recommend any man to act upon that threat and make
+her an offer.  In a couple of days we had some rolls of the bride’s first
+baking, which they call Madonnas.  The musicians, it seems, were in the
+same state as the bridegroom, for, in escorting her home, they all fell
+down in the mud.  My wrath against the bridegroom is somewhat calmed by
+finding that it is considered bad luck if he does not get tipsy at his
+wedding.”
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+Those readers of Miss Procter’s poems who should suppose from their tone
+that her mind was of a gloomy or despondent cast, would be curiously
+mistaken.  She was exceedingly humorous, and had a great delight in
+humour.  Cheerfulness was habitual with her, she was very ready at a
+sally or a reply, and in her laugh (as I remember well) there was an
+unusual vivacity, enjoyment, and sense of drollery.  She was perfectly
+unconstrained and unaffected: as modestly silent about her productions,
+as she was generous with their pecuniary results.  She was a friend who
+inspired the strongest attachments; she was a finely sympathetic woman,
+with a great accordant heart and a sterling noble nature.  No claim can
+be set up for her, thank God, to the possession of any of the
+conventional poetical qualities.  She never by any means held the opinion
+that she was among the greatest of human beings; she never suspected the
+existence of a conspiracy on the part of mankind against her; she never
+recognised in her best friends, her worst enemies; she never cultivated
+the luxury of being misunderstood and unappreciated; she would far rather
+have died without seeing a line of her composition in print, than that I
+should have maundered about her, here, as “the Poet”, or “the Poetess”.
+
+With the recollection of Miss Procter as a mere child and as a woman,
+fresh upon me, it is natural that I should linger on my way to the close
+of this brief record, avoiding its end.  But, even as the close came upon
+her, so must it come here.
+
+Always impelled by an intense conviction that her life must not be
+dreamed away, and that her indulgence in her favourite pursuits must be
+balanced by action in the real world around her, she was indefatigable in
+her endeavours to do some good.  Naturally enthusiastic, and
+conscientiously impressed with a deep sense of her Christian duty to her
+neighbour, she devoted herself to a variety of benevolent objects.  Now,
+it was the visitation of the sick, that had possession of her; now, it
+was the sheltering of the houseless; now, it was the elementary teaching
+of the densely ignorant; now, it was the raising up of those who had
+wandered and got trodden under foot; now, it was the wider employment of
+her own sex in the general business of life; now, it was all these things
+at once.  Perfectly unselfish, swift to sympathise and eager to relieve,
+she wrought at such designs with a flushed earnestness that disregarded
+season, weather, time of day or night, food, rest.  Under such a hurry of
+the spirits, and such incessant occupation, the strongest constitution
+will commonly go down.  Hers, neither of the strongest nor the weakest,
+yielded to the burden, and began to sink.
+
+To have saved her life, then, by taking action on the warning that shone
+in her eyes and sounded in her voice, would have been impossible, without
+changing her nature.  As long as the power of moving about in the old way
+was left to her, she must exercise it, or be killed by the restraint.
+And so the time came when she could move about no longer, and took to her
+bed.
+
+All the restlessness gone then, and all the sweet patience of her natural
+disposition purified by the resignation of her soul, she lay upon her bed
+through the whole round of changes of the seasons.  She lay upon her bed
+through fifteen months.  In all that time, her old cheerfulness never
+quitted her.  In all that time, not an impatient or a querulous minute
+can be remembered.
+
+At length, at midnight on the second of February, 1864, she turned down a
+leaf of a little book she was reading, and shut it up.
+
+The ministering hand that had copied the verses into the tiny album was
+soon around her neck, and she quietly asked, as the clock was on the
+stroke of one:
+
+“Do you think I am dying, mamma?”
+
+“I think you are very, very ill to-night, my dear!”
+
+“Send for my sister.  My feet are so cold.  Lift me up?”
+
+Her sister entering as they raised her, she said: “It has come at last!”
+And with a bright and happy smile, looked upward, and departed.
+
+Well had she written:
+
+    Why shouldst thou fear the beautiful angel, Death,
+    Who waits thee at the portals of the skies,
+    Ready to kiss away thy struggling breath,
+    Ready with gentle hand to close thine eyes?
+
+    Oh what were life, if life were all?  Thine eyes
+    Are blinded by their tears, or thou wouldst see
+    Thy treasures wait thee in the far-off skies,
+    And Death, thy friend, will give them all to thee.
+
+
+
+
+CHAUNCEY HARE TOWNSHEND
+EXPLANATORY INTRODUCTION TO “RELIGIOUS OPINIONS” BY THE LATE REVEREND
+CHAUNCEY HARE TOWNSHEND
+
+
+MR. CHAUNCEY HARE TOWNSHEND died in London, on the 25th of February 1868.
+His will contained the following passage:—
+
+    “I appoint my friend Charles Dickens, of Gad’s Hill Place, in the
+    County of Kent, Esquire, my literary executor; and beg of him to
+    publish without alteration as much of my notes and reflections as may
+    make known my opinions on religious matters, they being such as I
+    verily believe would be conducive to the happiness of mankind.”
+
+In pursuance of the foregoing injunction, the Literary Executor so
+appointed (not previously aware that the publication of any Religious
+Opinions would be enjoined upon him), applied himself to the examination
+of the numerous papers left by his deceased friend.  Some of these were
+in Lausanne, and some were in London.  Considerable delay occurred before
+they could be got together, arising out of certain claims preferred, and
+formalities insisted on by the authorities of the Canton de Vaud.  When
+at length the whole of his late friend’s papers passed into the Literary
+Executor’s hands, it was found that _Religious Opinions_ were scattered
+up and down through a variety of memoranda and note-books, the gradual
+accumulation of years and years.  Many of the following pages were
+carefully transcribed, numbered, connected, and prepared for the press;
+but many more were dispersed fragments, originally written in pencil,
+afterwards inked over, the intended sequence of which in the writer’s
+mind, it was extremely difficult to follow.  These again were intermixed
+with journals of travel, fragments of poems, critical essays, voluminous
+correspondence, and old school-exercises and college themes, having no
+kind of connection with them.
+
+To publish such materials “without alteration”, was simply impossible.
+But finding everywhere internal evidence that Mr. Townshend’s _Religious
+Opinions_ had been constantly meditated and reconsidered with great pains
+and sincerity throughout his life, the Literary Executor carefully
+compiled them (always in the writer’s exact words), and endeavoured in
+piecing them together to avoid needless repetition.  He does not doubt
+that Mr. Townshend held the clue to a precise plan, which could have
+greatly simplified the presentation of these views; and he has devoted
+the first section of this volume to Mr. Townshend’s own notes of his
+comprehensive intentions.  Proofs of the devout spirit in which they were
+conceived, and of the sense of responsibility with which he worked at
+them, abound through the whole mass of papers.  Mr. Townshend’s varied
+attainments, delicate tastes, and amiable and gentle nature, caused him
+to be beloved through life by the variously distinguished men who were
+his compeers at Cambridge long ago.  To his Literary Executor he was
+always a warmly-attached and sympathetic friend.  To the public, he has
+been a most generous benefactor, both in his munificent bequest of his
+collection of precious stones in the South Kensington Museum, and in the
+devotion of the bulk of his property to the education of poor children.
+
+
+
+
+ON MR. FECHTER’S ACTING
+
+
+THE distinguished artist whose name is prefixed to these remarks purposes
+to leave England for a professional tour in the United States.  A few
+words from me, in reference to his merits as an actor, I hope may not be
+uninteresting to some readers, in advance of his publicly proving them
+before an American audience, and I know will not be unacceptable to my
+intimate friend.  I state at once that Mr. Fechter holds that relation
+towards me; not only because it is the fact, but also because our
+friendship originated in my public appreciation of him.  I had studied
+his acting closely, and had admired it highly, both in Paris and in
+London, years before we exchanged a word.  Consequently my appreciation
+is not the result of personal regard, but personal regard has sprung out
+of my appreciation.
+
+The first quality observable in Mr. Fechter’s acting is, that it is in
+the highest degree romantic.  However elaborated in minute details, there
+is always a peculiar dash and vigour in it, like the fresh atmosphere of
+the story whereof it is a part.  When he is on the stage, it seems to me
+as though the story were transpiring before me for the first and last
+time.  Thus there is a fervour in his love-making—a suffusion of his
+whole being with the rapture of his passion—that sheds a glory on its
+object, and raises her, before the eyes of the audience, into the light
+in which he sees her.  It was this remarkable power that took Paris by
+storm when he became famous in the lover’s part in the _Dame aux
+Camélias_.  It is a short part, really comprised in two scenes, but, as
+he acted it (he was its original representative), it left its poetic and
+exalting influence on the heroine throughout the play.  A woman who could
+be so loved—who could be so devotedly and romantically adored—had a hold
+upon the general sympathy with which nothing less absorbing and complete
+could have invested her.  When I first saw this play and this actor, I
+could not in forming my lenient judgment of the heroine, forget that she
+had been the inspiration of a passion of which I had beheld such profound
+and affecting marks.  I said to myself, as a child might have said: “A
+bad woman could not have been the object of that wonderful tenderness,
+could not have so subdued that worshipping heart, could not have drawn
+such tears from such a lover”.  I am persuaded that the same effect was
+wrought upon the Parisian audiences, both consciously and unconsciously,
+to a very great extent, and that what was morally disagreeable in the
+_Dame aux Camélias_ first got lost in this brilliant halo of romance.  I
+have seen the same play with the same part otherwise acted, and in exact
+degree as the love became dull and earthy, the heroine descended from her
+pedestal.
+
+In Ruy Blas, in the Master of Ravenswood, and in the Lady of Lyons—three
+dramas in which Mr. Fechter especially shines as a lover, but notably in
+the first—this remarkable power of surrounding the beloved creature, in
+the eyes of the audience, with the fascination that she has for him, is
+strikingly displayed.  That observer must be cold indeed who does not
+feel, when Ruy Blas stands in the presence of the young unwedded Queen of
+Spain, that the air is enchanted; or, when she bends over him, laying her
+tender touch upon his bloody breast, that it is better so to die than to
+live apart from her, and that she is worthy to be so died for.  When the
+Master of Ravenswood declares his love to Lucy Ashton, and she hers to
+him, and when in a burst of rapture, he kisses the skirt of her dress, we
+feel as though we touched it with our lips to stay our goddess from
+soaring away into the very heavens.  And when they plight their troth and
+break the piece of gold, it is we—not Edgar—who quickly exchange our half
+for the half she was about to hang about her neck, solely because the
+latter has for an instant touched the bosom we so dearly love.  Again, in
+the Lady of Lyons: the picture on the easel in the poor cottage studio is
+not the unfinished portrait of a vain and arrogant girl, but becomes the
+sketch of a Soul’s high ambition and aspiration here and hereafter.
+
+Picturesqueness is a quality above all others pervading Mr. Fechter’s
+assumptions.  Himself a skilled painter and sculptor, learned in the
+history of costume, and informing those accomplishments and that
+knowledge with a similar infusion of romance (for romance is inseparable
+from the man), he is always a picture,—always a picture in its right
+place in the group, always in true composition with the background of the
+scene.  For picturesqueness of manner, note so trivial a thing as the
+turn of his hand in beckoning from a window, in Ruy Blas, to a personage
+down in an outer courtyard to come up; or his assumption of the Duke’s
+livery in the same scene; or his writing a letter from dictation.  In the
+last scene of Victor Hugo’s noble drama, his bearing becomes positively
+inspired; and his sudden assumption of the attitude of the headsman, in
+his denunciation of the Duke and threat to be his executioner, is, so far
+as I know, one of the most ferociously picturesque things conceivable on
+the stage.
+
+The foregoing use of the word “ferociously” reminds me to remark that
+this artist is a master of passionate vehemence; in which aspect he
+appears to me to represent, perhaps more than in any other, an
+interesting union of characteristics of two great nations,—the French and
+the Anglo-Saxon.  Born in London of a French mother, by a German father,
+but reared entirely in England and in France, there is, in his fury, a
+combination of French suddenness and impressibility with our more slowly
+demonstrative Anglo-Saxon way when we get, as we say, “our blood up”,
+that produces an intensely fiery result.  The fusion of two races is in
+it, and one cannot decidedly say that it belongs to either; but one can
+most decidedly say that it belongs to a powerful concentration of human
+passion and emotion, and to human nature.
+
+Mr. Fechter has been in the main more accustomed to speak French than to
+speak English, and therefore he speaks our language with a French accent.
+But whosoever should suppose that he does not speak English fluently,
+plainly, distinctly, and with a perfect understanding of the meaning,
+weight, and value of every word, would be greatly mistaken.  Not only is
+his knowledge of English—extending to the most subtle idiom, or the most
+recondite cant phrase—more extensive than that of many of us who have
+English for our mother-tongue, but his delivery of Shakespeare’s blank
+verse is remarkably facile, musical, and intelligent.  To be in a sort of
+pain for him, as one sometimes is for a foreigner speaking English, or to
+be in any doubt of his having twenty synonymes at his tongue’s end if he
+should want one, is out of the question after having been of his
+audience.
+
+A few words on two of his Shakespearian impersonations, and I shall have
+indicated enough, in advance of Mr. Fechter’s presentation of himself.
+That quality of picturesqueness, on which I have already laid stress, is
+strikingly developed in his Iago, and yet it is so judiciously governed
+that his Iago is not in the least picturesque according to the
+conventional ways of frowning, sneering, diabolically grinning, and
+elaborately doing everything else that would induce Othello to run him
+through the body very early in the play.  Mr. Fechter’s is the Iago who
+could, and did, make friends, who could dissect his master’s soul,
+without flourishing his scalpel as if it were a walking-stick, who could
+overpower Emilia by other arts than a sign-of-the-Saracen’s-Head
+grimness; who could be a boon companion without _ipso facto_ warning all
+beholders off by the portentous phenomenon; who could sing a song and
+clink a can naturally enough, and stab men really in the dark,—not in a
+transparent notification of himself as going about seeking whom to stab.
+Mr. Fechter’s Iago is no more in the conventional psychological mode than
+in the conventional hussar pantaloons and boots; and you shall see the
+picturesqueness of his wearing borne out in his bearing all through the
+tragedy down to the moment when he becomes invincibly and consistently
+dumb.
+
+Perhaps no innovation in Art was ever accepted with so much favour by so
+many intellectual persons pre-committed to, and preoccupied by, another
+system, as Mr. Fechter’s Hamlet.  I take this to have been the case (as
+it unquestionably was in London), not because of its picturesqueness, not
+because of its novelty, not because of its many scattered beauties, but
+because of its perfect consistency with itself.  As the animal-painter
+said of his favourite picture of rabbits that there was more nature about
+those rabbits than you usually found in rabbits, so it may be said of Mr.
+Fechter’s Hamlet, that there was more consistency about that Hamlet than
+you usually found in Hamlets.  Its great and satisfying originality was
+in its possessing the merit of a distinctly conceived and executed idea.
+From the first appearance of the broken glass of fashion and mould of
+form, pale and worn with weeping for his father’s death, and remotely
+suspicious of its cause, to his final struggle with Horatio for the fatal
+cup, there were cohesion and coherence in Mr. Fechter’s view of the
+character.  Devrient, the German actor, had, some years before in London,
+fluttered the theatrical doves considerably, by such changes as being
+seated when instructing the players, and like mild departures from
+established usage; but he had worn, in the main, the old nondescript
+dress, and had held forth, in the main, in the old way, hovering between
+sanity and madness.  I do not remember whether he wore his hair crisply
+curled short, as if he were going to an everlasting dancing-master’s
+party at the Danish court; but I do remember that most other Hamlets
+since the great Kemble had been bound to do so.  Mr. Fechter’s Hamlet, a
+pale, woebegone Norseman with long flaxen hair, wearing a strange garb
+never associated with the part upon the English stage (if ever seen there
+at all) and making a piratical swoop upon the whole fleet of little
+theatrical prescriptions without meaning, or, like Dr. Johnson’s
+celebrated friend, with only one idea in them, and that a wrong one,
+never could have achieved its extraordinary success but for its animation
+by one pervading purpose, to which all changes were made intelligently
+subservient.  The bearing of this purpose on the treatment of Ophelia, on
+the death of Polonius, and on the old student fellowship between Hamlet
+and Horatio, was exceedingly striking; and the difference between
+picturesqueness of stage arrangement for mere stage effect, and for the
+elucidation of a meaning, was well displayed in there having been a
+gallery of musicians at the Play, and in one of them passing on his way
+out, with his instrument in his hand, when Hamlet, seeing it, took it
+from him, to point his talk with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
+
+This leads me to the observation with which I have all along desired to
+conclude: that Mr. Fechter’s romance and picturesqueness are always
+united to a true artist’s intelligence, and a true artist’s training in a
+true artist’s spirit.  He became one of the company of the Théâtre
+Français when he was a very young man, and he has cultivated his natural
+gifts in the best schools.  I cannot wish my friend a better audience
+than he will have in the American people, and I cannot wish them a better
+actor than they will have in my friend.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTE
+
+
+{564}  Cornhill Magazine.
+
+
+
+
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+
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Miscellaneous Papers, by Charles Dickens
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions 
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at 
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+
+Title: Miscellaneous Papers
+
+
+Author: Charles Dickens
+
+
+
+Release Date: August 13, 2019  [eBook #1435]
+[This file was first posted June 23, 1998]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS***
+</pre>
+<p>Transcribed from the 1912 Gresham Publishing Company edition
+(<i>Works of Charles Dickens</i>, <i>Volume</i> 19) by David
+Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/cover.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Public domain cover"
+title=
+"Public domain cover"
+ src="images/cover.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<h1>MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS</h1>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">BY</span><br
+/>
+CHARLES DICKENS</p>
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">PAGE</span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>The Agricultural Interest (<i>Morning Chronicle</i>, March
+9, 1844)</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page529">529</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Threatening Letter to Thomas Hood from an Ancient
+Gentleman (<i>Hood&rsquo;s Magazine and Comic Miscellany</i>,
+May, 1844)</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page532">532</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Crime and Education (<i>Daily News</i>, February 4,
+1846)</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page538">538</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Capital Punishment (I&ndash;III; <i>Daily News</i>, March
+9, 13, and 16, 1846)</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page542">542</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>The Spirit of Chivalry in Westminster Hall (<i>Douglas
+Jerrold&rsquo;s Shilling Magazine</i>, August, 1845)</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page560">560</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>In Memoriam: W. M. Thackeray (<i>Cornhill Magazine</i>,
+February, 1864)</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page564">564</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Adelaide Anne Procter: Introduction to her <i>Legends and
+Lyrics</i> (1866)</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page568">568</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Chauncey Hare Townshend: Explanatory Introduction to
+<i>Religious Opinions</i> by the Late Reverend Chauncey Hare
+Townshend (1869)</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page574">574</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>On Mr. Fechter&rsquo;s Acting (<i>Atlantic Monthly</i>,
+August, 1869)</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page576">576</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<h2><a name="page529"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 529</span>THE
+AGRICULTURAL INTEREST</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> present Government, having
+shown itself to be particularly clever in its management of
+Indictments for Conspiracy, cannot do better, we think (keeping
+in its administrative eye the pacification of some of its most
+influential and most unruly supporters), than indict the whole
+manufacturing interest of the country for a conspiracy against
+the agricultural interest.&nbsp; As the jury ought to be beyond
+impeachment, the panel might be chosen among the Duke of
+Buckingham&rsquo;s tenants, with the Duke of Buckingham himself
+as foreman; and, to the end that the country might be quite
+satisfied with the judge, and have ample security beforehand for
+his moderation and impartiality, it would be desirable, perhaps,
+to make such a slight change in the working of the law (a mere
+nothing to a Conservative Government, bent upon its end), as
+would enable the question to be tried before an Ecclesiastical
+Court, with the Bishop of Exeter presiding.&nbsp; The
+Attorney-General for Ireland, turning his sword into a
+ploughshare, might conduct the prosecution; and Mr. Cobden and
+the other traversers might adopt any ground of defence they
+chose, or prove or disprove anything they pleased, without being
+embarrassed by the least anxiety or doubt in reference to the
+verdict.</p>
+<p>That the country in general is in a conspiracy against this
+sacred but unhappy agricultural interest, there can be no
+doubt.&nbsp; It is not alone within the walls of Covent Garden
+Theatre, or the Free Trade Hall at Manchester, or the Town Hall
+at Birmingham, that the cry &ldquo;Repeal the Corn-laws!&rdquo;
+is raised.&nbsp; It may be heard, moaning at night, through the
+straw-littered wards of Refuges for the Destitute; it may be read
+in the gaunt and famished faces which make our streets terrible;
+it is muttered in the thankful grace pronounced by haggard
+wretches over their felon fare in gaols; it is inscribed in
+dreadful characters upon the walls of Fever Hospitals; and may be
+plainly traced in every record of mortality.&nbsp; All of which
+proves, that there is a vast conspiracy afoot, against the
+unfortunate agricultural interest.</p>
+<p>They who run, even upon railroads, may read of this
+conspiracy.&nbsp; The old stage-coachman was a farmer&rsquo;s
+friend.&nbsp; He wore top-boots, understood cattle, fed his
+horses upon corn, and had a lively personal interest in
+malt.&nbsp; The engine-driver&rsquo;s garb, and sympathies, and
+tastes belong to the factory.&nbsp; His fustian dress, besmeared
+with coal-dust and begrimed with soot; his oily hands, his dirty
+face, his knowledge of machinery; all point him out as one
+devoted to the manufacturing interest.&nbsp; Fire and smoke, and
+red-hot cinders follow in his wake.&nbsp; He has no attachment to
+the soil, but travels on a road of iron, furnace wrought.&nbsp;
+His warning is not conveyed in the fine old Saxon dialect of our
+glorious forefathers, but in a fiendish yell.&nbsp; He never
+cries &ldquo;ya-hip&rdquo;, with agricultural lungs; but jerks
+forth a manufactured shriek from a brazen throat.</p>
+<p>Where <i>is</i> the agricultural interest represented?&nbsp;
+From what phase of our social life has it not been driven, to the
+undue setting up of its false rival?</p>
+<p>Are the police agricultural?&nbsp; The watchmen were.&nbsp;
+They wore woollen nightcaps to a man; they encouraged the growth
+of timber, by patriotically adhering to staves and rattles of
+immense size; they slept every night in boxes, which were but
+another form of the celebrated wooden walls of Old England; they
+never woke up till it was too late&mdash;in which respect you
+might have thought them very farmers.&nbsp; How is it with the
+police?&nbsp; Their buttons are made at Birmingham; a dozen of
+their truncheons would poorly furnish forth a watchman&rsquo;s
+staff; they have no wooden walls to repose between; and the
+crowns of their hats are plated with cast-iron.</p>
+<p>Are the doctors agricultural?&nbsp; Let Messrs. Morison and
+Moat, of the Hygeian establishment at King&rsquo;s Cross, London,
+reply.&nbsp; Is it not, upon the constant showing of those
+gentlemen, an ascertained fact that the whole medical profession
+have united to depreciate the worth of the Universal Vegetable
+Medicines?&nbsp; And is this opposition to vegetables, and
+exaltation of steel and iron instead, on the part of the regular
+practitioners, capable of any interpretation but one?&nbsp; Is it
+not a distinct renouncement of the agricultural interest, and a
+setting up of the manufacturing interest instead?</p>
+<p>Do the professors of the law at all fail in their truth to the
+beautiful maid whom they ought to adore?&nbsp; Inquire of the
+Attorney-General for Ireland.&nbsp; Inquire of that honourable
+and learned gentleman, whose last public act was to cast aside
+the grey goose-quill, an article of agricultural produce, and
+take up the pistol, which, under the system of percussion locks,
+has not even a flint to connect it with farming.&nbsp; Or put the
+question to a still higher legal functionary, who, on the same
+occasion, when he should have been a reed, inclining here and
+there, as adverse gales of evidence disposed him, was seen to be
+a manufactured image on the seat of Justice, cast by Power, in
+most impenetrable brass.</p>
+<p>The world is too much with us in this manufacturing interest,
+early and late; that is the great complaint and the great
+truth.&nbsp; It is not so with the agricultural interest, or what
+passes by that name.&nbsp; It never thinks of the suffering
+world, or sees it, or cares to extend its knowledge of it; or, so
+long as it remains a world, cares anything about it.&nbsp; All
+those whom Dante placed in the first pit or circle of the doleful
+regions, might have represented the agricultural interest in the
+present Parliament, or at quarter sessions, or at meetings of the
+farmers&rsquo; friends, or anywhere else.</p>
+<p>But that is not the question now.&nbsp; It is conspired
+against; and we have given a few proofs of the conspiracy, as
+they shine out of various classes engaged in it.&nbsp; An
+indictment against the whole manufacturing interest need not be
+longer, surely, than the indictment in the case of the Crown
+against O&rsquo;Connell and others.&nbsp; Mr. Cobden may be taken
+as its representative&mdash;as indeed he is, by one consent
+already.&nbsp; There may be no evidence; but that is not
+required.&nbsp; A judge and jury are all that is needed.&nbsp;
+And the Government know where to find <i>them</i>, or they gain
+experience to little purpose.</p>
+<h2><a name="page532"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+532</span>THREATENING LETTER TO THOMAS HOOD<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">FROM AN ANCIENT GENTLEMAN</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Mr. Hood</span>.&nbsp; <span
+class="smcap">Sir</span>,&mdash;The Constitution is going at
+last!&nbsp; You needn&rsquo;t laugh, Mr. Hood.&nbsp; I am aware
+that it has been going, two or three times before; perhaps four
+times; but it is on the move now, sir, and no mistake.</p>
+<p>I beg to say, that I use those last expressions advisedly,
+sir, and not in the sense in which they are now used by
+Jackanapeses.&nbsp; There were no Jackanapeses when I was a boy,
+Mr. Hood.&nbsp; England was Old England when I was young.&nbsp; I
+little thought it would ever come to be Young England when I was
+old.&nbsp; But everything is going backward.</p>
+<p>Ah! governments were governments, and judges were judges, in
+<i>my</i> day, Mr. Hood.&nbsp; There was no nonsense then.&nbsp;
+Any of your seditious complainings, and we were ready with the
+military on the shortest notice.&nbsp; We should have charged
+Covent Garden Theatre, sir, on a Wednesday night: at the point of
+the bayonet.&nbsp; Then, the judges were full of dignity and
+firmness, and knew how to administer the law.&nbsp; There is only
+one judge who knows how to do his duty, now.&nbsp; He tried that
+revolutionary female the other day, who, though she was in full
+work (making shirts at three-halfpence a piece), had no pride in
+her country, but treasonably took it in her head, in the
+distraction of having been robbed of her easy earnings, to
+attempt to drown herself and her young child; and the glorious
+man went out of his way, sir&mdash;out of his way&mdash;to call
+her up for instant sentence of Death; and to tell her she had no
+hope of mercy in this world&mdash;as you may see yourself if you
+look in the papers of Wednesday the 17th of April.&nbsp; He
+won&rsquo;t be supported, sir, I know he won&rsquo;t; but it is
+worth remembering that his words were carried into every
+manufacturing town of this kingdom, and read aloud to crowds in
+every political parlour, beer-shop, news-room, and secret or open
+place of assembly, frequented by the discontented working-men;
+and that no milk-and-water weakness on the part of the executive
+can ever blot them out.&nbsp; Great things like that, are caught
+up, and stored up, in these times, and are not forgotten, Mr.
+Hood.&nbsp; The public at large (especially those who wish for
+peace and conciliation) are universally obliged to him.&nbsp; If
+it is reserved for any man to set the Thames on fire, it is
+reserved for him; and indeed I am told he very nearly did it,
+once.</p>
+<p>But even he won&rsquo;t save the constitution, sir: it is
+mauled beyond the power of preservation.&nbsp; Do you know in
+what foul weather it will be sacrificed and shipwrecked, Mr.
+Hood?&nbsp; Do you know on what rock it will strike, sir?&nbsp;
+You don&rsquo;t, I am certain; for nobody does know as yet but
+myself.&nbsp; I will tell you.</p>
+<p>The constitution will go down, sir (nautically speaking), in
+the degeneration of the human species in England, and its
+reduction into a mingled race of savages and pigmies.</p>
+<p>That is my proposition.&nbsp; That is my prediction.&nbsp;
+That is the event of which I give you warning.&nbsp; I am now
+going to prove it, sir.</p>
+<p>You are a literary man, Mr. Hood, and have written, I am told,
+some things worth reading.&nbsp; I say I am told, because I never
+read what is written in these days.&nbsp; You&rsquo;ll excuse me;
+but my principle is, that no man ought to know anything about his
+own time, except that it is the worst time that ever was, or is
+ever likely to be.&nbsp; That is the only way, sir, to be truly
+wise and happy.</p>
+<p>In your station, as a literary man, Mr. Hood, you are
+frequently at the Court of Her Gracious Majesty the Queen.&nbsp;
+God bless her!&nbsp; You have reason to know that the three great
+keys to the royal palace (after rank and politics) are Science,
+Literature, Art.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t approve of this
+myself.&nbsp; I think it ungenteel and barbarous, and quite
+un-English; the custom having been a foreign one, ever since the
+reigns of the uncivilised sultans in the Arabian Nights, who
+always called the wise men of their time about them.&nbsp; But so
+it is.&nbsp; And when you don&rsquo;t dine at the royal table,
+there is always a knife and fork for you at the equerries&rsquo;
+table: where, I understand, all gifted men are made particularly
+welcome.</p>
+<p>But all men can&rsquo;t be gifted, Mr. Hood.&nbsp; Neither
+scientific, literary, nor artistical powers are any more to be
+inherited than the property arising from scientific, literary, or
+artistic productions, which the law, with a beautiful imitation
+of nature, declines to protect in the second generation.&nbsp;
+Very good, sir.&nbsp; Then, people are naturally very prone to
+cast about in their minds for other means of getting at Court
+Favour; and, watching the signs of the times, to hew out for
+themselves, or their descendants, the likeliest roads to that
+distinguished goal.</p>
+<p>Mr. Hood, it is pretty clear, from recent records in the Court
+Circular, that if a father wish to train up his son in the way he
+should go, to go to Court: and cannot indenture him to be a
+scientific man, an author, or an artist, three courses are open
+to him.&nbsp; He must endeavour by artificial means to make him a
+dwarf, a wild man, or a Boy Jones.</p>
+<p>Now, sir, this is the shoal and quicksand on which the
+constitution will go to pieces.</p>
+<p>I have made inquiry, Mr. Hood, and find that in my
+neighbourhood two families and a fraction out of every four, in
+the lower and middle classes of society, are studying and
+practising all conceivable arts to keep their infant children
+down.&nbsp; Understand me.&nbsp; I do not mean down in their
+numbers, or down in their precocity, but down in their growth,
+sir.&nbsp; A destructive and subduing drink, compounded of gin
+and milk in equal quantities, such as is given to puppies to
+retard their growth: not something short, but something
+shortening: is administered to these young creatures many times a
+day.&nbsp; An unnatural and artificial thirst is first awakened
+in these infants by meals of salt beef, bacon, anchovies,
+sardines, red herrings, shrimps, olives, pea-soup, and that
+description of diet; and when they screech for drink, in accents
+that might melt a heart of stone, which they do constantly (I
+allude to screeching, not to melting), this liquid is introduced
+into their too confiding stomachs.&nbsp; At such an early age,
+and to so great an extent, is this custom of provoking thirst,
+then quenching it with a stunting drink, observed, that brine pap
+has already superseded the use of tops-and-bottoms; and
+wet-nurses, previously free from any kind of reproach, have been
+seen to stagger in the streets: owing, sir, to the quantity of
+gin introduced into their systems, with a view to its gradual and
+natural conversion into the fluid I have already mentioned.</p>
+<p>Upon the best calculation I can make, this is going on, as I
+have said, in the proportion of about two families and a fraction
+in four.&nbsp; In one more family and a fraction out of the same
+number, efforts are being made to reduce the children to a state
+of nature; and to inculcate, at a tender age, the love of raw
+flesh, train oil, new rum, and the acquisition of scalps.&nbsp;
+Wild and outlandish dances are also in vogue (you will have
+observed the prevailing rage for the Polka); and savage cries and
+whoops are much indulged in (as you may discover, if you doubt
+it, in the House of Commons any night).&nbsp; Nay, some persons,
+Mr. Hood; and persons of some figure and distinction too; have
+already succeeded in breeding wild sons; who have been publicly
+shown in the Courts of Bankruptcy, and in police-offices, and in
+other commodious exhibition-rooms, with great effect, but who
+have not yet found favour at court; in consequence, as I infer,
+of the impression made by Mr. Rankin&rsquo;s wild men being too
+fresh and recent, to say nothing of Mr. Rankin&rsquo;s wild men
+being foreigners.</p>
+<p>I need not refer you, sir, to the late instance of the
+Ojibbeway Bride.&nbsp; But I am credibly informed, that she is on
+the eve of retiring into a savage fastness, where she may bring
+forth and educate a wild family, who shall in course of time, by
+the dexterous use of the popularity they are certain to acquire
+at Windsor and St. James&rsquo;s, divide with dwarfs the
+principal offices of state, of patronage, and power, in the
+United Kingdom.</p>
+<p>Consider the deplorable consequences, Mr. Hood, which must
+result from these proceedings, and the encouragement they receive
+in the highest quarters.</p>
+<p>The dwarf being the favourite, sir, it is certain that the
+public mind will run in a great and eminent degree upon the
+production of dwarfs.&nbsp; Perhaps the failures only will be
+brought up, wild.&nbsp; The imagination goes a long way in these
+cases; and all that the imagination <i>can</i> do, will be done,
+and is doing.&nbsp; You may convince yourself of this, by
+observing the condition of those ladies who take particular
+notice of General Tom Thumb at the Egyptian Hall, during his
+hours of performance.</p>
+<p>The rapid increase of dwarfs, will be first felt in her
+Majesty&rsquo;s recruiting department.&nbsp; The standard will,
+of necessity, be lowered; the dwarfs will grow smaller and
+smaller; the vulgar expression &ldquo;a man of his inches&rdquo;
+will become a figure of fact, instead of a figure of speech;
+crack regiments, household-troops especially, will pick the
+smallest men from all parts of the country; and in the two little
+porticoes at the Horse Guards, two Tom Thumbs will be daily seen,
+doing duty, mounted on a pair of Shetland ponies.&nbsp; Each of
+them will be relieved (as Tom Thumb is at this moment, in the
+intervals of his performance) by a wild man; and a British
+Grenadier will either go into a quart pot, or be an Old Boy, or
+Blue Gull, or Flying Bull, or some other savage chief of that
+nature.</p>
+<p>I will not expatiate upon the number of dwarfs who will be
+found representing Grecian statues in all parts of the
+metropolis; because I am inclined to think that this will be a
+change for the better; and that the engagement of two or three in
+Trafalgar Square will tend to the improvement of the public
+taste.</p>
+<p>The various genteel employments at Court being held by dwarfs,
+sir, it will be necessary to alter, in some respects, the present
+regulations.&nbsp; It is quite clear that not even General Tom
+Thumb himself could preserve a becoming dignity on state
+occasions, if required to walk about with a scaffolding-pole
+under his arm; therefore the gold and silver sticks at present
+used, must be cut down into skewers of those precious metals; a
+twig of the black rod will be quite as much as can be
+conveniently preserved; the coral and bells of his Royal Highness
+the Prince of Wales, will be used in lieu of the mace at present
+in existence; and that bauble (as Oliver Cromwell called it, Mr.
+Hood), its value being first calculated by Mr. Finlayson, the
+government actuary, will be placed to the credit of the National
+Debt.</p>
+<p>All this, sir, will be the death of the constitution.&nbsp;
+But this is not all.&nbsp; The constitution dies hard, perhaps;
+but there is enough disease impending, Mr. Hood, to kill it three
+times over.</p>
+<p>Wild men will get into the House of Commons.&nbsp; Imagine
+that, sir!&nbsp; Imagine Strong Wind in the House of
+Commons!&nbsp; It is not an easy matter to get through a debate
+now; but I say, imagine Strong Wind, speaking for the benefit of
+his constituents, upon the floor of the House of Commons! or
+imagine (which is pregnant with more awful consequences still)
+the ministry having an interpreter in the House of Commons, to
+tell the country, in English, what it really means!</p>
+<p>Why, sir, that in itself would be blowing the constitution out
+of the mortar in St. James&rsquo;s Park, and leaving nothing of
+it to be seen but smoke.</p>
+<p>But this, I repeat it, is the state of things to which we are
+fast tending, Mr. Hood; and I enclose my card for your private
+eye, that you may be quite certain of it.&nbsp; What the
+condition of this country will be, when its standing army is
+composed of dwarfs, with here and there a wild man to throw its
+ranks into confusion, like the elephants employed in war in
+former times, I leave you to imagine, sir.&nbsp; It may be
+objected by some hopeful jackanapeses, that the number of
+impressments in the navy, consequent upon the seizure of the
+Boy-Joneses, or remaining portion of the population ambitious of
+Court Favour, will be in itself sufficient to defend our Island
+from foreign invasion.&nbsp; But I tell those jackanapeses, sir,
+that while I admit the wisdom of the Boy Jones precedent, of
+kidnapping such youths after the expiration of their several
+terms of imprisonment as vagabonds; hurrying them on board ship;
+and packing them off to sea again whenever they venture to take
+the air on shore; I deny the justice of the inference; inasmuch
+as it appears to me, that the inquiring minds of those young
+outlaws must naturally lead to their being hanged by the enemy as
+spies, early in their career; and before they shall have been
+rated on the books of our fleet as able seamen.</p>
+<p>Such, Mr. Hood, sir, is the prospect before us!&nbsp; And
+unless you, and some of your friends who have influence at Court,
+can get up a giant as a forlorn hope, it is all over with this
+ill-fated land.</p>
+<p>In reference to your own affairs, sir, you will take whatever
+course may seem to you most prudent and advisable after this
+warning.&nbsp; It is not a warning to be slighted: that I happen
+to know.&nbsp; I am informed by the gentleman who favours this,
+that you have recently been making some changes and improvements
+in your Magazine, and are, in point of fact, starting
+afresh.&nbsp; If I be well informed, and this be really so, rely
+upon it that you cannot start too small, sir.&nbsp; Come down to
+the duodecimo size instantly, Mr. Hood.&nbsp; Take time by the
+forelock; and, reducing the stature of your Magazine every month,
+bring it at last to the dimensions of the little almanack no
+longer issued, I regret to say, by the ingenious Mr. Schloss:
+which was invisible to the naked eye until examined through a
+little eye-glass.</p>
+<p>You project, I am told, the publication of a new novel, by
+yourself, in the pages of your Magazine.&nbsp; A word in your
+ear.&nbsp; I am not a young man, sir, and have had some
+experience.&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t put your own name on the
+title-page; it would be suicide and madness.&nbsp; Treat with
+General Tom Thumb, Mr. Hood, for the use of his name on any
+terms.&nbsp; If the gallant general should decline to treat with
+you, get Mr. Barnum&rsquo;s name, which is the next best in the
+market.&nbsp; And when, through this politic course, you shall
+have received, in presents, a richly jewelled set of tablets from
+Buckingham Palace, and a gold watch and appendages from
+Marlborough House; and when those valuable trinkets shall be left
+under a glass case at your publisher&rsquo;s for inspection by
+your friends and the public in general;&mdash;then, sir, you will
+do me the justice of remembering this communication.</p>
+<p>It is unnecessary for me to add, after what I have observed in
+the course of this letter, that I am not,&mdash;sir, ever
+your</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Constant
+Reader</span>.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">Tuesday</span>, 23<i>rd</i> <i>April</i>
+1844.</p>
+<p><i>P.S.</i>&mdash;Impress it upon your contributors that they
+cannot be too short; and that if not dwarfish, they must be
+wild&mdash;or at all events not tame.</p>
+<h2><a name="page538"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+538</span>CRIME AND EDUCATION</h2>
+<p>I <span class="smcap">offer</span> no apology for entreating
+the attention of the readers of <i>The Daily News</i> to an
+effort which has been making for some three years and a half, and
+which is making now, to introduce among the most miserable and
+neglected outcasts in London, some knowledge of the commonest
+principles of morality and religion; to commence their
+recognition as immortal human creatures, before the Gaol Chaplain
+becomes their only schoolmaster; to suggest to Society that its
+duty to this wretched throng, foredoomed to crime and punishment,
+rightfully begins at some distance from the police office; and
+that the careless maintenance from year to year, in this, the
+capital city of the world, of a vast hopeless nursery of
+ignorance, misery and vice; a breeding place for the hulks and
+jails: is horrible to contemplate.</p>
+<p>This attempt is being made in certain of the most obscure and
+squalid parts of the Metropolis, where rooms are opened, at
+night, for the gratuitous instruction of all comers, children or
+adults, under the title of <span class="smcap">Ragged
+Schools</span>.&nbsp; The name implies the purpose.&nbsp; They
+who are too ragged, wretched, filthy, and forlorn, to enter any
+other place: who could gain admission into no charity school, and
+who would be driven from any church door; are invited to come in
+here, and find some people not depraved, willing to teach them
+something, and show them some sympathy, and stretch a hand out,
+which is not the iron hand of Law, for their correction.</p>
+<p>Before I describe a visit of my own to a Ragged School, and
+urge the readers of this letter for God&rsquo;s sake to visit one
+themselves, and think of it (which is my main object), let me
+say, that I know the prisons of London well; that I have visited
+the largest of them more times than I could count; and that the
+children in them are enough to break the heart and hope of any
+man.&nbsp; I have never taken a foreigner or a stranger of any
+kind to one of these establishments but I have seen him so moved
+at sight of the child offenders, and so affected by the
+contemplation of their utter renouncement and desolation outside
+the prison walls, that he has been as little able to disguise his
+emotion, as if some great grief had suddenly burst upon
+him.&nbsp; Mr. Chesterton and Lieutenant Tracey (than whom more
+intelligent and humane Governors of Prisons it would be hard, if
+not impossible, to find) know perfectly well that these children
+pass and repass through the prisons all their lives; that they
+are never taught; that the first distinctions between right and
+wrong are, from their cradles, perfectly confounded and perverted
+in their minds; that they come of untaught parents, and will give
+birth to another untaught generation; that in exact proportion to
+their natural abilities, is the extent and scope of their
+depravity; and that there is no escape or chance for them in any
+ordinary revolution of human affairs.&nbsp; Happily, there are
+schools in these prisons now.&nbsp; If any readers doubt how
+ignorant the children are, let them visit those schools and see
+them at their tasks, and hear how much they knew when they were
+sent there.&nbsp; If they would know the produce of this seed,
+let them see a class of men and boys together, at their books (as
+I have seen them in the House of Correction for this county of
+Middlesex), and mark how painfully the full grown felons toil at
+the very shape and form of letters; their ignorance being so
+confirmed and solid.&nbsp; The contrast of this labour in the
+men, with the less blunted quickness of the boys; the latent
+shame and sense of degradation struggling through their dull
+attempts at infant lessons; and the universal eagerness to learn,
+impress me, in this passing retrospect, more painfully than I can
+tell.</p>
+<p>For the instruction, and as a first step in the reformation,
+of such unhappy beings, the Ragged Schools were founded.&nbsp; I
+was first attracted to the subject, and indeed was first made
+conscious of their existence, about two years ago, or more, by
+seeing an advertisement in the papers dated from West Street,
+Saffron Hill, stating &ldquo;That a room had been opened and
+supported in that wretched neighbourhood for upwards of twelve
+months, where religious instruction had been imparted to the
+poor&rdquo;, and explaining in a few words what was meant by
+Ragged Schools as a generic term, including, then, four or five
+similar places of instruction.&nbsp; I wrote to the masters of
+this particular school to make some further inquiries, and went
+myself soon afterwards.</p>
+<p>It was a hot summer night; and the air of Field Lane and
+Saffron Hill was not improved by such weather, nor were the
+people in those streets very sober or honest company.&nbsp; Being
+unacquainted with the exact locality of the school, I was fain to
+make some inquiries about it.&nbsp; These were very jocosely
+received in general; but everybody knew where it was, and gave
+the right direction to it.&nbsp; The prevailing idea among the
+loungers (the greater part of them the very sweepings of the
+streets and station houses) seemed to be, that the teachers were
+quixotic, and the school upon the whole &ldquo;a
+lark&rdquo;.&nbsp; But there was certainly a kind of rough
+respect for the intention, and (as I have said) nobody denied the
+school or its whereabouts, or refused assistance in directing to
+it.</p>
+<p>It consisted at that time of either two or three&mdash;I
+forget which&mdash;miserable rooms, upstairs in a miserable
+house.&nbsp; In the best of these, the pupils in the female
+school were being taught to read and write; and though there were
+among the number, many wretched creatures steeped in degradation
+to the lips, they were tolerably quiet, and listened with
+apparent earnestness and patience to their instructors.&nbsp; The
+appearance of this room was sad and melancholy, of
+course&mdash;how could it be otherwise!&mdash;but, on the whole,
+encouraging.</p>
+<p>The close, low chamber at the back, in which the boys were
+crowded, was so foul and stifling as to be, at first, almost
+insupportable.&nbsp; But its moral aspect was so far worse than
+its physical, that this was soon forgotten.&nbsp; Huddled
+together on a bench about the room, and shown out by some flaring
+candles stuck against the walls, were a crowd of boys, varying
+from mere infants to young men; sellers of fruit, herbs,
+lucifer-matches, flints; sleepers under the dry arches of
+bridges; young thieves and beggars&mdash;with nothing natural to
+youth about them: with nothing frank, ingenuous, or pleasant in
+their faces; low-browed, vicious, cunning, wicked; abandoned of
+all help but this; speeding downward to destruction; and <span
+class="smcap">Unutterably Ignorant</span>.</p>
+<p>This, Reader, was one room as full as it could hold; but these
+were only grains in sample of a Multitude that are perpetually
+sifting through these schools; in sample of a Multitude who had
+within them once, and perhaps have now, the elements of men as
+good as you or I, and maybe infinitely better; in sample of a
+Multitude among whose doomed and sinful ranks (oh, think of this,
+and think of them!) the child of any man upon this earth, however
+lofty his degree, must, as by Destiny and Fate, be found, if, at
+its birth, it were consigned to such an infancy and nurture, as
+these fallen creatures had!</p>
+<p>This was the Class I saw at the Ragged School.&nbsp; They
+could not be trusted with books; they could only be instructed
+orally; they were difficult of reduction to anything like
+attention, obedience, or decent behaviour; their benighted
+ignorance in reference to the Deity, or to any social duty (how
+could they guess at any social duty, being so discarded by all
+social teachers but the gaoler and the hangman!) was terrible to
+see.&nbsp; Yet, even here, and among these, something had been
+done already.&nbsp; The Ragged School was of recent date and very
+poor; but he had inculcated some association with the name of the
+Almighty, which was not an oath, and had taught them to look
+forward in a hymn (they sang it) to another life, which would
+correct the miseries and woes of this.</p>
+<p>The new exposition I found in this Ragged School, of the
+frightful neglect by the State of those whom it punishes so
+constantly, and whom it might, as easily and less expensively,
+instruct and save; together with the sight I had seen there, in
+the heart of London; haunted me, and finally impelled me to an
+endeavour to bring these Institutions under the notice of the
+Government; with some faint hope that the vastness of the
+question would supersede the Theology of the schools, and that
+the Bench of Bishops might adjust the latter question, after some
+small grant had been conceded.&nbsp; I made the attempt; and have
+heard no more of the subject from that hour.</p>
+<p>The perusal of an advertisement in yesterday&rsquo;s paper,
+announcing a lecture on the Ragged Schools last night, has led me
+into these remarks.&nbsp; I might easily have given them another
+form; but I address this letter to you, in the hope that some few
+readers in whom I have awakened an interest, as a writer of
+fiction, may be, by that means, attracted to the subject, who
+might otherwise, unintentionally, pass it over.</p>
+<p>I have no desire to praise the system pursued in the Ragged
+Schools; which is necessarily very imperfect, if indeed there be
+one.&nbsp; So far as I have any means of judging of what is
+taught there, I should individually object to it, as not being
+sufficiently secular, and as presenting too many religious
+mysteries and difficulties, to minds not sufficiently prepared
+for their reception.&nbsp; But I should very imperfectly
+discharge in myself the duty I wish to urge and impress on
+others, if I allowed any such doubt of mine to interfere with my
+appreciation of the efforts of these teachers, or my true wish to
+promote them by any slight means in my power.&nbsp; Irritating
+topics, of all kinds, are equally far removed from my purpose and
+intention.&nbsp; But, I adjure those excellent persons who aid,
+munificently, in the building of New Churches, to think of these
+Ragged Schools; to reflect whether some portion of their rich
+endowments might not be spared for such a purpose; to
+contemplate, calmly, the necessity of beginning at the beginning;
+to consider for themselves where the Christian Religion most
+needs and most suggests immediate help and illustration; and not
+to decide on any theory or hearsay, but to go themselves into the
+Prisons and the Ragged Schools, and form their own
+conclusions.&nbsp; They will be shocked, pained, and repelled, by
+much that they learn there; but nothing they can learn will be
+one-thousandth part so shocking, painful, and repulsive, as the
+continuance for one year more of these things as they have been
+for too many years already.</p>
+<p>Anticipating that some of the more prominent facts connected
+with the history of the Ragged Schools, may become known to the
+readers of <i>The Daily News</i> through your account of the
+lecture in question, I abstain (though in possession of some such
+information) from pursuing the question further, at this
+time.&nbsp; But if I should see occasion, I will take leave to
+return to it.</p>
+<h2><a name="page542"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+542</span>CAPITAL PUNISHMENT</h2>
+<p>I <span class="smcap">will</span> take for the subject of this
+letter, the effect of Capital Punishment on the commission of
+crime, or rather of murder; the only crime with one exception
+(and that a rare one) to which it is now applied.&nbsp; Its
+effect in preventing crime, I will reserve for another letter:
+and a few of the more striking illustrations of each aspect of
+the subject, for a concluding one.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">The effect of Capital Punishment on
+the commission of Murder.</p>
+<p>Some murders are committed in hot blood and furious rage;
+some, in deliberate revenge; some, in terrible despair; some (but
+not many) for mere gain; some, for the removal of an object
+dangerous to the murderer&rsquo;s peace or good name; some, to
+win a monstrous notoriety.</p>
+<p>On murders committed in rage, in the despair of strong
+affection (as when a starving child is murdered by its parent) or
+for gain, I believe the punishment of death to have no effect in
+the least.&nbsp; In the two first cases, the impulse is a blind
+and wild one, infinitely beyond the reach of any reference to the
+punishment.&nbsp; In the last, there is little calculation beyond
+the absorbing greed of the money to be got.&nbsp; Courvoisier,
+for example, might have robbed his master with greater safety,
+and with fewer chances of detection, if he had not murdered
+him.&nbsp; But, his calculations going to the gain and not to the
+loss, he had no balance for the consequences of what he
+did.&nbsp; So, it would have been more safe and prudent in the
+woman who was hanged a few weeks since, for the murder in
+Westminster, to have simply robbed her old companion in an
+unguarded moment, as in her sleep.&nbsp; But, her calculation
+going to the gain of what she took to be a Bank note; and the
+poor old woman living between her and the gain; she murdered
+her.</p>
+<p>On murders committed in deliberate revenge, or to remove a
+stumbling block in the murderer&rsquo;s path, or in an insatiate
+craving for notoriety, is there reason to suppose that the
+punishment of death has the direct effect of an incentive and an
+impulse?</p>
+<p>A murder is committed in deliberate revenge.&nbsp; The
+murderer is at no trouble to prepare his train of circumstances,
+takes little or no pains to escape, is quite cool and collected,
+perfectly content to deliver himself up to the Police, makes no
+secret of his guilt, but boldly says, &ldquo;I killed him.&nbsp;
+I&rsquo;m glad of it.&nbsp; I meant to do it.&nbsp; I am ready to
+die.&rdquo;&nbsp; There was such a case the other day.&nbsp;
+There was such another case not long ago.&nbsp; There are such
+cases frequently.&nbsp; It is the commonest first exclamation on
+being seized.&nbsp; Now, what is this but a false arguing of the
+question, announcing a foregone conclusion, expressly leading to
+the crime, and inseparably arising out of the Punishment of
+Death?&nbsp; &ldquo;I took his life.&nbsp; I give up mine to pay
+for it.&nbsp; Life for life; blood for blood.&nbsp; I have done
+the crime.&nbsp; I am ready with the atonement.&nbsp; I know all
+about it; it&rsquo;s a fair bargain between me and the law.&nbsp;
+Here am I to execute my part of it; and what more is to be said
+or done?&rdquo;&nbsp; It is the very essence of the maintenance
+of this punishment for murder, that it <i>does</i> set life
+against life.&nbsp; It is in the essence of a stupid, weak, or
+otherwise ill-regulated mind (of such a murderer&rsquo;s mind, in
+short), to recognise in this set off, a something that diminishes
+the base and coward character of murder.&nbsp; &ldquo;In a
+pitched battle, I, a common man, may kill my adversary, but he
+may kill me.&nbsp; In a duel, a gentleman may shoot his opponent
+through the head, but the opponent may shoot him too, and this
+makes it fair.&nbsp; Very well.&nbsp; I take this man&rsquo;s
+life for a reason I have, or choose to think I have, and the law
+takes mine.&nbsp; The law says, and the clergyman says, there
+must be blood for blood and life for life.&nbsp; Here it
+is.&nbsp; I pay the penalty.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A mind incapable, or confounded in its perceptions&mdash;and
+you must argue with reference to such a mind, or you could not
+have such a murder&mdash;may not only establish on these grounds
+an idea of strict justice and fair reparation, but a stubborn and
+dogged fortitude and foresight that satisfy it hugely.&nbsp;
+Whether the fact be really so, or not, is a question I would be
+content to rest, alone, on the number of cases of revengeful
+murder in which this is well known, without dispute, to have been
+the prevailing demeanour of the criminal: and in which such
+speeches and such absurd reasoning have been constantly uppermost
+with him.&nbsp; &ldquo;Blood for blood&rdquo;, and &ldquo;life
+for life&rdquo;, and such like balanced jingles, have passed
+current in people&rsquo;s mouths, from legislators downwards,
+until they have been corrupted into &ldquo;tit for tat&rdquo;,
+and acted on.</p>
+<p>Next, come the murders done, to sweep out of the way a dreaded
+or detested object.&nbsp; At the bottom of this class of crimes,
+there is a slow, corroding, growing hate.&nbsp; Violent quarrels
+are commonly found to have taken place between the murdered
+person and the murderer: usually of opposite sexes.&nbsp; There
+are witnesses to old scenes of reproach and recrimination, in
+which they were the actors; and the murderer has been heard to
+say, in this or that coarse phrase, &ldquo;that he wouldn&rsquo;t
+mind killing her, though he should be hanged for
+it&rdquo;&mdash;in these cases, the commonest avowal.</p>
+<p>It seems to me, that in this well-known scrap of evidence,
+there is a deeper meaning than is usually attached to it.&nbsp; I
+do not know, but it may be&mdash;I have a strong suspicion that
+it is&mdash;a clue to the slow growth of the crime, and its
+gradual development in the mind.&nbsp; More than this; a clue to
+the mental connection of the deed, with the punishment to which
+the doer of that deed is liable, until the two, conjoined, give
+birth to monstrous and misshapen Murder.</p>
+<p>The idea of murder, in such a case, like that of
+self-destruction in the great majority of instances, is not a new
+one.&nbsp; It may have presented itself to the disturbed mind in
+a dim shape and afar off; but it has been there.&nbsp; After a
+quarrel, or with some strong sense upon him of irritation or
+discomfort arising out of the continuance of this life in his
+path, the man has brooded over the unformed desire to take
+it.&nbsp; &ldquo;Though he should be hanged for it.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+With the entrance of the Punishment into his thoughts, the shadow
+of the fatal beam begins to attend&mdash;not on himself, but on
+the object of his hate.&nbsp; At every new temptation, it is
+there, stronger and blacker yet, trying to terrify him.&nbsp;
+When she defies or threatens him, the scaffold seems to be her
+strength and &ldquo;vantage ground&rdquo;.&nbsp; Let her not be
+too sure of that; &ldquo;though he should be hanged for
+it&rdquo;.</p>
+<p>Thus, he begins to raise up, in the contemplation of this
+death by hanging, a new and violent enemy to brave.&nbsp; The
+prospect of a slow and solitary expiation would have no
+congeniality with his wicked thoughts, but this throttling and
+strangling has.&nbsp; There is always before him, an ugly,
+bloody, scarecrow phantom, that champions her, as it were, and
+yet shows him, in a ghastly way, the example of murder.&nbsp; Is
+she very weak, or very trustful in him, or infirm, or old?&nbsp;
+It gives a hideous courage to what would be mere slaughter
+otherwise; for there it is, a presence always about her, darkly
+menacing him with that penalty whose murky secret has a
+fascination for all secret and unwholesome thoughts.&nbsp; And
+when he struggles with his victim at the last, &ldquo;though he
+should be hanged for it&rdquo;, it is a merciless wrestle, not
+with one weak life only, but with that ever-haunting,
+ever-beckoning shadow of the gallows, too; and with a fierce
+defiance to it, after their long survey of each other, to come on
+and do its worst.</p>
+<p>Present this black idea of violence to a bad mind
+contemplating violence; hold up before a man remotely compassing
+the death of another person, the spectacle of his own ghastly and
+untimely death by man&rsquo;s hands; and out of the depths of his
+own nature you shall assuredly raise up that which lures and
+tempts him on.&nbsp; The laws which regulate those mysteries have
+not been studied or cared for, by the maintainers of this law;
+but they are paramount and will always assert their power.</p>
+<p>Out of one hundred and sixty-seven persons under sentence of
+Death in England, questioned at different times, in the course of
+years, by an English clergyman in the performance of his duty,
+there were only three who had not been spectators of
+executions.</p>
+<p>We come, now, to the consideration of those murders which are
+committed, or attempted, with no other object than the attainment
+of an infamous notoriety.&nbsp; That this class of crimes has its
+origin in the Punishment of Death, we cannot question; because
+(as we have already seen, and shall presently establish by
+another proof) great notoriety and interest attach, and are
+generally understood to attach, only to those criminals who are
+in danger of being executed.</p>
+<p>One of the most remarkable instances of murder originating in
+mad self-conceit; and of the murderer&rsquo;s part in the
+repulsive drama, in which the law appears at such great
+disadvantage to itself and to society, being acted almost to the
+last with a self-complacency that would be horribly ludicrous if
+it were not utterly revolting; is presented in the case of
+Hocker.</p>
+<p>Here is an insolent, flippant, dissolute youth: aping the man
+of intrigue and levity: over-dressed, over-confident,
+inordinately vain of his personal appearance: distinguished as to
+his hair, cane, snuff-box, and singing-voice: and unhappily the
+son of a working shoemaker.&nbsp; Bent on loftier flights than
+such a poor house-swallow as a teacher in a Sunday-school can
+take; and having no truth, industry, perseverance, or other dull
+work-a-day quality, to plume his wings withal; he casts about
+him, in his jaunty way, for some mode of distinguishing
+himself&mdash;some means of getting that head of hair into the
+print-shops; of having something like justice done to his
+singing-voice and fine intellect; of making the life and
+adventures of Thomas Hocker remarkable; and of getting up some
+excitement in connection with that slighted piece of
+biography.&nbsp; The Stage?&nbsp; No.&nbsp; Not feasible.&nbsp;
+There has always been a conspiracy against the Thomas Hockers, in
+that kind of effort.&nbsp; It has been the same with Authorship
+in prose and poetry.&nbsp; Is there nothing else?&nbsp; A Murder,
+now, would make a noise in the papers!&nbsp; There is the gallows
+to be sure; but without that, it would be nothing.&nbsp; Short of
+that, it wouldn&rsquo;t be fame.&nbsp; Well!&nbsp; We must all
+die at one time or other; and to die game, and have it in print,
+is just the thing for a man of spirit.&nbsp; They always die game
+at the Minor Theatres and the Saloons, and the people like it
+very much.&nbsp; Thurtell, too, died very game, and made a
+capital speech when he was tried.&nbsp; There&rsquo;s all about
+it in a book at the cigar-shop now.&nbsp; Come, Tom, get your
+name up!&nbsp; Let it be a dashing murder that shall keep the
+wood-engravers at it for the next two months.&nbsp; You are the
+boy to go through with it, and interest the town!</p>
+<p>The miserable wretch, inflated by this lunatic conceit,
+arranges his whole plan for publication and effect.&nbsp; It is
+quite an epitome of his experience of the domestic melodrama or
+penny novel.&nbsp; There is the Victim Friend; the mysterious
+letter of the injured Female to the Victim Friend; the romantic
+spot for the Death-Struggle by night; the unexpected appearance
+of Thomas Hocker to the Policeman; the parlour of the Public
+House, with Thomas Hocker reading the paper to a strange
+gentleman; the Family Apartment, with a song by Thomas Hocker;
+the Inquest Room, with Thomas Hocker boldly looking on; the
+interior of the Marylebone Theatre, with Thomas Hocker taken into
+custody; the Police Office with Thomas Hocker
+&ldquo;affable&rdquo; to the spectators; the interior of Newgate,
+with Thomas Hocker preparing his defence; the Court, where Thomas
+Hocker, with his dancing-master airs, is put upon his trial, and
+complimented by the Judge; the Prosecution, the Defence, the
+Verdict, the Black Cap, the Sentence&mdash;each of them a line in
+any Playbill, and how bold a line in Thomas Hocker&rsquo;s
+life!</p>
+<p>It is worthy of remark, that the nearer he approaches to the
+gallows&mdash;the great last scene to which the whole of these
+effects have been working up&mdash;the more the overweening
+conceit of the poor wretch shows itself; the more he feels that
+he is the hero of the hour; the more audaciously and recklessly
+he lies, in supporting the character.&nbsp; In public&mdash;at
+the condemned sermon&mdash;he deports himself as becomes the man
+whose autographs are precious, whose portraits are innumerable;
+in memory of whom, whole fences and gates have been borne away,
+in splinters, from the scene of murder.&nbsp; He knows that the
+eyes of Europe are upon him; but he is not proud&mdash;only
+graceful.&nbsp; He bows, like the first gentleman in Europe, to
+the turnkey who brings him a glass of water; and composes his
+clothes and hassock as carefully, as good Madame Blaize could
+do.&nbsp; In private&mdash;within the walls of the condemned
+cell&mdash;every word and action of his waning life, is a
+lie.&nbsp; His whole time is divided between telling lies and
+writing them.&nbsp; If he ever have another thought, it is for
+his genteel appearance on the scaffold; as when he begs the
+barber &ldquo;not to cut his hair too short, or they won&rsquo;t
+know him when he comes out&rdquo;.&nbsp; His last proceeding but
+one is to write two romantic love letters to women who have no
+existence.&nbsp; His last proceeding of all (but less
+characteristic, though the only true one) is to swoon away,
+miserably, in the arms of the attendants, and be hanged up like a
+craven dog.</p>
+<p>Is not such a history, from first to last, a most revolting
+and disgraceful one; and can the student of it bring himself to
+believe that it ever could have place in any record of facts, or
+that the miserable chief-actor in it could have ever had a motive
+for his arrogant wickedness, but for the comment and the
+explanation which the Punishment of Death supplies!</p>
+<p>It is not a solitary case, nor is it a prodigy, but a mere
+specimen of a class.&nbsp; The case of Oxford, who fired at Her
+Majesty in the Park, will be found, on examination, to resemble
+it very nearly, in the essential feature.&nbsp; There is no
+proved pretence whatever for regarding him as mad; other than
+that he was like this malefactor, brimful of conceit, and a
+desire to become, even at the cost of the gallows (the only cost
+within his reach) the talk of the town.&nbsp; He had less
+invention than Hocker, and perhaps was not so deliberately bad;
+but his attempt was a branch of the same tree, and it has its
+root in the ground where the scaffold is erected.</p>
+<p>Oxford had his imitators.&nbsp; Let it never be forgotten in
+the consideration of this part of the subject, how they were
+stopped.&nbsp; So long as attempts invested them with the
+distinction of being in danger of death at the hangman&rsquo;s
+hands, so long did they spring up.&nbsp; When the penalty of
+death was removed, and a mean and humiliating punishment
+substituted in its place, the race was at an end, and ceased to
+be.</p>
+<h3>II</h3>
+<p>We come, now, to consider the effect of Capital Punishment in
+the prevention of crime.</p>
+<p>Does it prevent crime in those who attend executions?</p>
+<p>There never is (and there never was) an execution at the Old
+Bailey in London, but the spectators include two large classes of
+thieves&mdash;one class who go there as they would go to a
+dog-fight, or any other brutal sport, for the attraction and
+excitement of the spectacle; the other who make it a dry matter
+of business, and mix with the crowd solely to pick pockets.&nbsp;
+Add to these, the dissolute, the drunken, the most idle,
+profligate, and abandoned of both sexes&mdash;some moody
+ill-conditioned minds, drawn thither by a fearful
+interest&mdash;and some impelled by curiosity; of whom the
+greater part are of an age and temperament rendering the
+gratification of that curiosity highly dangerous to themselves
+and to society&mdash;and the great elements of the concourse are
+stated.</p>
+<p>Nor is this assemblage peculiar to London.&nbsp; It is the
+same in country towns, allowing for the different statistics of
+the population.&nbsp; It is the same in America.&nbsp; I was
+present at an execution in Rome, for a most treacherous and
+wicked murder, and not only saw the same kind of assemblage
+there, but, wearing what is called a shooting-coat, with a great
+many pockets in it, felt innumerable hands busy in every one of
+them, close to the scaffold.</p>
+<p>I have already mentioned that out of one hundred and
+sixty-seven convicts under sentence of death, questioned at
+different times in the performance of his duty by an English
+clergyman, there were only three who had not been spectators of
+executions.&nbsp; Mr. Wakefield, in his <i>Facts relating to the
+Punishment of Death</i>, goes into the working, as it were, of
+this sum.&nbsp; His testimony is extremely valuable, because it
+is the evidence of an educated and observing man, who, before
+having personal knowledge of the subject and of Newgate, was
+quite satisfied that the Punishment of Death should continue, but
+who, when he gained that experience, exerted himself to the
+utmost for its abolition, even at the pain of constant public
+reference in his own person to his own imprisonment.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;It cannot be egotism&rdquo;, he reasonably observes,
+&ldquo;that prompts a man to speak of himself in connection with
+Newgate.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Whoever will undergo the pain,&rdquo; says Mr.
+Wakefield, &ldquo;of witnessing the public destruction of a
+fellow-creature&rsquo;s life, in London, must be perfectly
+satisfied that in the great mass of spectators, the effect of the
+punishment is to excite sympathy for the criminal and hatred of
+the law. . . .&nbsp; I am inclined to believe that the criminals
+of London, spoken of as a class and allowing for exceptions, take
+the same sort of delight in witnessing executions, as the
+sportsman and soldier find in the dangers of hunting and war. . .
+I am confident that few Old Bailey Sessions pass without the
+trial of a boy, whose first thought of crime occurred whilst he
+was witnessing an execution. . . .&nbsp; And one grown man, of
+great mental powers and superior education, who was acquitted of
+a charge of forgery, assured me that the first idea of committing
+a forgery occurred to him at the moment when he was accidentally
+witnessing the execution of Fauntleroy.&nbsp; To which it may be
+added, that Fauntleroy is said to have made precisely the same
+declaration in reference to the origin of his own
+criminality.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But one convict &ldquo;who was within an ace of being
+hanged&rdquo;, among the many with whom Mr. Wakefield conversed,
+seems to me to have unconsciously put a question which the
+advocates of Capital Punishment would find it very difficult
+indeed to answer.&nbsp; &ldquo;Have you often seen an
+execution?&rdquo; asked Mr. Wakefield.&nbsp; &ldquo;Yes,
+often.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;Did it not frighten you?&rdquo;&nbsp;
+&ldquo;No.&nbsp; <i>Why should it</i>?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It is very easy and very natural to turn from this ruffian,
+shocked by the hardened retort; but answer his question, why
+should it?&nbsp; Should he be frightened by the sight of a dead
+man?&nbsp; We are born to die, he says, with a careless
+triumph.&nbsp; We are not born to the treadmill, or to servitude
+and slavery, or to banishment; but the executioner has done no
+more for that criminal than nature may do tomorrow for the judge,
+and will certainly do, in her own good time, for judge and jury,
+counsel and witnesses, turnkeys, hangman, and all.&nbsp; Should
+he be frightened by the manner of the death?&nbsp; It is
+horrible, truly, so horrible, that the law, afraid or ashamed of
+its own deed, hides the face of the struggling wretch it slays;
+but does this fact naturally awaken in such a man,
+terror&mdash;or defiance?&nbsp; Let the same man speak.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;What did you think then?&rdquo; asked Mr. Wakefield.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Think?&nbsp; Why, I thought it was
+a&mdash;shame.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Disgust and indignation, or recklessness and indifference, or
+a morbid tendency to brood over the sight until temptation is
+engendered by it, are the inevitable consequences of the
+spectacle, according to the difference of habit and disposition
+in those who behold it.&nbsp; Why should it frighten or
+deter?&nbsp; We know it does not.&nbsp; We know it from the
+police reports, and from the testimony of those who have
+experience of prisons and prisoners, and we may know it, on the
+occasion of an execution, by the evidence of our own senses; if
+we will be at the misery of using them for such a purpose.&nbsp;
+But why should it?&nbsp; Who would send his child or his
+apprentice, or what tutor would send his scholars, or what master
+would send his servants, to be deterred from vice by the
+spectacle of an execution?&nbsp; If it be an example to
+criminals, and to criminals only, why are not the prisoners in
+Newgate brought out to see the show before the debtors&rsquo;
+door?&nbsp; Why, while they are made parties to the condemned
+sermon, are they rigidly excluded from the improving postscript
+of the gallows?&nbsp; Because an execution is well known to be an
+utterly useless, barbarous, and brutalising sight, and because
+the sympathy of all beholders, who have any sympathy at all, is
+certain to be always with the criminal, and never with the
+law.</p>
+<p>I learn from the newspaper accounts of every execution, how
+Mr. So-and-so, and Mr. Somebody else, and Mr. So-forth shook
+hands with the culprit, but I never find them shaking hands with
+the hangman.&nbsp; All kinds of attention and consideration are
+lavished on the one; but the other is universally avoided, like a
+pestilence.&nbsp; I want to know why so much sympathy is expended
+on the man who kills another in the vehemence of his own bad
+passions, and why the man who kills him in the name of the law is
+shunned and fled from?&nbsp; Is it because the murderer is going
+to die?&nbsp; Then by no means put him to death.&nbsp; Is it
+because the hangman executes a law, which, when they once come
+near it face to face, all men instinctively revolt from?&nbsp;
+Then by all means change it.&nbsp; There is, there can be, no
+prevention in such a law.</p>
+<p>It may be urged that Public Executions are not intended for
+the benefit of those dregs of society who habitually attend
+them.&nbsp; This is an absurdity, to which the obvious answer is,
+So much the worse.&nbsp; If they be not considered with reference
+to that class of persons, comprehending a great host of criminals
+in various stages of development, they ought to be, and must
+be.&nbsp; To lose sight of that consideration is to be
+irrational, unjust, and cruel.&nbsp; All other punishments are
+especially devised, with a reference to the rooted habits,
+propensities, and antipathies of criminals.&nbsp; And shall it be
+said, out of Bedlam, that this last punishment of all is alone to
+be made an exception from the rule, even where it is shown to be
+a means of propagating vice and crime?</p>
+<p>But there may be people who do not attend executions, to whom
+the general fame and rumour of such scenes is an example, and a
+means of deterring from crime.</p>
+<p>Who are they?&nbsp; We have seen that around Capital
+Punishment there lingers a fascination, urging weak and bad
+people towards it, and imparting an interest to details connected
+with it, and with malefactors awaiting it or suffering it, which
+even good and well-disposed people cannot withstand.&nbsp; We
+know that last-dying speeches and Newgate calendars are the
+favourite literature of very low intellects.&nbsp; The gallows is
+not appealed to as an example in the instruction of youth (unless
+they are training for it); nor are there condensed accounts of
+celebrated executions for the use of national schools.&nbsp;
+There is a story in an old spelling-book of a certain Don&rsquo;t
+Care who was hanged at last, but it is not understood to have had
+any remarkable effect on crimes or executions in the generation
+to which it belonged, and with which it has passed away.&nbsp;
+Hogarth&rsquo;s idle apprentice is hanged; but the whole
+scene&mdash;with the unmistakable stout lady, drunk and pious, in
+the cast; the quarrelling, blasphemy, lewdness, and uproar; Tiddy
+Doll vending his gingerbread, and the boys picking his
+pocket&mdash;is a bitter satire on the great example; as
+efficient then, as now.</p>
+<p>Is it efficient to prevent crime?&nbsp; The parliamentary
+returns demonstrate that it is not.&nbsp; I was engaged in making
+some extracts from these documents, when I found them so well
+abstracted in one of the papers published by the committee on
+this subject established at Aylesbury last year, by the humane
+exertions of Lord Nugent, that I am glad to quote the general
+results from its pages:</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;In 1843 a return was laid on the table of
+the House of the commitments and executions for murder in England
+and Wales during the thirty years ending with December 1842,
+divided into five periods of six years each.&nbsp; It shows that
+in the last six years, from 1836 to 1842, during which there were
+only 50 executions, the commitments for murder were fewer by 61
+than in the six years preceding with 74 executions; fewer by 63
+than in the six years ending 1830 with 75 executions; fewer by 56
+than in the six years ending 1824 with 94 executions; and fewer
+by 93 than in the six years ending 1818 when there was no less a
+number of executions than 122.&nbsp; But it may be said, perhaps,
+that in the inference we draw from this return, we are
+substituting cause for effect, and that in each successive cycle,
+the number of murders decreased in consequence of the example of
+public executions in the cycle immediately preceding, and that it
+was for that reason there were fewer commitments.&nbsp; This
+might be said with some colour of truth, if the example had been
+taken from two successive cycles <i>only</i>.&nbsp; But when the
+comparative examples adduced are of no less than <i>five</i>
+successive cycles, and the result gradually and constantly
+progressive in the same direction, the relation of facts to each
+other is determined beyond all ground for dispute, namely, that
+the number of these crimes has diminished in consequence of the
+diminution of the number of executions.&nbsp; More especially
+when it is also remembered that it was <i>immediately after</i>
+the first of these cycles of five years, when there had been the
+greatest number of executions and the greatest number of murders,
+that the greatest number of persons were suddenly cast loose upon
+the country, without employ, by the reduction of the Army and
+Navy; that then came periods of great distress and great
+disturbance in the agricultural and manufacturing districts; and
+<i>above all</i>, that it was during the subsequent cycles that
+the most important mitigations were effected in the law, and that
+the Punishment of Death was taken away not only for crimes of
+stealth, such as cattle and horse stealing and forgery, of which
+crimes corresponding statistics show likewise a corresponding
+decrease, but for the crimes of violence too, <i>tending to
+murder</i>, such as are many of the incendiary offences, and such
+as are highway robbery and burglary.&nbsp; But another return,
+laid before the House at the same time, bears upon our argument,
+if possible, still more conclusively.&nbsp; In table 11 we have
+<i>only</i> the years which have occurred since 1810, in which
+<i>all</i> persons convicted of murder suffered death; and,
+compared with these an <i>equal</i> number of years in which the
+<i>smallest</i> proportion of persons convicted were
+executed.&nbsp; In the first case there were 66 persons
+convicted, all of whom underwent the penalty of death; in the
+second 83 were convicted, of whom 31 only were executed.&nbsp;
+Now see how these two very different methods of dealing with the
+crime of murder affected the commission of it <i>in the years
+immediately following</i>.&nbsp; The number of commitments for
+murder, in the four years immediately following those in which
+all persons convicted were executed, was 270.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In the four years immediately following those in which
+little more than one-third of the persons convicted were
+executed, there were but 222, being 48 less.&nbsp; If we compare
+the commitments in the following years with those in the first
+years, we shall find that, immediately after the examples of
+unsparing execution, the crime <i>increased nearly 13 per
+cent.</i>, and that after commutation was the practice and
+capital punishment the exception, it <i>decreased 17 per
+cent.</i></p>
+<p>&ldquo;In the same parliamentary return is an account of the
+commitments and executions in London and Middlesex, <i>spread
+over a space of</i> 32 <i>years</i>, ending in 1842, divided into
+two cycles of 16 years each.&nbsp; In the first of these, 34
+persons were <i>convicted</i> of murder, <i>all of whom were
+executed</i>.&nbsp; In the second, 27 were <i>convicted</i>, and
+only 17 executed.&nbsp; The <i>commitments</i> for murder during
+the latter long period, with 17 executions, were <i>more than one
+half</i> fewer than they had been in the former <i>long</i>
+period with <i>exactly double the number of executions</i>.&nbsp;
+This appears to us to be as conclusive upon our argument as any
+statistical illustration can be upon any argument professing to
+place successive events in the relation of cause and effect to
+each other.&nbsp; How justly then is it said in that able and
+useful periodical work, now in the course of publication at
+Glasgow, under the name of the <i>Magazine of Popular Information
+on Capital and Secondary Punishment</i>, &lsquo;the greater the
+number of executions, the greater the number of murders; the
+smaller the number of executions, the smaller the number of
+murders.&nbsp; The lives of her Majesty&rsquo;s subjects are less
+safe with a hundred executions a year than with fifty; less safe
+with fifty than with twenty-five.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Similar results have followed from rendering public executions
+more and more infrequent, in Tuscany, in Prussia, in France, in
+Belgium.&nbsp; Wherever capital punishments are diminished in
+their number, there, crimes diminish in their number too.</p>
+<p>But the very same advocates of the punishment of Death who
+contend, in the teeth of all facts and figures, that it does
+prevent crime, contend in the same breath against its abolition
+because it does not!&nbsp; &ldquo;There are so many bad
+murders,&rdquo; say they, &ldquo;and they follow in such quick
+succession, that the Punishment must not be
+repealed.&rdquo;&nbsp; Why, is not this a reason, among others,
+<i>for</i> repealing it?&nbsp; Does it not go to show that it is
+ineffective as an example; that it fails to prevent crime; and
+that it is wholly inefficient to stay that imitation, or
+contagion, call it what you please, which brings one murder on
+the heels of another?</p>
+<p>One forgery came crowding on another&rsquo;s heels in the same
+way, when the same punishment attached to that crime.&nbsp; Since
+it has been removed, forgeries have diminished in a most
+remarkable degree.&nbsp; Yet within five and thirty years, Lord
+Eldon, with tearful solemnity, imagined in the House of Lords as
+a possibility for their Lordships to shudder at, that the time
+might come when some visionary and morbid person might even
+propose the abolition of the punishment of Death for
+forgery.&nbsp; And when it was proposed, Lords Lyndhurst,
+Wynford, Tenterden, and Eldon&mdash;all Law Lords&mdash;opposed
+it.</p>
+<p>The same Lord Tenterden manfully said, on another occasion and
+another question, that he was glad the subject of the amendment
+of the laws had been taken up by Mr. Peel, &ldquo;who had not
+been bred to the law; for those who were, were rendered dull, by
+habit, to many of its defects!&rdquo;&nbsp; I would respectfully
+submit, in extension of this text, that a criminal judge is an
+excellent witness against the Punishment of Death, but a bad
+witness in its favour; and I will reserve this point for a few
+remarks in the next, concluding, Letter.</p>
+<h3>III</h3>
+<p>The last English Judge, I believe, who gave expression to a
+public and judicial opinion in favour of the punishment of Death,
+is Mr. Justice Coleridge, who, in charging the Grand Jury at
+Hertford last year, took occasion to lament the presence of
+serious crimes in the calendar, and to say that he feared that
+they were referable to the comparative infrequency of Capital
+Punishment.</p>
+<p>It is not incompatible with the utmost deference and respect
+for an authority so eminent, to say that, in this, Mr. Justice
+Coleridge was not supported by facts, but quite the
+reverse.&nbsp; He went out of his way to found a general
+assumption on certain very limited and partial grounds, and even
+on those grounds was wrong.&nbsp; For among the few crimes which
+he instanced, murder stood prominently forth.&nbsp; Now persons
+found guilty of murder are more certainly and unsparingly hanged
+at this time, as the Parliamentary Returns demonstrate, than such
+criminals ever were.&nbsp; So how can the decline of public
+executions affect that class of crimes?&nbsp; As to persons
+committing murder, and yet not found guilty of it by juries, they
+escape solely because there are many public executions&mdash;not
+because there are none or few.</p>
+<p>But when I submit that a criminal judge is an excellent
+witness against Capital Punishment, but a bad witness in its
+favour, I do so on more broad and general grounds than apply to
+this error in fact and deduction (so I presume to consider it) on
+the part of the distinguished judge in question.&nbsp; And they
+are grounds which do not apply offensively to judges, as a class;
+than whom there are no authorities in England so deserving of
+general respect and confidence, or so possessed of it; but which
+apply alike to all men in their several degrees and pursuits.</p>
+<p>It is certain that men contract a general liking for those
+things which they have studied at great cost of time and
+intellect, and their proficiency in which has led to their
+becoming distinguished and successful.&nbsp; It is certain that
+out of this feeling arises, not only that passive blindness to
+their defects of which the example given by my Lord Tenterden was
+quoted in the last letter, but an active disposition to advocate
+and defend them.&nbsp; If it were otherwise; if it were not for
+this spirit of interest and partisanship; no single pursuit could
+have that attraction for its votaries which most pursuits in
+course of time establish.&nbsp; Thus legal authorities are
+usually jealous of innovations on legal principles.&nbsp; Thus it
+is described of the lawyer in the Introductory Discourse to the
+Description of Utopia, that he said of a proposal against Capital
+Punishment, &ldquo;&lsquo;this could never be so established in
+England but that it must needs bring the weal-public into great
+jeopardy and hazard&rsquo;, and as he was thus saying, he shaked
+his head, and made a wry mouth, and so he held his
+peace&rdquo;.&nbsp; Thus the Recorder of London, in 1811,
+objected to &ldquo;the capital part being taken off&rdquo; from
+the offence of picking pockets.&nbsp; Thus the Lord Chancellor,
+in 1813, objected to the removal of the penalty of death from the
+offence of stealing to the amount of five shillings from a
+shop.&nbsp; Thus, Lord Ellenborough, in 1820, anticipated the
+worst effects from there being no punishment of death for
+stealing five shillings worth of wet linen from a bleaching
+ground.&nbsp; Thus the Solicitor General, in 1830, advocated the
+punishment of death for forgery, and &ldquo;the satisfaction of
+thinking&rdquo; in the teeth of mountains of evidence from
+bankers and other injured parties (one thousand bankers alone!)
+&ldquo;that he was deterring persons from the commission of
+crime, by the severity of the law&rdquo;.&nbsp; Thus, Mr. Justice
+Coleridge delivered his charge at Hertford in 1845.&nbsp; Thus
+there were in the criminal code of England, in 1790, one hundred
+and sixty crimes punishable with death.&nbsp; Thus the lawyer has
+said, again and again, in his generation, that any change in such
+a state of things &ldquo;must needs bring the weal-public into
+jeopardy and hazard&rdquo;.&nbsp; And thus he has, all through
+the dismal history, &ldquo;shaked his head, and made a wry mouth,
+and held his peace&rdquo;.&nbsp; Except&mdash;a glorious
+exception!&mdash;when such lawyers as Bacon, More, Blackstone,
+Romilly, and&mdash;let us ever gratefully remember&mdash;in later
+times Mr. Basil Montagu, have striven, each in his day, within
+the utmost limits of the endurance of the mistaken feeling of the
+people or the legislature of the time, to champion and maintain
+the truth.</p>
+<p>There is another and a stronger reason still, why a criminal
+judge is a bad witness in favour of the punishment of
+Death.&nbsp; He is a chief actor in the terrible drama of a
+trial, where the life or death of a fellow creature is at
+issue.&nbsp; No one who has seen such a trial can fail to know,
+or can ever forget, its intense interest.&nbsp; I care not how
+painful this interest is to the good, wise judge upon the
+bench.&nbsp; I admit its painful nature, and the judge&rsquo;s
+goodness and wisdom to the fullest extent&mdash;but I submit that
+his prominent share in the excitement of such a trial, and the
+dread mystery involved, has a tendency to bewilder and confuse
+the judge upon the general subject of that penalty.&nbsp; I know
+the solemn pause before the verdict, the bush and stifling of the
+fever in the court, the solitary figure brought back to the bar,
+and standing there, observed of all the outstretched heads and
+gleaming eyes, to be next minute stricken dead as one may say,
+among them.&nbsp; I know the thrill that goes round when the
+black cap is put on, and how there will be shrieks among the
+women, and a taking out of some one in a swoon; and, when the
+judge&rsquo;s faltering voice delivers sentence, how awfully the
+prisoner and he confront each other; two mere men, destined one
+day, however far removed from one another at this time, to stand
+alike as suppliants at the bar of God.&nbsp; I know all this, I
+can imagine what the office of the judge costs in this execution
+of it; but I say that in these strong sensations he is lost, and
+is unable to abstract the penalty as a preventive or example,
+from an experience of it, and from associations surrounding it,
+which are and can be, only his, and his alone.</p>
+<p>Not to contend that there is no amount of wig or ermine that
+can change the nature of the man inside; not to say that the
+nature of a judge may be, like the dyer&rsquo;s hand, subdued to
+what it works in, and may become too used to this punishment of
+death to consider it quite dispassionately; not to say that it
+may possibly be inconsistent to have, deciding as calm
+authorities in favour of death, judges who have been constantly
+sentencing to death;&mdash;I contend that for the reasons I have
+stated alone, a judge, and especially a criminal judge, is a bad
+witness for the punishment but an excellent witness against it,
+inasmuch as in the latter case his conviction of its inutility
+has been so strong and paramount as utterly to beat down and
+conquer these adverse incidents.&nbsp; I have no scruple in
+stating this position, because, for anything I know, the majority
+of excellent judges now on the bench may have overcome them, and
+may be opposed to the punishment of Death under any
+circumstances.</p>
+<p>I mentioned that I would devote a portion of this letter to a
+few prominent illustrations of each head of objection to the
+punishment of Death.&nbsp; Those on record are so very numerous
+that selection is extremely difficult; but in reference to the
+possibility of mistake, and the impossibility of reparation, one
+case is as good (I should rather say as bad) as a hundred; and if
+there were none but Eliza Fenning&rsquo;s, that would be
+sufficient.&nbsp; Nay, if there were none at all, it would be
+enough to sustain this objection, that men of finite and limited
+judgment do inflict, on testimony which admits of doubt, an
+infinite and irreparable punishment.&nbsp; But there are on
+record numerous instances of mistake; many of them very generally
+known and immediately recognisable in the following summary,
+which I copy from the <i>New York Report</i> already referred
+to.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;There have been cases in which groans have
+been heard in the apartment of the crime, which have attracted
+the steps of those on whose testimony the case has
+turned&mdash;when, on proceeding to the spot, they have found a
+man bending over the murdered body, a lantern in the left hand,
+and the knife yet dripping with the warm current in the
+blood-stained right, with horror-stricken countenance, and lips
+which, in the presence of the dead, seem to refuse to deny the
+crime in the very act of which he is thus surprised&mdash;and yet
+the man has been, many years after, when his memory alone could
+be benefited by the discovery, ascertained not to have been the
+real murderer!&nbsp; There have been cases in which, in a house
+in which were two persons alone, a murder has been committed on
+one of them&mdash;when many additional circumstances have
+fastened the imputation upon the other&mdash;and when, all
+apparent modes of access from without, being closed inward, the
+demonstration has seemed complete of the guilt for which that
+other has suffered the doom of the law&mdash;yet suffered
+<i>innocently</i>!&nbsp; There have been cases in which a father
+has been found murdered in an outhouse, the only person at home
+being a son, sworn by a sister to have been dissolute and
+undutiful, and anxious for the death of the father, and
+succession to the family property&mdash;when the track of his
+shoes in the snow is found from the house to the spot of the
+murder, and the hammer with which it was committed (known as his
+own), found, on a search, in the corner of one of his private
+drawers, with the bloody evidence of the deed only imperfectly
+effaced from it&mdash;and yet the son has been
+innocent!&mdash;the sister, years after, on her death-bed,
+confessing herself the fratricide as well as the parricide.&nbsp;
+There have been cases in which men have been hung on the most
+positive testimony to identity (aided by many suspicious
+circumstances), by persons familiar with their appearance, which
+have afterwards proved grievous mistakes, growing out of
+remarkable personal resemblance.&nbsp; There have been cases in
+which two men have been seen fighting in a field&mdash;an old
+enmity existing between them&mdash;the one found dead, killed by
+a stab from a pitchfork known as belonging to the other, and
+which that other had been carrying, the pitch-fork lying by the
+side of the murdered man&mdash;and yet its owner has been
+afterwards found not to have been the author of the murder of
+which it had been the instrument, the true murderer sitting on
+the jury that tried him.&nbsp; There have been cases in which an
+innkeeper has been charged by one of his servants with the murder
+of a traveller, the servant deposing to having seen his master on
+the stranger&rsquo;s bed, strangling him, and afterwards rifling
+his pockets&mdash;another servant deposing that she saw him come
+down at that time at a very early hour in the morning, steal into
+the garden, take gold from his pocket, and carefully wrapping it
+up bury it in a designated spot&mdash;on the search of which the
+ground is found loose and freshly dug, and a sum of thirty pounds
+in gold found buried according to the description&mdash;the
+master, who confessed the burying of the money, with many
+evidences of guilt in his hesitation and confusion, has been hung
+of course, and proved innocent only too late.&nbsp; There have
+been cases in which a traveller has been robbed on the highway of
+twenty guineas, which he had taken the precaution to
+mark&mdash;one of these is found to have been paid away or
+changed by one of the servants of the inn which the traveller
+reaches the same evening&mdash;the servant is about the height of
+the robber, who had been cloaked and disguised&mdash;his master
+deposes to his having been recently unaccountably extravagant and
+flush of gold&mdash;and on his trunk being searched the other
+nineteen marked guineas and the traveller&rsquo;s purse are found
+there, the servant being asleep at the time, half-drunk&mdash;he
+is of course convicted and hung, for the crime of which his
+master was the author!&nbsp; There have been cases in which a
+father and daughter have been overheard in violent
+dispute&mdash;the words &ldquo;<i>barbarity</i>&rdquo;,
+&ldquo;<i>cruelly</i>&rdquo;, and &ldquo;<i>death</i>&rdquo;,
+being heard frequently to proceed from the latter&mdash;the
+former goes out locking the door behind him&mdash;groans are
+overheard, and the words, &ldquo;<i>cruel father</i>, <i>thou art
+the cause of my death</i>!&rdquo;&mdash;on the room being opened
+she is found on the point of death from a wound in her side, and
+near her the knife with which it had been inflicted&mdash;and on
+being questioned as to her owing her death to her father, her
+last motion before expiring is an expression of assent&mdash;the
+father, on returning to the room, exhibits the usual evidences of
+guilt&mdash;he, too, is of course hung&mdash;and it is not till
+nearly a year afterwards that, on the discovery of conclusive
+evidence that it was a suicide, the vain reparation is made, to
+his memory by the public authorities, of&mdash;waving a pair of
+colours over his grave in token of the recognition of his
+innocence.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>More than a hundred such cases are known, it is said in this
+Report, in English criminal jurisprudence.&nbsp; The same Report
+contains three striking cases of supposed criminals being
+unjustly hanged in America; and also five more in which people
+whose innocence was not afterwards established were put to death
+on evidence as purely circumstantial and as doubtful, to say the
+least of it, as any that was held to be sufficient in this
+general summary of legal murders.&nbsp; Mr. O&rsquo;Connell
+defended, in Ireland, within five and twenty years, three
+brothers who were hanged for a murder of which they were
+afterwards shown to have been innocent.&nbsp; I cannot find the
+reference at this moment, but I have seen it stated on good
+authority, that but for the exertions, I think of the present
+Lord Chief Baron, six or seven innocent men would certainly have
+been hanged.&nbsp; Such are the instances of wrong judgment which
+are known to us.&nbsp; How many more there may be in which the
+real murderers never disclosed their guilt, or were never
+discovered, and where the odium of great crimes still rests on
+guiltless people long since resolved to dust in their untimely
+graves, no human power can tell.</p>
+<p>The effect of public executions on those who witness them,
+requires no better illustration, and can have none, than the
+scene which any execution in itself presents, and the general
+Police-office knowledge of the offences arising out of
+them.&nbsp; I have stated my belief that the study of rude scenes
+leads to the disregard of human life, and to murder.&nbsp;
+Referring, since that expression of opinion, to the very last
+trial for murder in London, I have made inquiry, and am assured
+that the youth now under sentence of death in Newgate for the
+murder of his master in Drury Lane, was a vigilant spectator of
+the three last public executions in this City.&nbsp; What effects
+a daily increasing familiarity with the scaffold, and with death
+upon it, wrought in France in the Great Revolution, everybody
+knows.&nbsp; In reference to this very question of Capital
+Punishment, Robespierre himself, before he was</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: center">&ldquo;in blood stept
+in so far&rdquo;,</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>warned the National Assembly that in taking human life, and in
+displaying before the eyes of the people scenes of cruelty and
+the bodies of murdered men, the law awakened ferocious
+prejudices, which gave birth to a long and growing train of their
+own kind.&nbsp; With how much reason this was said, let his own
+detestable name bear witness!&nbsp; If we would know how callous
+and hardened society, even in a peaceful and settled state,
+becomes to public executions when they are frequent, let us
+recollect how few they were who made the last attempt to stay the
+dreadful Monday-morning spectacles of men and women strung up in
+a row for crimes as different in their degree as our whole social
+scheme is different in its component parts, which, within some
+fifteen years or so, made human shambles of the Old Bailey.</p>
+<p>There is no better way of testing the effect of public
+executions on those who do not actually behold them, but who read
+of them and know of them, than by inquiring into their efficiency
+in preventing crime.&nbsp; In this respect they have always, and
+in all countries, failed.&nbsp; According to all facts and
+figures, failed.&nbsp; In Russia, in Spain, in France, in Italy,
+in Belgium, in Sweden, in England, there has been one
+result.&nbsp; In Bombay, during the Recordership of Sir James
+Macintosh, there were fewer crimes in seven years without one
+execution, than in the preceding seven years with forty-seven
+executions; notwithstanding that in the seven years without
+capital punishment, the population had greatly increased, and
+there had been a large accession to the numbers of the ignorant
+and licentious soldiery, with whom the more violent offences
+originated.&nbsp; During the four wickedest years of the Bank of
+England (from 1814 to 1817, inclusive), when the one-pound note
+capital prosecutions were most numerous and shocking, the number
+of forged one-pound notes discovered by the Bank steadily
+increased, from the gross amount in the first year of
+&pound;10,342, to the gross amount in the last of
+&pound;28,412.&nbsp; But in every branch of this part of the
+subject&mdash;the inefficiency of capital punishment to prevent
+crime, and its efficiency to produce it&mdash;the body of
+evidence (if there were space to quote or analyse it here) is
+overpowering and resistless.</p>
+<p>I have purposely deferred until now any reference to one
+objection which is urged against the abolition of capital
+punishment: I mean that objection which claims to rest on
+Scriptural authority.</p>
+<p>It was excellently well said by Lord Melbourne, that no class
+of persons can be shown to be very miserable and oppressed, but
+some supporters of things as they are will immediately rise up
+and assert&mdash;not that those persons are moderately well to
+do, or that their lot in life has a reasonably bright
+side&mdash;but that they are, of all sorts and conditions of men,
+the happiest.&nbsp; In like manner, when a certain proceeding or
+institution is shown to be very wrong indeed, there is a class of
+people who rush to the fountainhead at once, and will have no
+less an authority for it than the Bible, on any terms.</p>
+<p>So, we have the Bible appealed to in behalf of Capital
+Punishment.&nbsp; So, we have the Bible produced as a distinct
+authority for Slavery.&nbsp; So, American representatives find
+the title of their country to the Oregon territory distinctly
+laid down in the Book of Genesis.&nbsp; So, in course of time, we
+shall find Repudiation, perhaps, expressly commanded in the
+Sacred Writings.</p>
+<p>It is enough for me to be satisfied, on calm inquiry and with
+reason, that an Institution or Custom is wrong and bad; and
+thence to feel assured that <span class="GutSmall">IT CANNOT
+BE</span> a part of the law laid down by the Divinity who walked
+the earth.&nbsp; Though every other man who wields a pen should
+turn himself into a commentator on the Scriptures&mdash;not all
+their united efforts, pursued through our united lives, could
+ever persuade me that Slavery is a Christian law; nor, with one
+of these objections to an execution in my certain knowledge, that
+Executions are a Christian law, my will is not concerned.&nbsp; I
+could not, in my veneration for the life and lessons of Our Lord,
+believe it.&nbsp; If any text appeared to justify the claim, I
+would reject that limited appeal, and rest upon the character of
+the Redeemer, and the great scheme of His Religion, where, in its
+broad spirit, made so plain&mdash;and not this or that disputed
+letter&mdash;we all put our trust.&nbsp; But, happily, such
+doubts do not exist.&nbsp; The case is far too plain.&nbsp; The
+Rev. Henry Christmas, in a recent pamphlet on this subject, shows
+clearly that in five important versions of the Old Testament (to
+say nothing of versions of less note) the words, &ldquo;by
+man&rdquo;, in the often-quoted text, &ldquo;Whoso sheddeth
+man&rsquo;s blood, by man shall his blood be shed&rdquo;, do not
+appear at all.&nbsp; We know that the law of Moses was delivered
+to certain wandering tribes in a peculiar and perfectly different
+social condition from that which prevails among us at this
+time.&nbsp; We know that the Christian Dispensation did
+distinctly repeal and annul certain portions of that law.&nbsp;
+We know that the doctrine of retributive justice or vengeance,
+was plainly disavowed by the Saviour.&nbsp; We know that on the
+only occasion of an offender, liable by the law to death, being
+brought before Him for His judgment, it was <i>not</i>
+death.&nbsp; We know that He said, &ldquo;Thou shalt not
+kill&rdquo;.&nbsp; And if we are still to inflict capital
+punishment because of the Mosaic law (under which it was not the
+consequence of a legal proceeding, but an act of vengeance from
+the next of kin, which would surely be discouraged by our later
+laws if it were revived among the Jews just now) it would be
+equally reasonable to establish the lawfulness of a plurality of
+wives on the same authority.</p>
+<p>Here I will leave this aspect of the question.&nbsp; I should
+not have treated of it at all in the columns of a newspaper, but
+for the possibility of being unjustly supposed to have given it
+no consideration in my own mind.</p>
+<p>In bringing to a close these letters on a subject, in
+connection with which there is happily very little that is new to
+be said or written, I beg to be understood as advocating the
+total abolition of the Punishment of Death, as a general
+principle, for the advantage of society, for the prevention of
+crime, and without the least reference to, or tenderness for any
+individual malefactor whomsoever.&nbsp; Indeed, in most cases of
+murder, my feeling towards the culprit is very strongly and
+violently the reverse.&nbsp; I am the more desirous to be so
+understood, after reading a speech made by Mr. Macaulay in the
+House of Commons last Tuesday night, in which that accomplished
+gentleman hardly seemed to recognise the possibility of anybody
+entertaining an honest conviction of the inutility and bad
+effects of Capital Punishment in the abstract, founded on inquiry
+and reflection, without being the victim of &ldquo;a kind of
+effeminate feeling&rdquo;.&nbsp; Without staying to inquire what
+there may be that is especially manly and heroic in the advocacy
+of the gallows, or to express my admiration of Mr. Calcraft, the
+hangman, as doubtless one of the most manly specimens now in
+existence, I would simply hint a doubt, in all good humour,
+whether this be the true Macaulay way of meeting a great
+question?&nbsp; One of the instances of effeminacy of feeling
+quoted by Mr. Macaulay, I have reason to think was not quite
+fairly stated.&nbsp; I allude to the petition in Tawell&rsquo;s
+case.&nbsp; I had neither hand nor part in it myself; but, unless
+I am greatly mistaken, it did pretty clearly set forth that
+Tawell was a most abhorred villain, and that the House might
+conclude how strongly the petitioners were opposed to the
+Punishment of Death, when they prayed for its non-infliction even
+in such a case.</p>
+<h2><a name="page560"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 560</span>THE
+SPIRIT OF CHIVALRY IN WESTMINSTER HALL</h2>
+<p>&ldquo;<span class="smcap">Of</span> all the cants that are
+canted in this canting world,&rdquo; wrote Sterne, &ldquo;kind
+Heaven defend me from the cant of Art!&rdquo;&nbsp; We have no
+intention of tapping our little cask of cant, soured by the
+thunder of great men&rsquo;s fame, for the refreshment of our
+readers: its freest draught would be unreasonably dear at a
+shilling, when the same small liquor may be had for nothing, at
+innumerable ready pipes and conduits.</p>
+<p>But it is a main part of the design of this Magazine to
+sympathise with what is truly great and good; to scout the
+miserable discouragements that beset, especially in England, the
+upward path of men of high desert; and gladly to give honour
+where it is due, in right of Something achieved, tending to
+elevate the tastes and thoughts of all who contemplate it, and
+prove a lasting credit to the country of its birth.</p>
+<p>Upon the walls of Westminster Hall, there hangs, at this time,
+such a Something.&nbsp; A composition of such marvellous beauty,
+of such infinite variety, of such masterly design, of such
+vigorous and skilful drawing, of such thought and fancy, of such
+surprising and delicate accuracy of detail, subserving one grand
+harmony, and one plain purpose, that it may be questioned whether
+the Fine Arts in any period of their history have known a more
+remarkable performance.</p>
+<p>It is the cartoon of Daniel Maclise, &ldquo;executed by order
+of the Commissioners&rdquo;, and called The Spirit of
+Chivalry.&nbsp; It may be left an open question, whether or no
+this allegorical order on the part of the Commissioners, displays
+any uncommon felicity of idea.&nbsp; We rather think not; and are
+free to confess that we should like to have seen the
+Commissioners&rsquo; notion of the Spirit of Chivalry stated by
+themselves, in the first instance, on a sheet of foolscap, as the
+ground-plan of a model cartoon, with all the commissioned
+proportions of height and breadth.&nbsp; That the treatment of
+such an abstraction, for the purposes of Art, involves great and
+peculiar difficulties, no one who considers the subject for a
+moment can doubt.&nbsp; That nothing is easier to render it
+absurd and monstrous, is a position as little capable of dispute
+by anybody who has beheld another cartoon on the same subject in
+the same Hall, representing a Ghoule in a state of raving
+madness, dancing on a Body in a very high wind, to the great
+astonishment of John the Baptist&rsquo;s head, which is looking
+on from a corner.</p>
+<p>Mr. Maclise&rsquo;s handling of the subject has by this time
+sunk into the hearts of thousands upon thousands of people.&nbsp;
+It is familiar knowledge among all classes and conditions of
+men.&nbsp; It is the great feature within the Hall, and the
+constant topic of discourse elsewhere.&nbsp; It has awakened in
+the great body of society a new interest in, and a new perception
+and a new love of, Art.&nbsp; Students of Art have sat before it,
+hour by hour, perusing in its many forms of Beauty, lessons to
+delight the world, and raise themselves, its future teachers, in
+its better estimation.&nbsp; Eyes well accustomed to the glories
+of the Vatican, the galleries of Florence, all the mightiest
+works of art in Europe, have grown dim before it with the strong
+emotions it inspires; ignorant, unlettered, drudging men, mere
+hewers and drawers, have gathered in a knot about it (as at our
+back a week ago), and read it, in their homely language, as it
+were a Book.&nbsp; In minds, the roughest and the most refined,
+it has alike found quick response; and will, and must, so long as
+it shall hold together.</p>
+<p>For how can it be otherwise?&nbsp; Look up, upon the pressing
+throng who strive to win distinction from the Guardian Genius of
+all noble deeds and honourable renown,&mdash;a gentle Spirit,
+holding her fair state for their reward and recognition (do not
+be alarmed, my Lord Chamberlain; this is only in a picture); and
+say what young and ardent heart may not find one to beat in
+unison with it&mdash;beat high with generous aspiration like its
+own&mdash;in following their onward course, as it is traced by
+this great pencil!&nbsp; Is it the Love of Woman, in its truth
+and deep devotion, that inspires you?&nbsp; See it here!&nbsp; Is
+it Glory, as the world has learned to call the pomp and
+circumstance of arms?&nbsp; Behold it at the summit of its
+exaltation, with its mailed hand resting on the altar where the
+Spirit ministers.&nbsp; The Poet&rsquo;s laurel-crown, which they
+who sit on thrones can neither twine or wither&mdash;is
+<i>that</i> the aim of thy ambition?&nbsp; It is there, upon his
+brow; it wreathes his stately forehead, as he walks apart and
+holds communion with himself.&nbsp; The Palmer and the Bard are
+there; no solitary wayfarers, now; but two of a great company of
+pilgrims, climbing up to honour by the different paths that lead
+to the great end.&nbsp; And sure, amidst the gravity and beauty
+of them all&mdash;unseen in his own form, but shining in his
+spirit, out of every gallant shape and earnest thought&mdash;the
+Painter goes triumphant!</p>
+<p>Or say that you who look upon this work, be old, and bring to
+it grey hairs, a head bowed down, a mind on which the day of life
+has spent itself, and the calm evening closes gently in.&nbsp; Is
+its appeal to you confined to its presentment of the Past?&nbsp;
+Have you no share in this, but while the grace of youth and the
+strong resolve of maturity are yours to aid you?&nbsp; Look up
+again.&nbsp; Look up where the spirit is enthroned, and see about
+her, reverend men, whose task is done; whose struggle is no more;
+who cluster round her as her train and council; who have lost no
+share or interest in that great rising up and progress, which
+bears upward with it every means of human happiness, but, true in
+Autumn to the purposes of Spring, are there to stimulate the race
+who follow in their steps; to contemplate, with hearts grown
+serious, not cold or sad, the striving in which they once had
+part; to die in that great Presence, which is Truth and Bravery,
+and Mercy to the Weak, beyond all power of separation.</p>
+<p>It would be idle to observe of this last group that, both in
+execution and idea, they are of the very highest order of Art,
+and wonderfully serve the purpose of the picture.&nbsp; There is
+not one among its three-and-twenty heads of which the same remark
+might not be made.&nbsp; Neither will we treat of great effects
+produced by means quite powerless in other hands for such an end,
+or of the prodigious force and <i>colour</i> which so separate
+this work from all the rest exhibited, that it would scarcely
+appear to be produced upon the same kind of surface by the same
+description of instrument.&nbsp; The bricks and stones and
+timbers of the Hall itself are not facts more indisputable than
+these.</p>
+<p>It has been objected to this extraordinary work that it is too
+elaborately finished; too complete in its several parts.&nbsp;
+And Heaven knows, if it be judged in this respect by any standard
+in the Hall about it, it will find no parallel, nor anything
+approaching to it.&nbsp; But it is a design, intended to be
+afterwards copied and painted in fresco; and certain finish must
+be had at last, if not at first.&nbsp; It is very well to take it
+for granted in a Cartoon that a series of cross-lines, almost as
+rough and apart as the lattice-work of a garden summerhouse,
+represents the texture of a human face; but the face cannot be
+<i>painted</i> so.&nbsp; A smear upon the paper may be
+understood, by virtue of the context gained from what surrounds
+it, to stand for a limb, or a body, or a cuirass, or a hat and
+feathers, or a flag, or a boot, or an angel.&nbsp; But when the
+time arrives for rendering these things in colours on a wall,
+they must be grappled with, and cannot be slurred over in this
+wise.&nbsp; Great misapprehension on this head seems to have been
+engendered in the minds of some observers by the famous cartoons
+of Raphael; but they forget that these were never intended as
+designs for fresco painting.&nbsp; They were designs for
+tapestry-work, which is susceptible of only certain broad and
+general effects, as no one better knew than the Great
+Master.&nbsp; Utterly detestable and vile as the tapestry is,
+compared with the immortal Cartoons from which it was worked, it
+is impossible for any man who casts his eyes upon it where it
+hangs at Rome, not to see immediately the special adaptation of
+the drawings to that end, and for that purpose.&nbsp; The aim of
+these Cartoons being wholly different, Mr. Maclise&rsquo;s
+object, if we understand it, was to show precisely what he meant
+to do, and knew he could perform, in fresco, on a wall.&nbsp; And
+here his meaning is; worked out; without a compromise of any
+difficulty; without the avoidance of any disconcerting truth;
+expressed in all its beauty, strength, and power.</p>
+<p>To what end?&nbsp; To be perpetuated hereafter in the high
+place of the chief Senate-House of England?&nbsp; To be wrought,
+as it were, into the very elements of which that Temple is
+composed; to co-endure with it, and still present, perhaps, some
+lingering traces of its ancient Beauty, when London shall have
+sunk into a grave of grass-grown ruin,&mdash;and the whole circle
+of the Arts, another revolution of the mighty wheel completed,
+shall be wrecked and broken?</p>
+<p>Let us hope so.&nbsp; We will contemplate no other
+possibility&mdash;at present.</p>
+<h2><a name="page564"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 564</span>IN
+MEMORIAM<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">W. M. THACKERAY</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">It</span> has been desired by some of the
+personal friends of the great English writer who established this
+magazine, <a name="citation564"></a><a href="#footnote564"
+class="citation">[564]</a> that its brief record of his having
+been stricken from among men should be written by the old comrade
+and brother in arms who pens these lines, and of whom he often
+wrote himself, and always with the warmest generosity.</p>
+<p>I saw him first nearly twenty-eight years ago, when he
+proposed to become the illustrator of my earliest book.&nbsp; I
+saw him last, shortly before Christmas, at the Athen&aelig;um
+Club, when he told me that he had been in bed three
+days&mdash;that, after these attacks, he was troubled with cold
+shiverings, &ldquo;which quite took the power of work out of
+him&rdquo;&mdash;and that he had it in his mind to try a new
+remedy which he laughingly described.&nbsp; He was very cheerful,
+and looked very bright.&nbsp; In the night of that day week, he
+died.</p>
+<p>The long interval between those two periods is marked in my
+remembrance of him by many occasions when he was supremely
+humorous, when he was irresistibly extravagant, when he was
+softened and serious, when he was charming with children.&nbsp;
+But, by none do I recall him more tenderly than by two or three
+that start out of the crowd, when he unexpectedly presented
+himself in my room, announcing how that some passage in a certain
+book had made him cry yesterday, and how that he had come to
+dinner, &ldquo;because he couldn&rsquo;t help it&rdquo;, and must
+talk such passage over.&nbsp; No one can ever have seen him more
+genial, natural, cordial, fresh, and honestly impulsive, than I
+have seen him at those times.&nbsp; No one can be surer than I,
+of the greatness and the goodness of the heart that then
+disclosed itself.</p>
+<p>We had our differences of opinion.&nbsp; I thought that he too
+much feigned a want of earnestness, and that he made a pretence
+of under-valuing his art, which was not good for the art that he
+held in trust.&nbsp; But, when we fell upon these topics, it was
+never very gravely, and I have a lively image of him in my mind,
+twisting both his hands in his hair, and stamping about,
+laughing, to make an end of the discussion.</p>
+<p>When we were associated in remembrance of the late Mr. Douglas
+Jerrold, he delivered a public lecture in London, in the course
+of which, he read his very best contribution to Punch, describing
+the grown-up cares of a poor family of young children.&nbsp; No
+one hearing him could have doubted his natural gentleness, or his
+thoroughly unaffected manly sympathy with the weak and
+lowly.&nbsp; He read the paper most pathetically, and with a
+simplicity of tenderness that certainly moved one of his audience
+to tears.&nbsp; This was presently after his standing for Oxford,
+from which place he had dispatched his agent to me, with a droll
+note (to which he afterwards added a verbal postscript), urging
+me to &ldquo;come down and make a speech, and tell them who he
+was, for he doubted whether more than two of the electors had
+ever heard of him, and he thought there might be as many as six
+or eight who had heard of me&rdquo;.&nbsp; He introduced the
+lecture just mentioned, with a reference to his late
+electioneering failure, which was full of good sense, good
+spirits, and good humour.</p>
+<p>He had a particular delight in boys, and an excellent way with
+them.&nbsp; I remember his once asking me with fantastic gravity,
+when he had been to Eton where my eldest son then was, whether I
+felt as he did in regard of never seeing a boy without wanting
+instantly to give him a sovereign?&nbsp; I thought of this when I
+looked down into his grave, after he was laid there, for I looked
+down into it over the shoulder of a boy to whom he had been
+kind.</p>
+<p>These are slight remembrances; but it is to little familiar
+things suggestive of the voice, look, manner, never, never more
+to be encountered on this earth, that the mind first turns in a
+bereavement.&nbsp; And greater things that are known of him, in
+the way of his warm affections, his quiet endurance, his
+unselfish thoughtfulness for others, and his munificent hand, may
+not be told.</p>
+<p>If, in the reckless vivacity of his youth, his satirical pen
+had ever gone astray or done amiss, he had caused it to prefer
+its own petition for forgiveness, long before:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>I&rsquo;ve writ the foolish fancy of his brain;<br
+/>
+The aimless jest that, striking, hath caused pain;<br />
+The idle word that he&rsquo;d wish back again.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>In no pages should I take it upon myself at this time to
+discourse of his books, of his refined knowledge of character, of
+his subtle acquaintance with the weaknesses of human nature, of
+his delightful playfulness as an essayist, of his quaint and
+touching ballads, of his mastery over the English language.&nbsp;
+Least of all, in these pages, enriched by his brilliant qualities
+from the first of the series, and beforehand accepted by the
+Public through the strength of his great name.</p>
+<p>But, on the table before me, there lies all that he had
+written of his latest and last story.&nbsp; That it would be very
+sad to any one&mdash;that it is inexpressibly so to a
+writer&mdash;in its evidences of matured designs never to be
+accomplished, of intentions begun to be executed and destined
+never to be completed, of careful preparation for long roads of
+thought that he was never to traverse, and for shining goals that
+he was never to reach, will be readily believed.&nbsp; The pain,
+however, that I have felt in perusing it, has not been deeper
+than the conviction that he was in the healthiest vigour of his
+powers when he wrought on this last labour.&nbsp; In respect of
+earnest feeling, far-seeing purpose, character, incident, and a
+certain loving picturesqueness blending the whole, I believe it
+to be much the best of all his works.&nbsp; That he fully meant
+it to be so, that he had become strongly attached to it, and that
+he bestowed great pains upon it, I trace in almost every
+page.&nbsp; It contains one picture which must have cost him
+extreme distress, and which is a masterpiece.&nbsp; There are two
+children in it, touched with a hand as loving and tender as ever
+a father caressed his little child with.&nbsp; There is some
+young love as pure and innocent and pretty as the truth.&nbsp;
+And it is very remarkable that, by reason of the singular
+construction of the story, more than one main incident usually
+belonging to the end of such a fiction is anticipated in the
+beginning, and thus there is an approach to completeness in the
+fragment, as to the satisfaction of the reader&rsquo;s mind
+concerning the most interesting persons, which could hardly have
+been better attained if the writer&rsquo;s breaking-off had been
+foreseen.</p>
+<p>The last line he wrote, and the last proof he corrected, are
+among these papers through which I have so sorrowfully made my
+way.&nbsp; The condition of the little pages of manuscript where
+Death stopped his hand, shows that he had carried them about, and
+often taken them out of his pocket here and there, for patient
+revision and interlineation.&nbsp; The last words he corrected in
+print were, &ldquo;And my heart throbbed with an exquisite
+bliss&rdquo;.&nbsp; <span class="smcap">God</span> grant that on
+that Christmas Eve when he laid his head back on his pillow and
+threw up his arms as he had been wont to do when very weary, some
+consciousness of duty done and Christian hope throughout life
+humbly cherished, may have caused his own heart so to throb, when
+he passed away to his Redeemer&rsquo;s rest!</p>
+<p>He was found peacefully lying as above described, composed,
+undisturbed, and to all appearance asleep, on the twenty-fourth
+of December 1863.&nbsp; He was only in his fifty-third year; so
+young a man that the mother who blessed him in his first sleep
+blessed him in his last.&nbsp; Twenty years before, he had
+written, after being in a white squall:</p>
+<blockquote><p>And when, its force expended,<br />
+The harmless storm was ended,<br />
+And, as the sunrise splendid<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Came blushing o&rsquo;er the sea;<br />
+I thought, as day was breaking,<br />
+My little girls were waking,<br />
+And smiling, and making<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; A prayer at home for me.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Those little girls had grown to be women when the mournful day
+broke that saw their father lying dead.&nbsp; In those twenty
+years of companionship with him they had learned much from him;
+and one of them has a literary course before her, worthy of her
+famous name.</p>
+<p>On the bright wintry day, the last but one of the old year, he
+was laid in his grave at Kensal Green, there to mingle the dust
+to which the mortal part of him had returned, with that of a
+third child, lost in her infancy years ago.&nbsp; The heads of a
+great concourse of his fellow-workers in the Arts were bowed
+around his tomb.</p>
+<h2><a name="page568"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+568</span>ADELAIDE ANNE PROCTER<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">INTRODUCTION TO HER &ldquo;LEGENDS AND
+LYRICS&rdquo;</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">In</span> the spring of the year 1853, I
+observed, as conductor of the weekly journal <i>Household
+Words</i>, a short poem among the proffered contributions, very
+different, as I thought, from the shoal of verses perpetually
+setting through the office of such a periodical, and possessing
+much more merit.&nbsp; Its authoress was quite unknown to
+me.&nbsp; She was one Miss Mary Berwick, whom I had never heard
+of; and she was to be addressed by letter, if addressed at all,
+at a circulating library in the western district of London.&nbsp;
+Through this channel, Miss Berwick was informed that her poem was
+accepted, and was invited to send another.&nbsp; She complied,
+and became a regular and frequent contributor.&nbsp; Many letters
+passed between the journal and Miss Berwick, but Miss Berwick
+herself was never seen.</p>
+<p>How we came gradually to establish, at the office of
+<i>Household Words</i>, that we knew all about Miss Berwick, I
+have never discovered.&nbsp; But we settled somehow, to our
+complete satisfaction, that she was governess in a family; that
+she went to Italy in that capacity, and returned; and that she
+had long been in the same family.&nbsp; We really knew nothing
+whatever of her, except that she was remarkably business-like,
+punctual, self-reliant, and reliable: so I suppose we insensibly
+invented the rest.&nbsp; For myself, my mother was not a more
+real personage to me, than Miss Berwick the governess became.</p>
+<p>This went on until December, 1854, when the Christmas number,
+entitled <i>The Seven Poor Travellers</i>, was sent to
+press.&nbsp; Happening to be going to dine that day with an old
+and dear friend, distinguished in literature as Barry Cornwall, I
+took with me an early proof of that number, and remarked, as I
+laid it on the drawing-room table, that it contained a very
+pretty poem, written by a certain Miss Berwick.&nbsp; Next day
+brought me the disclosure that I had so spoken of the poem to the
+mother of its writer, in its writer&rsquo;s presence; that I had
+no such correspondent in existence as Miss Berwick; and that the
+name had been assumed by Barry Cornwall&rsquo;s eldest daughter,
+Miss Adelaide Anne Procter.</p>
+<p>The anecdote I have here noted down, besides serving to
+explain why the parents of the late Miss Procter have looked to
+me for these poor words of remembrance of their lamented child,
+strikingly illustrates the honesty, independence, and quiet
+dignity, of the lady&rsquo;s character.&nbsp; I had known her
+when she was very young; I had been honoured with her
+father&rsquo;s friendship when I was myself a young aspirant; and
+she had said at home, &ldquo;If I send him, in my own name,
+verses that he does not honestly like, either it will be very
+painful to him to return them, or he will print them for
+papa&rsquo;s sake, and not for their own.&nbsp; So I have made up
+my mind to take my chance fairly with the unknown
+volunteers.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Perhaps it requires an editor&rsquo;s experience of the
+profoundly unreasonable grounds on which he is often urged to
+accept unsuitable articles&mdash;such as having been to school
+with the writer&rsquo;s husband&rsquo;s brother-in-law, or having
+lent an alpenstock in Switzerland to the writer&rsquo;s
+wife&rsquo;s nephew, when that interesting stranger had broken
+his own&mdash;fully to appreciate the delicacy and the
+self-respect of this resolution.</p>
+<p>Some verses by Miss Procter had been published in the <i>Book
+of Beauty</i>, ten years before she became Miss Berwick.&nbsp;
+With the exception of two poems in the <i>Cornhill Magazine</i>,
+two in <i>Good Words</i>, and others in a little book called <i>A
+Chaplet of Verses</i> (issued in 1862 for the benefit of a Night
+Refuge), her published writings first appeared in <i>Household
+Words</i>, or <i>All the Year Round</i>.&nbsp; The present
+edition contains the whole of her <i>Legends and Lyrics</i>, and
+originates in the great favour with which they have been received
+by the public.</p>
+<p>Miss Procter was born in Bedford Square, London, on the 30th
+of October, 1825.&nbsp; Her love of poetry was conspicuous at so
+early an age, that I have before me a tiny album made of small
+note-paper, into which her favourite passages were copied for her
+by her mother&rsquo;s hand before she herself could write.&nbsp;
+It looks as if she had carried it about, as another little girl
+might have carried a doll.&nbsp; She soon displayed a remarkable
+memory, and great quickness of apprehension.&nbsp; When she was
+quite a young child, she learned with facility several of the
+problems of Euclid.&nbsp; As she grew older, she acquired the
+French, Italian, and German languages; became a clever pianoforte
+player; and showed a true taste and sentiment in drawing.&nbsp;
+But, as soon as she had completely vanquished the difficulties of
+any one branch of study, it was her way to lose interest in it,
+and pass to another.&nbsp; While her mental resources were being
+trained, it was not at all suspected in her family that she had
+any gift of authorship, or any ambition to become a writer.&nbsp;
+Her father had no idea of her having ever attempted to turn a
+rhyme, until her first little poem saw the light in print.</p>
+<p>When she attained to womanhood, she had read an extraordinary
+number of books, and throughout her life she was always largely
+adding to the number.&nbsp; In 1853 she went to Turin and its
+neighbourhood, on a visit to her aunt, a Roman Catholic
+lady.&nbsp; As Miss Procter had herself professed the Roman
+Catholic Faith two years before, she entered with the greater
+ardour on the study of the Piedmontese dialect, and the
+observation of the habits and manners of the peasantry.&nbsp; In
+the former, she soon became a proficient.&nbsp; On the latter
+head, I extract from her familiar letters written home to England
+at the time, two pleasant pieces of description.</p>
+<h3>A <span class="smcap">Betrothal</span></h3>
+<p>&ldquo;We have been to a ball, of which I must give you a
+description.&nbsp; Last Tuesday we had just done dinner at about
+seven, and stepped out into the balcony to look at the remains of
+the sunset behind the mountains, when we heard very distinctly a
+band of music, which rather excited my astonishment, as a
+solitary organ is the utmost that toils up here.&nbsp; I went out
+of the room for a few minutes, and, on my returning, Emily said,
+&lsquo;Oh!&nbsp; That band is playing at the farmer&rsquo;s near
+here.&nbsp; The daughter is <i>fianc&eacute;e</i> to-day, and
+they have a ball.&rsquo;&nbsp; I said, &lsquo;I wish I was
+going!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Well,&rsquo; replied she, &lsquo;the
+farmer&rsquo;s wife did call to invite us.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Then I shall certainly go,&rsquo; I exclaimed.&nbsp; I
+applied to Madame B., who said she would like it very much, and
+we had better go, children and all.&nbsp; Some of the servants
+were already gone.&nbsp; We rushed away to put on some shawls,
+and put off any shred of black we might have about us (as the
+people would have been quite annoyed if we had appeared on such
+an occasion with any black), and we started.&nbsp; When we
+reached the farmer&rsquo;s, which is a stone&rsquo;s throw above
+our house, we were received with great enthusiasm; the only
+drawback being, that no one spoke French, and we did not yet
+speak Piedmontese.&nbsp; We were placed on a bench against the
+wall, and the people went on dancing.&nbsp; The room was a large
+whitewashed kitchen (I suppose), with several large pictures in
+black frames, and very smoky.&nbsp; I distinguished the Martyrdom
+of Saint Sebastian, and the others appeared equally lively and
+appropriate subjects.&nbsp; Whether they were Old Masters or not,
+and if so, by whom, I could not ascertain.&nbsp; The band were
+seated opposite us.&nbsp; Five men, with wind instruments, part
+of the band of the National Guard, to which the farmer&rsquo;s
+sons belong.&nbsp; They played really admirably, and I began to
+be afraid that some idea of our dignity would prevent me getting
+a partner; so, by Madame B.&rsquo;s advice, I went up to the
+bride, and offered to dance with her.&nbsp; Such a handsome young
+woman!&nbsp; Like one of Uwins&rsquo;s pictures.&nbsp; Very dark,
+with a quantity of black hair, and on an immense scale.&nbsp; The
+children were already dancing, as well as the maids.&nbsp; After
+we came to an end of our dance, which was what they called a
+Polka-Mazourka, I saw the bride trying to screw up the courage of
+her <i>fianc&eacute;</i> to ask me to dance, which after a little
+hesitation he did.&nbsp; And admirably he danced, as indeed they
+all did&mdash;in excellent time, and with a little more spirit
+than one sees in a ball-room.&nbsp; In fact, they were very like
+one&rsquo;s ordinary partners, except that they wore earrings and
+were in their shirt-sleeves, and truth compels me to state that
+they decidedly smelt of garlic.&nbsp; Some of them had been
+smoking, but threw away their cigars when we came in.&nbsp; The
+only thing that did not look cheerful was, that the room was only
+lighted by two or three oil-lamps, and that there seemed to be no
+preparation for refreshments.&nbsp; Madame B., seeing this,
+whispered to her maid, who disengaged herself from her partner,
+and ran off to the house; she and the kitchenmaid presently
+returning with a large tray covered with all kinds of cakes (of
+which we are great consumers and always have a stock), and a
+large hamper full of bottles of wine, with coffee and
+sugar.&nbsp; This seemed all very acceptable.&nbsp; The
+<i>fianc&eacute;e</i> was requested to distribute the eatables,
+and a bucket of water being produced to wash the glasses in, the
+wine disappeared very quickly&mdash;as fast as they could open
+the bottles.&nbsp; But, elated, I suppose, by this, the floor was
+sprinkled with water, and the musicians played a Monferrino,
+which is a Piedmontese dance.&nbsp; Madame B. danced with the
+farmer&rsquo;s son, and Emily with another distinguished member
+of the company.&nbsp; It was very fatiguing&mdash;something like
+a Scotch reel.&nbsp; My partner was a little man, like Perrot,
+and very proud of his dancing.&nbsp; He cut in the air and
+twisted about, until I was out of breath, though my attempts to
+imitate him were feeble in the extreme.&nbsp; At last, after
+seven or eight dances, I was obliged to sit down.&nbsp; We stayed
+till nine, and I was so dead beat with the heat that I could
+hardly crawl about the house, and in an agony with the cramp, it
+is so long since I have danced.&rdquo;</p>
+<h3>A <span class="smcap">Marriage</span></h3>
+<p>&ldquo;The wedding of the farmer&rsquo;s daughter has taken
+place.&nbsp; We had hoped it would have been in the little chapel
+of our house, but it seems some special permission was necessary,
+and they applied for it too late.&nbsp; They all said,
+&ldquo;This is the Constitution.&nbsp; There would have been no
+difficulty before!&rdquo; the lower classes making the poor
+Constitution the scapegoat for everything they don&rsquo;t
+like.&nbsp; So as it was impossible for us to climb up to the
+church where the wedding was to be, we contented ourselves with
+seeing the procession pass.&nbsp; It was not a very large one,
+for, it requiring some activity to go up, all the old people
+remained at home.&nbsp; It is not etiquette for the bride&rsquo;s
+mother to go, and no unmarried woman can go to a wedding&mdash;I
+suppose for fear of its making her discontented with her own
+position.&nbsp; The procession stopped at our door, for the bride
+to receive our congratulations.&nbsp; She was dressed in a shot
+silk, with a yellow handkerchief, and rows of a large gold
+chain.&nbsp; In the afternoon they sent to request us to go
+there.&nbsp; On our arrival we found them dancing out of doors,
+and a most melancholy affair it was.&nbsp; All the bride&rsquo;s
+sisters were not to be recognised, they had cried so.&nbsp; The
+mother sat in the house, and could not appear.&nbsp; And the
+bride was sobbing so, she could hardly stand!&nbsp; The most
+melancholy spectacle of all to my mind was, that the bridegroom
+was decidedly tipsy.&nbsp; He seemed rather affronted at all the
+distress.&nbsp; We danced a Monferrino; I with the bridegroom;
+and the bride crying the whole time.&nbsp; The company did their
+utmost to enliven her by firing pistols, but without success, and
+at last they began a series of yells, which reminded me of a set
+of savages.&nbsp; But even this delicate method of consolation
+failed, and the wishing good-bye began.&nbsp; It was altogether
+so melancholy an affair that Madame B. dropped a few tears, and I
+was very near it, particularly when the poor mother came out to
+see the last of her daughter, who was finally dragged off between
+her brother and uncle, with a last explosion of pistols.&nbsp; As
+she lives quite near, makes an excellent match, and is one of
+nine children, it really was a most desirable marriage, in spite
+of all the show of distress.&nbsp; Albert was so discomfited by
+it, that he forgot to kiss the bride as he had intended to do,
+and therefore went to call upon her yesterday, and found her very
+smiling in her new house, and supplied the omission.&nbsp; The
+cook came home from the wedding, declaring she was cured of any
+wish to marry&mdash;but I would not recommend any man to act upon
+that threat and make her an offer.&nbsp; In a couple of days we
+had some rolls of the bride&rsquo;s first baking, which they call
+Madonnas.&nbsp; The musicians, it seems, were in the same state
+as the bridegroom, for, in escorting her home, they all fell down
+in the mud.&nbsp; My wrath against the bridegroom is somewhat
+calmed by finding that it is considered bad luck if he does not
+get tipsy at his wedding.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p>Those readers of Miss Procter&rsquo;s poems who should suppose
+from their tone that her mind was of a gloomy or despondent cast,
+would be curiously mistaken.&nbsp; She was exceedingly humorous,
+and had a great delight in humour.&nbsp; Cheerfulness was
+habitual with her, she was very ready at a sally or a reply, and
+in her laugh (as I remember well) there was an unusual vivacity,
+enjoyment, and sense of drollery.&nbsp; She was perfectly
+unconstrained and unaffected: as modestly silent about her
+productions, as she was generous with their pecuniary
+results.&nbsp; She was a friend who inspired the strongest
+attachments; she was a finely sympathetic woman, with a great
+accordant heart and a sterling noble nature.&nbsp; No claim can
+be set up for her, thank God, to the possession of any of the
+conventional poetical qualities.&nbsp; She never by any means
+held the opinion that she was among the greatest of human beings;
+she never suspected the existence of a conspiracy on the part of
+mankind against her; she never recognised in her best friends,
+her worst enemies; she never cultivated the luxury of being
+misunderstood and unappreciated; she would far rather have died
+without seeing a line of her composition in print, than that I
+should have maundered about her, here, as &ldquo;the Poet&rdquo;,
+or &ldquo;the Poetess&rdquo;.</p>
+<p>With the recollection of Miss Procter as a mere child and as a
+woman, fresh upon me, it is natural that I should linger on my
+way to the close of this brief record, avoiding its end.&nbsp;
+But, even as the close came upon her, so must it come here.</p>
+<p>Always impelled by an intense conviction that her life must
+not be dreamed away, and that her indulgence in her favourite
+pursuits must be balanced by action in the real world around her,
+she was indefatigable in her endeavours to do some good.&nbsp;
+Naturally enthusiastic, and conscientiously impressed with a deep
+sense of her Christian duty to her neighbour, she devoted herself
+to a variety of benevolent objects.&nbsp; Now, it was the
+visitation of the sick, that had possession of her; now, it was
+the sheltering of the houseless; now, it was the elementary
+teaching of the densely ignorant; now, it was the raising up of
+those who had wandered and got trodden under foot; now, it was
+the wider employment of her own sex in the general business of
+life; now, it was all these things at once.&nbsp; Perfectly
+unselfish, swift to sympathise and eager to relieve, she wrought
+at such designs with a flushed earnestness that disregarded
+season, weather, time of day or night, food, rest.&nbsp; Under
+such a hurry of the spirits, and such incessant occupation, the
+strongest constitution will commonly go down.&nbsp; Hers, neither
+of the strongest nor the weakest, yielded to the burden, and
+began to sink.</p>
+<p>To have saved her life, then, by taking action on the warning
+that shone in her eyes and sounded in her voice, would have been
+impossible, without changing her nature.&nbsp; As long as the
+power of moving about in the old way was left to her, she must
+exercise it, or be killed by the restraint.&nbsp; And so the time
+came when she could move about no longer, and took to her
+bed.</p>
+<p>All the restlessness gone then, and all the sweet patience of
+her natural disposition purified by the resignation of her soul,
+she lay upon her bed through the whole round of changes of the
+seasons.&nbsp; She lay upon her bed through fifteen months.&nbsp;
+In all that time, her old cheerfulness never quitted her.&nbsp;
+In all that time, not an impatient or a querulous minute can be
+remembered.</p>
+<p>At length, at midnight on the second of February, 1864, she
+turned down a leaf of a little book she was reading, and shut it
+up.</p>
+<p>The ministering hand that had copied the verses into the tiny
+album was soon around her neck, and she quietly asked, as the
+clock was on the stroke of one:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Do you think I am dying, mamma?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I think you are very, very ill to-night, my
+dear!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Send for my sister.&nbsp; My feet are so cold.&nbsp;
+Lift me up?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Her sister entering as they raised her, she said: &ldquo;It
+has come at last!&rdquo;&nbsp; And with a bright and happy smile,
+looked upward, and departed.</p>
+<p>Well had she written:</p>
+<blockquote><p>Why shouldst thou fear the beautiful angel,
+Death,<br />
+Who waits thee at the portals of the skies,<br />
+Ready to kiss away thy struggling breath,<br />
+Ready with gentle hand to close thine eyes?</p>
+<p>Oh what were life, if life were all?&nbsp; Thine eyes<br />
+Are blinded by their tears, or thou wouldst see<br />
+Thy treasures wait thee in the far-off skies,<br />
+And Death, thy friend, will give them all to thee.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<h2><a name="page574"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+574</span>CHAUNCEY HARE TOWNSHEND<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">EXPLANATORY INTRODUCTION TO
+&ldquo;RELIGIOUS OPINIONS&rdquo; BY THE LATE REVEREND CHAUNCEY
+HARE TOWNSHEND</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Mr. Chauncey Hare Townshend</span> died in
+London, on the 25th of February 1868.&nbsp; His will contained
+the following passage:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;I appoint my friend Charles Dickens, of
+Gad&rsquo;s Hill Place, in the County of Kent, Esquire, my
+literary executor; and beg of him to publish without alteration
+as much of my notes and reflections as may make known my opinions
+on religious matters, they being such as I verily believe would
+be conducive to the happiness of mankind.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>In pursuance of the foregoing injunction, the Literary
+Executor so appointed (not previously aware that the publication
+of any Religious Opinions would be enjoined upon him), applied
+himself to the examination of the numerous papers left by his
+deceased friend.&nbsp; Some of these were in Lausanne, and some
+were in London.&nbsp; Considerable delay occurred before they
+could be got together, arising out of certain claims preferred,
+and formalities insisted on by the authorities of the Canton de
+Vaud.&nbsp; When at length the whole of his late friend&rsquo;s
+papers passed into the Literary Executor&rsquo;s hands, it was
+found that <i>Religious Opinions</i> were scattered up and down
+through a variety of memoranda and note-books, the gradual
+accumulation of years and years.&nbsp; Many of the following
+pages were carefully transcribed, numbered, connected, and
+prepared for the press; but many more were dispersed fragments,
+originally written in pencil, afterwards inked over, the intended
+sequence of which in the writer&rsquo;s mind, it was extremely
+difficult to follow.&nbsp; These again were intermixed with
+journals of travel, fragments of poems, critical essays,
+voluminous correspondence, and old school-exercises and college
+themes, having no kind of connection with them.</p>
+<p>To publish such materials &ldquo;without alteration&rdquo;,
+was simply impossible.&nbsp; But finding everywhere internal
+evidence that Mr. Townshend&rsquo;s <i>Religious Opinions</i> had
+been constantly meditated and reconsidered with great pains and
+sincerity throughout his life, the Literary Executor carefully
+compiled them (always in the writer&rsquo;s exact words), and
+endeavoured in piecing them together to avoid needless
+repetition.&nbsp; He does not doubt that Mr. Townshend held the
+clue to a precise plan, which could have greatly simplified the
+presentation of these views; and he has devoted the first section
+of this volume to Mr. Townshend&rsquo;s own notes of his
+comprehensive intentions.&nbsp; Proofs of the devout spirit in
+which they were conceived, and of the sense of responsibility
+with which he worked at them, abound through the whole mass of
+papers.&nbsp; Mr. Townshend&rsquo;s varied attainments, delicate
+tastes, and amiable and gentle nature, caused him to be beloved
+through life by the variously distinguished men who were his
+compeers at Cambridge long ago.&nbsp; To his Literary Executor he
+was always a warmly-attached and sympathetic friend.&nbsp; To the
+public, he has been a most generous benefactor, both in his
+munificent bequest of his collection of precious stones in the
+South Kensington Museum, and in the devotion of the bulk of his
+property to the education of poor children.</p>
+<h2><a name="page576"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 576</span>ON
+MR. FECHTER&rsquo;S ACTING</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> distinguished artist whose name
+is prefixed to these remarks purposes to leave England for a
+professional tour in the United States.&nbsp; A few words from
+me, in reference to his merits as an actor, I hope may not be
+uninteresting to some readers, in advance of his publicly proving
+them before an American audience, and I know will not be
+unacceptable to my intimate friend.&nbsp; I state at once that
+Mr. Fechter holds that relation towards me; not only because it
+is the fact, but also because our friendship originated in my
+public appreciation of him.&nbsp; I had studied his acting
+closely, and had admired it highly, both in Paris and in London,
+years before we exchanged a word.&nbsp; Consequently my
+appreciation is not the result of personal regard, but personal
+regard has sprung out of my appreciation.</p>
+<p>The first quality observable in Mr. Fechter&rsquo;s acting is,
+that it is in the highest degree romantic.&nbsp; However
+elaborated in minute details, there is always a peculiar dash and
+vigour in it, like the fresh atmosphere of the story whereof it
+is a part.&nbsp; When he is on the stage, it seems to me as
+though the story were transpiring before me for the first and
+last time.&nbsp; Thus there is a fervour in his
+love-making&mdash;a suffusion of his whole being with the rapture
+of his passion&mdash;that sheds a glory on its object, and raises
+her, before the eyes of the audience, into the light in which he
+sees her.&nbsp; It was this remarkable power that took Paris by
+storm when he became famous in the lover&rsquo;s part in the
+<i>Dame aux Cam&eacute;lias</i>.&nbsp; It is a short part, really
+comprised in two scenes, but, as he acted it (he was its original
+representative), it left its poetic and exalting influence on the
+heroine throughout the play.&nbsp; A woman who could be so
+loved&mdash;who could be so devotedly and romantically
+adored&mdash;had a hold upon the general sympathy with which
+nothing less absorbing and complete could have invested
+her.&nbsp; When I first saw this play and this actor, I could not
+in forming my lenient judgment of the heroine, forget that she
+had been the inspiration of a passion of which I had beheld such
+profound and affecting marks.&nbsp; I said to myself, as a child
+might have said: &ldquo;A bad woman could not have been the
+object of that wonderful tenderness, could not have so subdued
+that worshipping heart, could not have drawn such tears from such
+a lover&rdquo;.&nbsp; I am persuaded that the same effect was
+wrought upon the Parisian audiences, both consciously and
+unconsciously, to a very great extent, and that what was morally
+disagreeable in the <i>Dame aux Cam&eacute;lias</i> first got
+lost in this brilliant halo of romance.&nbsp; I have seen the
+same play with the same part otherwise acted, and in exact degree
+as the love became dull and earthy, the heroine descended from
+her pedestal.</p>
+<p>In Ruy Blas, in the Master of Ravenswood, and in the Lady of
+Lyons&mdash;three dramas in which Mr. Fechter especially shines
+as a lover, but notably in the first&mdash;this remarkable power
+of surrounding the beloved creature, in the eyes of the audience,
+with the fascination that she has for him, is strikingly
+displayed.&nbsp; That observer must be cold indeed who does not
+feel, when Ruy Blas stands in the presence of the young unwedded
+Queen of Spain, that the air is enchanted; or, when she bends
+over him, laying her tender touch upon his bloody breast, that it
+is better so to die than to live apart from her, and that she is
+worthy to be so died for.&nbsp; When the Master of Ravenswood
+declares his love to Lucy Ashton, and she hers to him, and when
+in a burst of rapture, he kisses the skirt of her dress, we feel
+as though we touched it with our lips to stay our goddess from
+soaring away into the very heavens.&nbsp; And when they plight
+their troth and break the piece of gold, it is we&mdash;not
+Edgar&mdash;who quickly exchange our half for the half she was
+about to hang about her neck, solely because the latter has for
+an instant touched the bosom we so dearly love.&nbsp; Again, in
+the Lady of Lyons: the picture on the easel in the poor cottage
+studio is not the unfinished portrait of a vain and arrogant
+girl, but becomes the sketch of a Soul&rsquo;s high ambition and
+aspiration here and hereafter.</p>
+<p>Picturesqueness is a quality above all others pervading Mr.
+Fechter&rsquo;s assumptions.&nbsp; Himself a skilled painter and
+sculptor, learned in the history of costume, and informing those
+accomplishments and that knowledge with a similar infusion of
+romance (for romance is inseparable from the man), he is always a
+picture,&mdash;always a picture in its right place in the group,
+always in true composition with the background of the
+scene.&nbsp; For picturesqueness of manner, note so trivial a
+thing as the turn of his hand in beckoning from a window, in Ruy
+Blas, to a personage down in an outer courtyard to come up; or
+his assumption of the Duke&rsquo;s livery in the same scene; or
+his writing a letter from dictation.&nbsp; In the last scene of
+Victor Hugo&rsquo;s noble drama, his bearing becomes positively
+inspired; and his sudden assumption of the attitude of the
+headsman, in his denunciation of the Duke and threat to be his
+executioner, is, so far as I know, one of the most ferociously
+picturesque things conceivable on the stage.</p>
+<p>The foregoing use of the word &ldquo;ferociously&rdquo;
+reminds me to remark that this artist is a master of passionate
+vehemence; in which aspect he appears to me to represent, perhaps
+more than in any other, an interesting union of characteristics
+of two great nations,&mdash;the French and the Anglo-Saxon.&nbsp;
+Born in London of a French mother, by a German father, but reared
+entirely in England and in France, there is, in his fury, a
+combination of French suddenness and impressibility with our more
+slowly demonstrative Anglo-Saxon way when we get, as we say,
+&ldquo;our blood up&rdquo;, that produces an intensely fiery
+result.&nbsp; The fusion of two races is in it, and one cannot
+decidedly say that it belongs to either; but one can most
+decidedly say that it belongs to a powerful concentration of
+human passion and emotion, and to human nature.</p>
+<p>Mr. Fechter has been in the main more accustomed to speak
+French than to speak English, and therefore he speaks our
+language with a French accent.&nbsp; But whosoever should suppose
+that he does not speak English fluently, plainly, distinctly, and
+with a perfect understanding of the meaning, weight, and value of
+every word, would be greatly mistaken.&nbsp; Not only is his
+knowledge of English&mdash;extending to the most subtle idiom, or
+the most recondite cant phrase&mdash;more extensive than that of
+many of us who have English for our mother-tongue, but his
+delivery of Shakespeare&rsquo;s blank verse is remarkably facile,
+musical, and intelligent.&nbsp; To be in a sort of pain for him,
+as one sometimes is for a foreigner speaking English, or to be in
+any doubt of his having twenty synonymes at his tongue&rsquo;s
+end if he should want one, is out of the question after having
+been of his audience.</p>
+<p>A few words on two of his Shakespearian impersonations, and I
+shall have indicated enough, in advance of Mr. Fechter&rsquo;s
+presentation of himself.&nbsp; That quality of picturesqueness,
+on which I have already laid stress, is strikingly developed in
+his Iago, and yet it is so judiciously governed that his Iago is
+not in the least picturesque according to the conventional ways
+of frowning, sneering, diabolically grinning, and elaborately
+doing everything else that would induce Othello to run him
+through the body very early in the play.&nbsp; Mr.
+Fechter&rsquo;s is the Iago who could, and did, make friends, who
+could dissect his master&rsquo;s soul, without flourishing his
+scalpel as if it were a walking-stick, who could overpower Emilia
+by other arts than a sign-of-the-Saracen&rsquo;s-Head grimness;
+who could be a boon companion without <i>ipso facto</i> warning
+all beholders off by the portentous phenomenon; who could sing a
+song and clink a can naturally enough, and stab men really in the
+dark,&mdash;not in a transparent notification of himself as going
+about seeking whom to stab.&nbsp; Mr. Fechter&rsquo;s Iago is no
+more in the conventional psychological mode than in the
+conventional hussar pantaloons and boots; and you shall see the
+picturesqueness of his wearing borne out in his bearing all
+through the tragedy down to the moment when he becomes invincibly
+and consistently dumb.</p>
+<p>Perhaps no innovation in Art was ever accepted with so much
+favour by so many intellectual persons pre-committed to, and
+preoccupied by, another system, as Mr. Fechter&rsquo;s
+Hamlet.&nbsp; I take this to have been the case (as it
+unquestionably was in London), not because of its
+picturesqueness, not because of its novelty, not because of its
+many scattered beauties, but because of its perfect consistency
+with itself.&nbsp; As the animal-painter said of his favourite
+picture of rabbits that there was more nature about those rabbits
+than you usually found in rabbits, so it may be said of Mr.
+Fechter&rsquo;s Hamlet, that there was more consistency about
+that Hamlet than you usually found in Hamlets.&nbsp; Its great
+and satisfying originality was in its possessing the merit of a
+distinctly conceived and executed idea.&nbsp; From the first
+appearance of the broken glass of fashion and mould of form, pale
+and worn with weeping for his father&rsquo;s death, and remotely
+suspicious of its cause, to his final struggle with Horatio for
+the fatal cup, there were cohesion and coherence in Mr.
+Fechter&rsquo;s view of the character.&nbsp; Devrient, the German
+actor, had, some years before in London, fluttered the theatrical
+doves considerably, by such changes as being seated when
+instructing the players, and like mild departures from
+established usage; but he had worn, in the main, the old
+nondescript dress, and had held forth, in the main, in the old
+way, hovering between sanity and madness.&nbsp; I do not remember
+whether he wore his hair crisply curled short, as if he were
+going to an everlasting dancing-master&rsquo;s party at the
+Danish court; but I do remember that most other Hamlets since the
+great Kemble had been bound to do so.&nbsp; Mr. Fechter&rsquo;s
+Hamlet, a pale, woebegone Norseman with long flaxen hair, wearing
+a strange garb never associated with the part upon the English
+stage (if ever seen there at all) and making a piratical swoop
+upon the whole fleet of little theatrical prescriptions without
+meaning, or, like Dr. Johnson&rsquo;s celebrated friend, with
+only one idea in them, and that a wrong one, never could have
+achieved its extraordinary success but for its animation by one
+pervading purpose, to which all changes were made intelligently
+subservient.&nbsp; The bearing of this purpose on the treatment
+of Ophelia, on the death of Polonius, and on the old student
+fellowship between Hamlet and Horatio, was exceedingly striking;
+and the difference between picturesqueness of stage arrangement
+for mere stage effect, and for the elucidation of a meaning, was
+well displayed in there having been a gallery of musicians at the
+Play, and in one of them passing on his way out, with his
+instrument in his hand, when Hamlet, seeing it, took it from him,
+to point his talk with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.</p>
+<p>This leads me to the observation with which I have all along
+desired to conclude: that Mr. Fechter&rsquo;s romance and
+picturesqueness are always united to a true artist&rsquo;s
+intelligence, and a true artist&rsquo;s training in a true
+artist&rsquo;s spirit.&nbsp; He became one of the company of the
+Th&eacute;&acirc;tre Fran&ccedil;ais when he was a very young
+man, and he has cultivated his natural gifts in the best
+schools.&nbsp; I cannot wish my friend a better audience than he
+will have in the American people, and I cannot wish them a better
+actor than they will have in my friend.</p>
+<h2>FOOTNOTE</h2>
+<p><a name="footnote564"></a><a href="#citation564"
+class="footnote">[564]</a>&nbsp; Cornhill Magazine.</p>
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS***</p>
+<pre>
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+
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+This etext was prepared from the 1912 Gresham Publishing Company
+edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+
+MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS BY CHARLES DICKENS
+
+
+
+
+Contents:
+
+The Agricultural Interest
+Threatening Letter to Thomas Hood from an Ancient Gentleman
+Crime and Education
+Capital Punishment
+The Spirit of Chivalry in Westminster Hall
+In Memoriam--W. M. Thackeray
+Adelaide Anne Procter
+Chauncey Hare Townshend
+On Mr. Fechter's Acting
+
+
+
+
+THE AGRICULTURAL INTEREST
+
+
+
+The present Government, having shown itself to be particularly
+clever in its management of Indictments for Conspiracy, cannot do
+better, we think (keeping in its administrative eye the pacification
+of some of its most influential and most unruly supporters), than
+indict the whole manufacturing interest of the country for a
+conspiracy against the agricultural interest.  As the jury ought to
+be beyond impeachment, the panel might be chosen among the Duke of
+Buckingham's tenants, with the Duke of Buckingham himself as
+foreman; and, to the end that the country might be quite satisfied
+with the judge, and have ample security beforehand for his
+moderation and impartiality, it would be desirable, perhaps, to make
+such a slight change in the working of the law (a mere nothing to a
+Conservative Government, bent upon its end), as would enable the
+question to be tried before an Ecclesiastical Court, with the Bishop
+of Exeter presiding.  The Attorney-General for Ireland, turning his
+sword into a ploughshare, might conduct the prosecution; and Mr.
+Cobden and the other traversers might adopt any ground of defence
+they chose, or prove or disprove anything they pleased, without
+being embarrassed by the least anxiety or doubt in reference to the
+verdict.
+
+That the country in general is in a conspiracy against this sacred
+but unhappy agricultural interest, there can be no doubt.  It is not
+alone within the walls of Covent Garden Theatre, or the Free Trade
+Hall at Manchester, or the Town Hall at Birmingham, that the cry
+"Repeal the Corn-laws!" is raised.  It may be heard, moaning at
+night, through the straw-littered wards of Refuges for the
+Destitute; it may be read in the gaunt and famished faces which make
+our streets terrible; it is muttered in the thankful grace
+pronounced by haggard wretches over their felon fare in gaols; it is
+inscribed in dreadful characters upon the walls of Fever Hospitals;
+and may be plainly traced in every record of mortality.  All of
+which proves, that there is a vast conspiracy afoot, against the
+unfortunate agricultural interest.
+
+They who run, even upon railroads, may read of this conspiracy.  The
+old stage-coachman was a farmer's friend.  He wore top-boots,
+understood cattle, fed his horses upon corn, and had a lively
+personal interest in malt.  The engine-driver's garb, and
+sympathies, and tastes belong to the factory.  His fustian dress,
+besmeared with coal-dust and begrimed with soot; his oily hands, his
+dirty face, his knowledge of machinery; all point him out as one
+devoted to the manufacturing interest.  Fire and smoke, and red-hot
+cinders follow in his wake.  He has no attachment to the soil, but
+travels on a road of iron, furnace wrought.  His warning is not
+conveyed in the fine old Saxon dialect of our glorious forefathers,
+but in a fiendish yell.  He never cries "ya-hip", with agricultural
+lungs; but jerks forth a manufactured shriek from a brazen throat.
+
+Where is the agricultural interest represented?  From what phase of
+our social life has it not been driven, to the undue setting up of
+its false rival?
+
+Are the police agricultural?  The watchmen were.  They wore woollen
+nightcaps to a man; they encouraged the growth of timber, by
+patriotically adhering to staves and rattles of immense size; they
+slept every night in boxes, which were but another form of the
+celebrated wooden walls of Old England; they never woke up till it
+was too late--in which respect you might have thought them very
+farmers.  How is it with the police?  Their buttons are made at
+Birmingham; a dozen of their truncheons would poorly furnish forth a
+watchman's staff; they have no wooden walls to repose between; and
+the crowns of their hats are plated with cast-iron.
+
+Are the doctors agricultural?  Let Messrs. Morison and Moat, of the
+Hygeian establishment at King's Cross, London, reply.  Is it not,
+upon the constant showing of those gentlemen, an ascertained fact
+that the whole medical profession have united to depreciate the
+worth of the Universal Vegetable Medicines?  And is this opposition
+to vegetables, and exaltation of steel and iron instead, on the part
+of the regular practitioners, capable of any interpretation but one?
+Is it not a distinct renouncement of the agricultural interest, and
+a setting up of the manufacturing interest instead?
+
+Do the professors of the law at all fail in their truth to the
+beautiful maid whom they ought to adore?  Inquire of the Attorney-
+General for Ireland.  Inquire of that honourable and learned
+gentleman, whose last public act was to cast aside the grey goose-
+quill, an article of agricultural produce, and take up the pistol,
+which, under the system of percussion locks, has not even a flint to
+connect it with farming.  Or put the question to a still higher
+legal functionary, who, on the same occasion, when he should have
+been a reed, inclining here and there, as adverse gales of evidence
+disposed him, was seen to be a manufactured image on the seat of
+Justice, cast by Power, in most impenetrable brass.
+
+The world is too much with us in this manufacturing interest, early
+and late; that is the great complaint and the great truth.  It is
+not so with the agricultural interest, or what passes by that name.
+It never thinks of the suffering world, or sees it, or cares to
+extend its knowledge of it; or, so long as it remains a world, cares
+anything about it.  All those whom Dante placed in the first pit or
+circle of the doleful regions, might have represented the
+agricultural interest in the present Parliament, or at quarter
+sessions, or at meetings of the farmers' friends, or anywhere else.
+
+But that is not the question now.  It is conspired against; and we
+have given a few proofs of the conspiracy, as they shine out of
+various classes engaged in it.  An indictment against the whole
+manufacturing interest need not be longer, surely, than the
+indictment in the case of the Crown against O'Connell and others.
+Mr. Cobden may be taken as its representative--as indeed he is, by
+one consent already.  There may be no evidence; but that is not
+required.  A judge and jury are all that is needed.  And the
+Government know where to find them, or they gain experience to
+little purpose.
+
+
+
+THREATENING LETTER
+TO THOMAS HOOD
+FROM AN ANCIENT GENTLEMAN
+
+
+
+MR. HOOD.  SIR,--The Constitution is going at last!  You needn't
+laugh, Mr. Hood.  I am aware that it has been going, two or three
+times before; perhaps four times; but it is on the move now, sir,
+and no mistake.
+
+I beg to say, that I use those last expressions advisedly, sir, and
+not in the sense in which they are now used by Jackanapeses.  There
+were no Jackanapeses when I was a boy, Mr. Hood.  England was Old
+England when I was young.  I little thought it would ever come to be
+Young England when I was old.  But everything is going backward.
+
+Ah! governments were governments, and judges were judges, in my day,
+Mr. Hood.  There was no nonsense then.  Any of your seditious
+complainings, and we were ready with the military on the shortest
+notice.  We should have charged Covent Garden Theatre, sir, on a
+Wednesday night:  at the point of the bayonet.  Then, the judges
+were full of dignity and firmness, and knew how to administer the
+law.  There is only one judge who knows how to do his duty, now.  He
+tried that revolutionary female the other day, who, though she was
+in full work (making shirts at three-halfpence a piece), had no
+pride in her country, but treasonably took it in her head, in the
+distraction of having been robbed of her easy earnings, to attempt
+to drown herself and her young child; and the glorious man went out
+of his way, sir--out of his way--to call her up for instant sentence
+of Death; and to tell her she had no hope of mercy in this world--as
+you may see yourself if you look in the papers of Wednesday the 17th
+of April.  He won't be supported, sir, I know he won't; but it is
+worth remembering that his words were carried into every
+manufacturing town of this kingdom, and read aloud to crowds in
+every political parlour, beer-shop, news-room, and secret or open
+place of assembly, frequented by the discontented working-men; and
+that no milk-and-water weakness on the part of the executive can
+ever blot them out.  Great things like that, are caught up, and
+stored up, in these times, and are not forgotten, Mr. Hood.  The
+public at large (especially those who wish for peace and
+conciliation) are universally obliged to him.  If it is reserved for
+any man to set the Thames on fire, it is reserved for him; and
+indeed I am told he very nearly did it, once.
+
+But even he won't save the constitution, sir:  it is mauled beyond
+the power of preservation.  Do you know in what foul weather it will
+be sacrificed and shipwrecked, Mr. Hood?  Do you know on what rock
+it will strike, sir?  You don't, I am certain; for nobody does know
+as yet but myself.  I will tell you.
+
+The constitution will go down, sir (nautically speaking), in the
+degeneration of the human species in England, and its reduction into
+a mingled race of savages and pigmies.
+
+That is my proposition.  That is my prediction.  That is the event
+of which I give you warning.  I am now going to prove it, sir.
+
+You are a literary man, Mr. Hood, and have written, I am told, some
+things worth reading.  I say I am told, because I never read what is
+written in these days.  You'll excuse me; but my principle is, that
+no man ought to know anything about his own time, except that it is
+the worst time that ever was, or is ever likely to be.  That is the
+only way, sir, to be truly wise and happy.
+
+In your station, as a literary man, Mr. Hood, you are frequently at
+the Court of Her Gracious Majesty the Queen.  God bless her!  You
+have reason to know that the three great keys to the royal palace
+(after rank and politics) are Science, Literature, Art.  I don't
+approve of this myself.  I think it ungenteel and barbarous, and
+quite un-English; the custom having been a foreign one, ever since
+the reigns of the uncivilised sultans in the Arabian Nights, who
+always called the wise men of their time about them.  But so it is.
+And when you don't dine at the royal table, there is always a knife
+and fork for you at the equerries' table:  where, I understand, all
+gifted men are made particularly welcome.
+
+But all men can't be gifted, Mr. Hood.  Neither scientific,
+literary, nor artistical powers are any more to be inherited than
+the property arising from scientific, literary, or artistic
+productions, which the law, with a beautiful imitation of nature,
+declines to protect in the second generation.  Very good, sir.
+Then, people are naturally very prone to cast about in their minds
+for other means of getting at Court Favour; and, watching the signs
+of the times, to hew out for themselves, or their descendants, the
+likeliest roads to that distinguished goal.
+
+Mr. Hood, it is pretty clear, from recent records in the Court
+Circular, that if a father wish to train up his son in the way he
+should go, to go to Court:  and cannot indenture him to be a
+scientific man, an author, or an artist, three courses are open to
+him.  He must endeavour by artificial means to make him a dwarf, a
+wild man, or a Boy Jones.
+
+Now, sir, this is the shoal and quicksand on which the constitution
+will go to pieces.
+
+I have made inquiry, Mr. Hood, and find that in my neighbourhood two
+families and a fraction out of every four, in the lower and middle
+classes of society, are studying and practising all conceivable arts
+to keep their infant children down.  Understand me.  I do not mean
+down in their numbers, or down in their precocity, but down in their
+growth, sir.  A destructive and subduing drink, compounded of gin
+and milk in equal quantities, such as is given to puppies to retard
+their growth:  not something short, but something shortening:  is
+administered to these young creatures many times a day.  An
+unnatural and artificial thirst is first awakened in these infants
+by meals of salt beef, bacon, anchovies, sardines, red herrings,
+shrimps, olives, pea-soup, and that description of diet; and when
+they screech for drink, in accents that might melt a heart of stone,
+which they do constantly (I allude to screeching, not to melting),
+this liquid is introduced into their too confiding stomachs.  At
+such an early age, and to so great an extent, is this custom of
+provoking thirst, then quenching it with a stunting drink, observed,
+that brine pap has already superseded the use of tops-and-bottoms;
+and wet-nurses, previously free from any kind of reproach, have been
+seen to stagger in the streets:  owing, sir, to the quantity of gin
+introduced into their systems, with a view to its gradual and
+natural conversion into the fluid I have already mentioned.
+
+Upon the best calculation I can make, this is going on, as I have
+said, in the proportion of about two families and a fraction in
+four.  In one more family and a fraction out of the same number,
+efforts are being made to reduce the children to a state of nature;
+and to inculcate, at a tender age, the love of raw flesh, train oil,
+new rum, and the acquisition of scalps.  Wild and outlandish dances
+are also in vogue (you will have observed the prevailing rage for
+the Polka); and savage cries and whoops are much indulged in (as you
+may discover, if you doubt it, in the House of Commons any night).
+Nay, some persons, Mr. Hood; and persons of some figure and
+distinction too; have already succeeded in breeding wild sons; who
+have been publicly shown in the Courts of Bankruptcy, and in police-
+offices, and in other commodious exhibition-rooms, with great
+effect, but who have not yet found favour at court; in consequence,
+as I infer, of the impression made by Mr. Rankin's wild men being
+too fresh and recent, to say nothing of Mr. Rankin's wild men being
+foreigners.
+
+I need not refer you, sir, to the late instance of the Ojibbeway
+Bride.  But I am credibly informed, that she is on the eve of
+retiring into a savage fastness, where she may bring forth and
+educate a wild family, who shall in course of time, by the dexterous
+use of the popularity they are certain to acquire at Windsor and St.
+James's, divide with dwarfs the principal offices of state, of
+patronage, and power, in the United Kingdom.
+
+Consider the deplorable consequences, Mr. Hood, which must result
+from these proceedings, and the encouragement they receive in the
+highest quarters.
+
+The dwarf being the favourite, sir, it is certain that the public
+mind will run in a great and eminent degree upon the production of
+dwarfs.  Perhaps the failures only will be brought up, wild.  The
+imagination goes a long way in these cases; and all that the
+imagination can do, will be done, and is doing.  You may convince
+yourself of this, by observing the condition of those ladies who
+take particular notice of General Tom Thumb at the Egyptian Hall,
+during his hours of performance.
+
+The rapid increase of dwarfs, will be first felt in her Majesty's
+recruiting department.  The standard will, of necessity, be lowered;
+the dwarfs will grow smaller and smaller; the vulgar expression "a
+man of his inches" will become a figure of fact, instead of a figure
+of speech; crack regiments, household-troops especially, will pick
+the smallest men from all parts of the country; and in the two
+little porticoes at the Horse Guards, two Tom Thumbs will be daily
+seen, doing duty, mounted on a pair of Shetland ponies.  Each of
+them will be relieved (as Tom Thumb is at this moment, in the
+intervals of his performance) by a wild man; and a British Grenadier
+will either go into a quart pot, or be an Old Boy, or Blue Gull, or
+Flying Bull, or some other savage chief of that nature.
+
+I will not expatiate upon the number of dwarfs who will be found
+representing Grecian statues in all parts of the metropolis; because
+I am inclined to think that this will be a change for the better;
+and that the engagement of two or three in Trafalgar Square will
+tend to the improvement of the public taste.
+
+The various genteel employments at Court being held by dwarfs, sir,
+it will be necessary to alter, in some respects, the present
+regulations.  It is quite clear that not even General Tom Thumb
+himself could preserve a becoming dignity on state occasions, if
+required to walk about with a scaffolding-pole under his arm;
+therefore the gold and silver sticks at present used, must be cut
+down into skewers of those precious metals; a twig of the black rod
+will be quite as much as can be conveniently preserved; the coral
+and bells of his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, will be used in
+lieu of the mace at present in existence; and that bauble (as Oliver
+Cromwell called it, Mr. Hood), its value being first calculated by
+Mr. Finlayson, the government actuary, will be placed to the credit
+of the National Debt.
+
+All this, sir, will be the death of the constitution.  But this is
+not all.  The constitution dies hard, perhaps; but there is enough
+disease impending, Mr. Hood, to kill it three times over.
+
+Wild men will get into the House of Commons.  Imagine that, sir!
+Imagine Strong Wind in the House of Commons!  It is not an easy
+matter to get through a debate now; but I say, imagine Strong Wind,
+speaking for the benefit of his constituents, upon the floor of the
+House of Commons! or imagine (which is pregnant with more awful
+consequences still) the ministry having an interpreter in the House
+of Commons, to tell the country, in English, what it really means!
+
+Why, sir, that in itself would be blowing the constitution out of
+the mortar in St. James's Park, and leaving nothing of it to be seen
+but smoke.
+
+But this, I repeat it, is the state of things to which we are fast
+tending, Mr. Hood; and I enclose my card for your private eye, that
+you may be quite certain of it.  What the condition of this country
+will be, when its standing army is composed of dwarfs, with here and
+there a wild man to throw its ranks into confusion, like the
+elephants employed in war in former times, I leave you to imagine,
+sir.  It may be objected by some hopeful jackanapeses, that the
+number of impressments in the navy, consequent upon the seizure of
+the Boy-Joneses, or remaining portion of the population ambitious of
+Court Favour, will be in itself sufficient to defend our Island from
+foreign invasion.  But I tell those jackanapeses, sir, that while I
+admit the wisdom of the Boy Jones precedent, of kidnapping such
+youths after the expiration of their several terms of imprisonment
+as vagabonds; hurrying them on board ship; and packing them off to
+sea again whenever they venture to take the air on shore; I deny the
+justice of the inference; inasmuch as it appears to me, that the
+inquiring minds of those young outlaws must naturally lead to their
+being hanged by the enemy as spies, early in their career; and
+before they shall have been rated on the books of our fleet as able
+seamen.
+
+Such, Mr. Hood, sir, is the prospect before us!  And unless you, and
+some of your friends who have influence at Court, can get up a giant
+as a forlorn hope, it is all over with this ill-fated land.
+
+In reference to your own affairs, sir, you will take whatever course
+may seem to you most prudent and advisable after this warning.  It
+is not a warning to be slighted:  that I happen to know.  I am
+informed by the gentleman who favours this, that you have recently
+been making some changes and improvements in your Magazine, and are,
+in point of fact, starting afresh.  If I be well informed, and this
+be really so, rely upon it that you cannot start too small, sir.
+Come down to the duodecimo size instantly, Mr. Hood.  Take time by
+the forelock; and, reducing the stature of your Magazine every
+month, bring it at last to the dimensions of the little almanack no
+longer issued, I regret to say, by the ingenious Mr. Schloss:  which
+was invisible to the naked eye until examined through a little eye-
+glass.
+
+You project, I am told, the publication of a new novel, by yourself,
+in the pages of your Magazine.  A word in your ear.  I am not a
+young man, sir, and have had some experience.  Don't put your own
+name on the title-page; it would be suicide and madness.  Treat with
+General Tom Thumb, Mr. Hood, for the use of his name on any terms.
+If the gallant general should decline to treat with you, get Mr.
+Barnum's name, which is the next best in the market.  And when,
+through this politic course, you shall have received, in presents, a
+richly jewelled set of tablets from Buckingham Palace, and a gold
+watch and appendages from Marlborough House; and when those valuable
+trinkets shall be left under a glass case at your publisher's for
+inspection by your friends and the public in general;--then, sir,
+you will do me the justice of remembering this communication.
+
+It is unnecessary for me to add, after what I have observed in the
+course of this letter, that I am not,--sir, ever your
+
+CONSTANT READER.
+
+TUESDAY, 23rd April 1844.
+
+P.S.--Impress it upon your contributors that they cannot be too
+short; and that if not dwarfish, they must be wild--or at all events
+not tame.
+
+
+
+CRIME AND EDUCATION
+
+
+
+I offer no apology for entreating the attention of the readers of
+The Daily News to an effort which has been making for some three
+years and a half, and which is making now, to introduce among the
+most miserable and neglected outcasts in London, some knowledge of
+the commonest principles of morality and religion; to commence their
+recognition as immortal human creatures, before the Gaol Chaplain
+becomes their only schoolmaster; to suggest to Society that its duty
+to this wretched throng, foredoomed to crime and punishment,
+rightfully begins at some distance from the police office; and that
+the careless maintenance from year to year, in this, the capital
+city of the world, of a vast hopeless nursery of ignorance, misery
+and vice; a breeding place for the hulks and jails:  is horrible to
+contemplate.
+
+This attempt is being made in certain of the most obscure and
+squalid parts of the Metropolis, where rooms are opened, at night,
+for the gratuitous instruction of all comers, children or adults,
+under the title of RAGGED SCHOOLS.  The name implies the purpose.
+They who are too ragged, wretched, filthy, and forlorn, to enter any
+other place:  who could gain admission into no charity school, and
+who would be driven from any church door; are invited to come in
+here, and find some people not depraved, willing to teach them
+something, and show them some sympathy, and stretch a hand out,
+which is not the iron hand of Law, for their correction.
+
+Before I describe a visit of my own to a Ragged School, and urge the
+readers of this letter for God's sake to visit one themselves, and
+think of it (which is my main object), let me say, that I know the
+prisons of London well; that I have visited the largest of them more
+times than I could count; and that the children in them are enough
+to break the heart and hope of any man.  I have never taken a
+foreigner or a stranger of any kind to one of these establishments
+but I have seen him so moved at sight of the child offenders, and so
+affected by the contemplation of their utter renouncement and
+desolation outside the prison walls, that he has been as little able
+to disguise his emotion, as if some great grief had suddenly burst
+upon him.  Mr. Chesterton and Lieutenant Tracey (than whom more
+intelligent and humane Governors of Prisons it would be hard, if not
+impossible, to find) know perfectly well that these children pass
+and repass through the prisons all their lives; that they are never
+taught; that the first distinctions between right and wrong are,
+from their cradles, perfectly confounded and perverted in their
+minds; that they come of untaught parents, and will give birth to
+another untaught generation; that in exact proportion to their
+natural abilities, is the extent and scope of their depravity; and
+that there is no escape or chance for them in any ordinary
+revolution of human affairs.  Happily, there are schools in these
+prisons now.  If any readers doubt how ignorant the children are,
+let them visit those schools and see them at their tasks, and hear
+how much they knew when they were sent there.  If they would know
+the produce of this seed, let them see a class of men and boys
+together, at their books (as I have seen them in the House of
+Correction for this county of Middlesex), and mark how painfully the
+full grown felons toil at the very shape and form of letters; their
+ignorance being so confirmed and solid.  The contrast of this labour
+in the men, with the less blunted quickness of the boys; the latent
+shame and sense of degradation struggling through their dull
+attempts at infant lessons; and the universal eagerness to learn,
+impress me, in this passing retrospect, more painfully than I can
+tell.
+
+For the instruction, and as a first step in the reformation, of such
+unhappy beings, the Ragged Schools were founded.  I was first
+attracted to the subject, and indeed was first made conscious of
+their existence, about two years ago, or more, by seeing an
+advertisement in the papers dated from West Street, Saffron Hill,
+stating "That a room had been opened and supported in that wretched
+neighbourhood for upwards of twelve months, where religious
+instruction had been imparted to the poor", and explaining in a few
+words what was meant by Ragged Schools as a generic term, including,
+then, four or five similar places of instruction.  I wrote to the
+masters of this particular school to make some further inquiries,
+and went myself soon afterwards.
+
+It was a hot summer night; and the air of Field Lane and Saffron
+Hill was not improved by such weather, nor were the people in those
+streets very sober or honest company.  Being unacquainted with the
+exact locality of the school, I was fain to make some inquiries
+about it.  These were very jocosely received in general; but
+everybody knew where it was, and gave the right direction to it.
+The prevailing idea among the loungers (the greater part of them the
+very sweepings of the streets and station houses) seemed to be, that
+the teachers were quixotic, and the school upon the whole "a lark".
+But there was certainly a kind of rough respect for the intention,
+and (as I have said) nobody denied the school or its whereabouts, or
+refused assistance in directing to it.
+
+It consisted at that time of either two or three--I forget which--
+miserable rooms, upstairs in a miserable house.  In the best of
+these, the pupils in the female school were being taught to read and
+write; and though there were among the number, many wretched
+creatures steeped in degradation to the lips, they were tolerably
+quiet, and listened with apparent earnestness and patience to their
+instructors.  The appearance of this room was sad and melancholy, of
+course--how could it be otherwise!--but, on the whole, encouraging.
+
+The close, low chamber at the back, in which the boys were crowded,
+was so foul and stifling as to be, at first, almost insupportable.
+But its moral aspect was so far worse than its physical, that this
+was soon forgotten.  Huddled together on a bench about the room, and
+shown out by some flaring candles stuck against the walls, were a
+crowd of boys, varying from mere infants to young men; sellers of
+fruit, herbs, lucifer-matches, flints; sleepers under the dry arches
+of bridges; young thieves and beggars--with nothing natural to youth
+about them:  with nothing frank, ingenuous, or pleasant in their
+faces; low-browed, vicious, cunning, wicked; abandoned of all help
+but this; speeding downward to destruction; and UNUTTERABLY
+IGNORANT.
+
+This, Reader, was one room as full as it could hold; but these were
+only grains in sample of a Multitude that are perpetually sifting
+through these schools; in sample of a Multitude who had within them
+once, and perhaps have now, the elements of men as good as you or I,
+and maybe infinitely better; in sample of a Multitude among whose
+doomed and sinful ranks (oh, think of this, and think of them!) the
+child of any man upon this earth, however lofty his degree, must, as
+by Destiny and Fate, be found, if, at its birth, it were consigned
+to such an infancy and nurture, as these fallen creatures had!
+
+This was the Class I saw at the Ragged School.  They could not be
+trusted with books; they could only be instructed orally; they were
+difficult of reduction to anything like attention, obedience, or
+decent behaviour; their benighted ignorance in reference to the
+Deity, or to any social duty (how could they guess at any social
+duty, being so discarded by all social teachers but the gaoler and
+the hangman!) was terrible to see.  Yet, even here, and among these,
+something had been done already.  The Ragged School was of recent
+date and very poor; but he had inculcated some association with the
+name of the Almighty, which was not an oath, and had taught them to
+look forward in a hymn (they sang it) to another life, which would
+correct the miseries and woes of this.
+
+The new exposition I found in this Ragged School, of the frightful
+neglect by the State of those whom it punishes so constantly, and
+whom it might, as easily and less expensively, instruct and save;
+together with the sight I had seen there, in the heart of London;
+haunted me, and finally impelled me to an endeavour to bring these
+Institutions under the notice of the Government; with some faint
+hope that the vastness of the question would supersede the Theology
+of the schools, and that the Bench of Bishops might adjust the
+latter question, after some small grant had been conceded.  I made
+the attempt; and have heard no more of the subject from that hour.
+
+The perusal of an advertisement in yesterday's paper, announcing a
+lecture on the Ragged Schools last night, has led me into these
+remarks.  I might easily have given them another form; but I address
+this letter to you, in the hope that some few readers in whom I have
+awakened an interest, as a writer of fiction, may be, by that means,
+attracted to the subject, who might otherwise, unintentionally, pass
+it over.
+
+I have no desire to praise the system pursued in the Ragged Schools;
+which is necessarily very imperfect, if indeed there be one.  So far
+as I have any means of judging of what is taught there, I should
+individually object to it, as not being sufficiently secular, and as
+presenting too many religious mysteries and difficulties, to minds
+not sufficiently prepared for their reception.  But I should very
+imperfectly discharge in myself the duty I wish to urge and impress
+on others, if I allowed any such doubt of mine to interfere with my
+appreciation of the efforts of these teachers, or my true wish to
+promote them by any slight means in my power.  Irritating topics, of
+all kinds, are equally far removed from my purpose and intention.
+But, I adjure those excellent persons who aid, munificently, in the
+building of New Churches, to think of these Ragged Schools; to
+reflect whether some portion of their rich endowments might not be
+spared for such a purpose; to contemplate, calmly, the necessity of
+beginning at the beginning; to consider for themselves where the
+Christian Religion most needs and most suggests immediate help and
+illustration; and not to decide on any theory or hearsay, but to go
+themselves into the Prisons and the Ragged Schools, and form their
+own conclusions.  They will be shocked, pained, and repelled, by
+much that they learn there; but nothing they can learn will be one-
+thousandth part so shocking, painful, and repulsive, as the
+continuance for one year more of these things as they have been for
+too many years already.
+
+Anticipating that some of the more prominent facts connected with
+the history of the Ragged Schools, may become known to the readers
+of The Daily News through your account of the lecture in question, I
+abstain (though in possession of some such information) from
+pursuing the question further, at this time.  But if I should see
+occasion, I will take leave to return to it.
+
+
+
+CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
+
+
+
+I will take for the subject of this letter, the effect of Capital
+Punishment on the commission of crime, or rather of murder; the only
+crime with one exception (and that a rare one) to which it is now
+applied.  Its effect in preventing crime, I will reserve for another
+letter:  and a few of the more striking illustrations of each aspect
+of the subject, for a concluding one.
+
+The effect of Capital Punishment on the commission of Murder.
+
+Some murders are committed in hot blood and furious rage; some, in
+deliberate revenge; some, in terrible despair; some (but not many)
+for mere gain; some, for the removal of an object dangerous to the
+murderer's peace or good name; some, to win a monstrous notoriety.
+
+On murders committed in rage, in the despair of strong affection (as
+when a starving child is murdered by its parent) or for gain, I
+believe the punishment of death to have no effect in the least.  In
+the two first cases, the impulse is a blind and wild one, infinitely
+beyond the reach of any reference to the punishment.  In the last,
+there is little calculation beyond the absorbing greed of the money
+to be got.  Courvoisier, for example, might have robbed his master
+with greater safety, and with fewer chances of detection, if he had
+not murdered him.  But, his calculations going to the gain and not
+to the loss, he had no balance for the consequences of what he did.
+So, it would have been more safe and prudent in the woman who was
+hanged a few weeks since, for the murder in Westminster, to have
+simply robbed her old companion in an unguarded moment, as in her
+sleep.  But, her calculation going to the gain of what she took to
+be a Bank note; and the poor old woman living between her and the
+gain; she murdered her.
+
+On murders committed in deliberate revenge, or to remove a stumbling
+block in the murderer's path, or in an insatiate craving for
+notoriety, is there reason to suppose that the punishment of death
+has the direct effect of an incentive and an impulse?
+
+A murder is committed in deliberate revenge.  The murderer is at no
+trouble to prepare his train of circumstances, takes little or no
+pains to escape, is quite cool and collected, perfectly content to
+deliver himself up to the Police, makes no secret of his guilt, but
+boldly says, "I killed him.  I'm glad of it.  I meant to do it.  I
+am ready to die."  There was such a case the other day.  There was
+such another case not long ago.  There are such cases frequently.
+It is the commonest first exclamation on being seized.  Now, what is
+this but a false arguing of the question, announcing a foregone
+conclusion, expressly leading to the crime, and inseparably arising
+out of the Punishment of Death?  "I took his life.  I give up mine
+to pay for it.  Life for life; blood for blood.  I have done the
+crime.  I am ready with the atonement.  I know all about it; it's a
+fair bargain between me and the law.  Here am I to execute my part
+of it; and what more is to be said or done?"  It is the very essence
+of the maintenance of this punishment for murder, that it does set
+life against life.  It is in the essence of a stupid, weak, or
+otherwise ill-regulated mind (of such a murderer's mind, in short),
+to recognise in this set off, a something that diminishes the base
+and coward character of murder.  "In a pitched battle, I, a common
+man, may kill my adversary, but he may kill me.  In a duel, a
+gentleman may shoot his opponent through the head, but the opponent
+may shoot him too, and this makes it fair.  Very well.  I take this
+man's life for a reason I have, or choose to think I have, and the
+law takes mine.  The law says, and the clergyman says, there must be
+blood for blood and life for life.  Here it is.  I pay the penalty."
+
+A mind incapable, or confounded in its perceptions--and you must
+argue with reference to such a mind, or you could not have such a
+murder--may not only establish on these grounds an idea of strict
+justice and fair reparation, but a stubborn and dogged fortitude and
+foresight that satisfy it hugely.  Whether the fact be really so, or
+not, is a question I would be content to rest, alone, on the number
+of cases of revengeful murder in which this is well known, without
+dispute, to have been the prevailing demeanour of the criminal:  and
+in which such speeches and such absurd reasoning have been
+constantly uppermost with him.  "Blood for blood", and "life for
+life", and such like balanced jingles, have passed current in
+people's mouths, from legislators downwards, until they have been
+corrupted into "tit for tat", and acted on.
+
+Next, come the murders done, to sweep out of the way a dreaded or
+detested object.  At the bottom of this class of crimes, there is a
+slow, corroding, growing hate.  Violent quarrels are commonly found
+to have taken place between the murdered person and the murderer:
+usually of opposite sexes.  There are witnesses to old scenes of
+reproach and recrimination, in which they were the actors; and the
+murderer has been heard to say, in this or that coarse phrase, "that
+he wouldn't mind killing her, though he should be hanged for it"--in
+these cases, the commonest avowal.
+
+It seems to me, that in this well-known scrap of evidence, there is
+a deeper meaning than is usually attached to it.  I do not know, but
+it may be--I have a strong suspicion that it is--a clue to the slow
+growth of the crime, and its gradual development in the mind.  More
+than this; a clue to the mental connection of the deed, with the
+punishment to which the doer of that deed is liable, until the two,
+conjoined, give birth to monstrous and misshapen Murder.
+
+The idea of murder, in such a case, like that of self-destruction in
+the great majority of instances, is not a new one.  It may have
+presented itself to the disturbed mind in a dim shape and afar off;
+but it has been there.  After a quarrel, or with some strong sense
+upon him of irritation or discomfort arising out of the continuance
+of this life in his path, the man has brooded over the unformed
+desire to take it.  "Though he should be hanged for it."  With the
+entrance of the Punishment into his thoughts, the shadow of the
+fatal beam begins to attend--not on himself, but on the object of
+his hate.  At every new temptation, it is there, stronger and
+blacker yet, trying to terrify him.  When she defies or threatens
+him, the scaffold seems to be her strength and "vantage ground".
+Let her not be too sure of that; "though he should be hanged for
+it".
+
+Thus, he begins to raise up, in the contemplation of this death by
+hanging, a new and violent enemy to brave.  The prospect of a slow
+and solitary expiation would have no congeniality with his wicked
+thoughts, but this throttling and strangling has.  There is always
+before him, an ugly, bloody, scarecrow phantom, that champions her,
+as it were, and yet shows him, in a ghastly way, the example of
+murder.  Is she very weak, or very trustful in him, or infirm, or
+old?  It gives a hideous courage to what would be mere slaughter
+otherwise; for there it is, a presence always about her, darkly
+menacing him with that penalty whose murky secret has a fascination
+for all secret and unwholesome thoughts.  And when he struggles with
+his victim at the last, "though he should be hanged for it", it is a
+merciless wrestle, not with one weak life only, but with that ever-
+haunting, ever-beckoning shadow of the gallows, too; and with a
+fierce defiance to it, after their long survey of each other, to
+come on and do its worst.
+
+Present this black idea of violence to a bad mind contemplating
+violence; hold up before a man remotely compassing the death of
+another person, the spectacle of his own ghastly and untimely death
+by man's hands; and out of the depths of his own nature you shall
+assuredly raise up that which lures and tempts him on.  The laws
+which regulate those mysteries have not been studied or cared for,
+by the maintainers of this law; but they are paramount and will
+always assert their power.
+
+Out of one hundred and sixty-seven persons under sentence of Death
+in England, questioned at different times, in the course of years,
+by an English clergyman in the performance of his duty, there were
+only three who had not been spectators of executions.
+
+We come, now, to the consideration of those murders which are
+committed, or attempted, with no other object than the attainment of
+an infamous notoriety.  That this class of crimes has its origin in
+the Punishment of Death, we cannot question; because (as we have
+already seen, and shall presently establish by another proof) great
+notoriety and interest attach, and are generally understood to
+attach, only to those criminals who are in danger of being executed.
+
+One of the most remarkable instances of murder originating in mad
+self-conceit; and of the murderer's part in the repulsive drama, in
+which the law appears at such great disadvantage to itself and to
+society, being acted almost to the last with a self-complacency that
+would be horribly ludicrous if it were not utterly revolting; is
+presented in the case of Hocker.
+
+Here is an insolent, flippant, dissolute youth:  aping the man of
+intrigue and levity:  over-dressed, over-confident, inordinately
+vain of his personal appearance:  distinguished as to his hair,
+cane, snuff-box, and singing-voice:  and unhappily the son of a
+working shoemaker.  Bent on loftier flights than such a poor house-
+swallow as a teacher in a Sunday-school can take; and having no
+truth, industry, perseverance, or other dull work-a-day quality, to
+plume his wings withal; he casts about him, in his jaunty way, for
+some mode of distinguishing himself--some means of getting that head
+of hair into the print-shops; of having something like justice done
+to his singing-voice and fine intellect; of making the life and
+adventures of Thomas Hocker remarkable; and of getting up some
+excitement in connection with that slighted piece of biography.  The
+Stage?  No.  Not feasible.  There has always been a conspiracy
+against the Thomas Hockers, in that kind of effort.  It has been the
+same with Authorship in prose and poetry.  Is there nothing else?  A
+Murder, now, would make a noise in the papers!  There is the gallows
+to be sure; but without that, it would be nothing.  Short of that,
+it wouldn't be fame.  Well!  We must all die at one time or other;
+and to die game, and have it in print, is just the thing for a man
+of spirit.  They always die game at the Minor Theatres and the
+Saloons, and the people like it very much.  Thurtell, too, died very
+game, and made a capital speech when he was tried.  There's all
+about it in a book at the cigar-shop now.  Come, Tom, get your name
+up!  Let it be a dashing murder that shall keep the wood-engravers
+at it for the next two months.  You are the boy to go through with
+it, and interest the town!
+
+The miserable wretch, inflated by this lunatic conceit, arranges his
+whole plan for publication and effect.  It is quite an epitome of
+his experience of the domestic melodrama or penny novel.  There is
+the Victim Friend; the mysterious letter of the injured Female to
+the Victim Friend; the romantic spot for the Death-Struggle by
+night; the unexpected appearance of Thomas Hocker to the Policeman;
+the parlour of the Public House, with Thomas Hocker reading the
+paper to a strange gentleman; the Family Apartment, with a song by
+Thomas Hocker; the Inquest Room, with Thomas Hocker boldly looking
+on; the interior of the Marylebone Theatre, with Thomas Hocker taken
+into custody; the Police Office with Thomas Hocker "affable" to the
+spectators; the interior of Newgate, with Thomas Hocker preparing
+his defence; the Court, where Thomas Hocker, with his dancing-master
+airs, is put upon his trial, and complimented by the Judge; the
+Prosecution, the Defence, the Verdict, the Black Cap, the Sentence--
+each of them a line in any Playbill, and how bold a line in Thomas
+Hocker's life!
+
+It is worthy of remark, that the nearer he approaches to the
+gallows--the great last scene to which the whole of these effects
+have been working up--the more the overweening conceit of the poor
+wretch shows itself; the more he feels that he is the hero of the
+hour; the more audaciously and recklessly he lies, in supporting the
+character.  In public--at the condemned sermon--he deports himself
+as becomes the man whose autographs are precious, whose portraits
+are innumerable; in memory of whom, whole fences and gates have been
+borne away, in splinters, from the scene of murder.  He knows that
+the eyes of Europe are upon him; but he is not proud--only graceful.
+He bows, like the first gentleman in Europe, to the turnkey who
+brings him a glass of water; and composes his clothes and hassock as
+carefully, as good Madame Blaize could do.  In private--within the
+walls of the condemned cell--every word and action of his waning
+life, is a lie.  His whole time is divided between telling lies and
+writing them.  If he ever have another thought, it is for his
+genteel appearance on the scaffold; as when he begs the barber "not
+to cut his hair too short, or they won't know him when he comes
+out".  His last proceeding but one is to write two romantic love
+letters to women who have no existence.  His last proceeding of all
+(but less characteristic, though the only true one) is to swoon
+away, miserably, in the arms of the attendants, and be hanged up
+like a craven dog.
+
+Is not such a history, from first to last, a most revolting and
+disgraceful one; and can the student of it bring himself to believe
+that it ever could have place in any record of facts, or that the
+miserable chief-actor in it could have ever had a motive for his
+arrogant wickedness, but for the comment and the explanation which
+the Punishment of Death supplies!
+
+It is not a solitary case, nor is it a prodigy, but a mere specimen
+of a class.  The case of Oxford, who fired at Her Majesty in the
+Park, will be found, on examination, to resemble it very nearly, in
+the essential feature.  There is no proved pretence whatever for
+regarding him as mad; other than that he was like this malefactor,
+brimful of conceit, and a desire to become, even at the cost of the
+gallows (the only cost within his reach) the talk of the town.  He
+had less invention than Hocker, and perhaps was not so deliberately
+bad; but his attempt was a branch of the same tree, and it has its
+root in the ground where the scaffold is erected.
+
+Oxford had his imitators.  Let it never be forgotten in the
+consideration of this part of the subject, how they were stopped.
+So long as attempts invested them with the distinction of being in
+danger of death at the hangman's hands, so long did they spring up.
+When the penalty of death was removed, and a mean and humiliating
+punishment substituted in its place, the race was at an end, and
+ceased to be.
+
+
+II
+
+
+We come, now, to consider the effect of Capital Punishment in the
+prevention of crime.
+
+Does it prevent crime in those who attend executions?
+
+There never is (and there never was) an execution at the Old Bailey
+in London, but the spectators include two large classes of thieves--
+one class who go there as they would go to a dog-fight, or any other
+brutal sport, for the attraction and excitement of the spectacle;
+the other who make it a dry matter of business, and mix with the
+crowd solely to pick pockets.  Add to these, the dissolute, the
+drunken, the most idle, profligate, and abandoned of both sexes--
+some moody ill-conditioned minds, drawn thither by a fearful
+interest--and some impelled by curiosity; of whom the greater part
+are of an age and temperament rendering the gratification of that
+curiosity highly dangerous to themselves and to society--and the
+great elements of the concourse are stated.
+
+Nor is this assemblage peculiar to London.  It is the same in
+country towns, allowing for the different statistics of the
+population.  It is the same in America.  I was present at an
+execution in Rome, for a most treacherous and wicked murder, and not
+only saw the same kind of assemblage there, but, wearing what is
+called a shooting-coat, with a great many pockets in it, felt
+innumerable hands busy in every one of them, close to the scaffold.
+
+I have already mentioned that out of one hundred and sixty-seven
+convicts under sentence of death, questioned at different times in
+the performance of his duty by an English clergyman, there were only
+three who had not been spectators of executions.  Mr. Wakefield, in
+his Facts relating to the Punishment of Death, goes into the
+working, as it were, of this sum.  His testimony is extremely
+valuable, because it is the evidence of an educated and observing
+man, who, before having personal knowledge of the subject and of
+Newgate, was quite satisfied that the Punishment of Death should
+continue, but who, when he gained that experience, exerted himself
+to the utmost for its abolition, even at the pain of constant public
+reference in his own person to his own imprisonment.  "It cannot be
+egotism", he reasonably observes, "that prompts a man to speak of
+himself in connection with Newgate."
+
+"Whoever will undergo the pain," says Mr. Wakefield, "of witnessing
+the public destruction of a fellow-creature's life, in London, must
+be perfectly satisfied that in the great mass of spectators, the
+effect of the punishment is to excite sympathy for the criminal and
+hatred of the law. . . I am inclined to believe that the criminals
+of London, spoken of as a class and allowing for exceptions, take
+the same sort of delight in witnessing executions, as the sportsman
+and soldier find in the dangers of hunting and war. . . I am
+confident that few Old Bailey Sessions pass without the trial of a
+boy, whose first thought of crime occurred whilst he was witnessing
+an execution. . . And one grown man, of great mental powers and
+superior education, who was acquitted of a charge of forgery,
+assured me that the first idea of committing a forgery occurred to
+him at the moment when he was accidentally witnessing the execution
+of Fauntleroy.  To which it may be added, that Fauntleroy is said to
+have made precisely the same declaration in reference to the origin
+of his own criminality.
+
+But one convict "who was within an ace of being hanged", among the
+many with whom Mr. Wakefield conversed, seems to me to have
+unconsciously put a question which the advocates of Capital
+Punishment would find it very difficult indeed to answer.  "Have you
+often seen an execution?" asked Mr. Wakefield.  "Yes, often."  "Did
+it not frighten you?"  "No.  Why should it?"
+
+It is very easy and very natural to turn from this ruffian, shocked
+by the hardened retort; but answer his question, why should it?
+Should he be frightened by the sight of a dead man?  We are born to
+die, he says, with a careless triumph.  We are not born to the
+treadmill, or to servitude and slavery, or to banishment; but the
+executioner has done no more for that criminal than nature may do
+tomorrow for the judge, and will certainly do, in her own good time,
+for judge and jury, counsel and witnesses, turnkeys, hangman, and
+all.  Should he be frightened by the manner of the death?  It is
+horrible, truly, so horrible, that the law, afraid or ashamed of its
+own deed, hides the face of the struggling wretch it slays; but does
+this fact naturally awaken in such a man, terror--or defiance?  Let
+the same man speak.  "What did you think then?" asked Mr. Wakefield.
+"Think?  Why, I thought it was a--shame."
+
+Disgust and indignation, or recklessness and indifference, or a
+morbid tendency to brood over the sight until temptation is
+engendered by it, are the inevitable consequences of the spectacle,
+according to the difference of habit and disposition in those who
+behold it.  Why should it frighten or deter?  We know it does not.
+We know it from the police reports, and from the testimony of those
+who have experience of prisons and prisoners, and we may know it, on
+the occasion of an execution, by the evidence of our own senses; if
+we will be at the misery of using them for such a purpose.  But why
+should it?  Who would send his child or his apprentice, or what
+tutor would send his scholars, or what master would send his
+servants, to be deterred from vice by the spectacle of an execution?
+If it be an example to criminals, and to criminals only, why are not
+the prisoners in Newgate brought out to see the show before the
+debtors' door?  Why, while they are made parties to the condemned
+sermon, are they rigidly excluded from the improving postscript of
+the gallows?  Because an execution is well known to be an utterly
+useless, barbarous, and brutalising sight, and because the sympathy
+of all beholders, who have any sympathy at all, is certain to be
+always with the criminal, and never with the law.
+
+I learn from the newspaper accounts of every execution, how Mr. So-
+and-so, and Mr. Somebody else, and Mr. So-forth shook hands with the
+culprit, but I never find them shaking hands with the hangman.  All
+kinds of attention and consideration are lavished on the one; but
+the other is universally avoided, like a pestilence.  I want to know
+why so much sympathy is expended on the man who kills another in the
+vehemence of his own bad passions, and why the man who kills him in
+the name of the law is shunned and fled from?  Is it because the
+murderer is going to die?  Then by no means put him to death.  Is it
+because the hangman executes a law, which, when they once come near
+it face to face, all men instinctively revolt from?  Then by all
+means change it.  There is, there can be, no prevention in such a
+law.
+
+It may be urged that Public Executions are not intended for the
+benefit of those dregs of society who habitually attend them.  This
+is an absurdity, to which the obvious answer is, So much the worse.
+If they be not considered with reference to that class of persons,
+comprehending a great host of criminals in various stages of
+development, they ought to be, and must be.  To lose sight of that
+consideration is to be irrational, unjust, and cruel.  All other
+punishments are especially devised, with a reference to the rooted
+habits, propensities, and antipathies of criminals.  And shall it be
+said, out of Bedlam, that this last punishment of all is alone to be
+made an exception from the rule, even where it is shown to be a
+means of propagating vice and crime?
+
+But there may be people who do not attend executions, to whom the
+general fame and rumour of such scenes is an example, and a means of
+deterring from crime.
+
+Who are they?  We have seen that around Capital Punishment there
+lingers a fascination, urging weak and bad people towards it, and
+imparting an interest to details connected with it, and with
+malefactors awaiting it or suffering it, which even good and well-
+disposed people cannot withstand.  We know that last-dying speeches
+and Newgate calendars are the favourite literature of very low
+intellects.  The gallows is not appealed to as an example in the
+instruction of youth (unless they are training for it); nor are
+there condensed accounts of celebrated executions for the use of
+national schools.  There is a story in an old spelling-book of a
+certain Don't Care who was hanged at last, but it is not understood
+to have had any remarkable effect on crimes or executions in the
+generation to which it belonged, and with which it has passed away.
+Hogarth's idle apprentice is hanged; but the whole scene--with the
+unmistakable stout lady, drunk and pious, in the cast; the
+quarrelling, blasphemy, lewdness, and uproar; Tiddy Doll vending his
+gingerbread, and the boys picking his pocket--is a bitter satire on
+the great example; as efficient then, as now.
+
+Is it efficient to prevent crime?  The parliamentary returns
+demonstrate that it is not.  I was engaged in making some extracts
+from these documents, when I found them so well abstracted in one of
+the papers published by the committee on this subject established at
+Aylesbury last year, by the humane exertions of Lord Nugent, that I
+am glad to quote the general results from its pages:
+
+
+"In 1843 a return was laid on the table of the House of the
+commitments and executions for murder in England and Wales during
+the thirty years ending with December 1842, divided into five
+periods of six years each.  It shows that in the last six years,
+from 1836 to 1842, during which there were only 50 executions, the
+commitments for murder were fewer by 61 than in the six years
+preceding with 74 executions; fewer by 63 than in the six years
+ending 1830 with 75 executions; fewer by 56 than in the six years
+ending 1824 with 94 executions; and fewer by 93 than in the six
+years ending 1818 when there was no less a number of executions than
+122.  But it may be said, perhaps, that in the inference we draw
+from this return, we are substituting cause for effect, and that in
+each successive cycle, the number of murders decreased in
+consequence of the example of public executions in the cycle
+immediately preceding, and that it was for that reason there were
+fewer commitments.  This might be said with some colour of truth, if
+the example had been taken from two successive cycles only.  But
+when the comparative examples adduced are of no less than five
+successive cycles, and the result gradually and constantly
+progressive in the same direction, the relation of facts to each
+other is determined beyond all ground for dispute, namely, that the
+number of these crimes has diminished in consequence of the
+diminution of the number of executions.  More especially when it is
+also remembered that it was immediately after the first of these
+cycles of five years, when there had been the greatest number of
+executions and the greatest number of murders, that the greatest
+number of persons were suddenly cast loose upon the country, without
+employ, by the reduction of the Army and Navy; that then came
+periods of great distress and great disturbance in the agricultural
+and manufacturing districts; and above all, that it was during the
+subsequent cycles that the most important mitigations were effected
+in the law, and that the Punishment of Death was taken away not only
+for crimes of stealth, such as cattle and horse stealing and
+forgery, of which crimes corresponding statistics show likewise a
+corresponding decrease, but for the crimes of violence too, tending
+to murder, such as are many of the incendiary offences, and such as
+are highway robbery and burglary.  But another return, laid before
+the House at the same time, bears upon our argument, if possible,
+still more conclusively.  In table 11 we have only the years which
+have occurred since 1810, in which all persons convicted of murder
+suffered death; and, compared with these an equal number of years in
+which the smallest proportion of persons convicted were executed.
+In the first case there were 66 persons convicted, all of whom
+underwent the penalty of death; in the second 83 were convicted, of
+whom 31 only were executed.  Now see how these two very different
+methods of dealing with the crime of murder affected the commission
+of it in the years immediately following.  The number of commitments
+for murder, in the four years immediately following those in which
+all persons convicted were executed, was 270.
+
+"In the four years immediately following those in which little more
+than one-third of the persons convicted were executed, there were
+but 222, being 48 less.  If we compare the commitments in the
+following years with those in the first years, we shall find that,
+immediately after the examples of unsparing execution, the crime
+increased nearly 13 per cent., and that after commutation was the
+practice and capital punishment the exception, it decreased 17 per
+cent.
+
+"In the same parliamentary return is an account of the commitments
+and executions in London and Middlesex, spread over a space of 32
+years, ending in 1842, divided into two cycles of 16 years each.  In
+the first of these, 34 persons were convicted of murder, all of whom
+were executed.  In the second, 27 were convicted, and only 17
+executed.  The commitments for murder during the latter long period,
+with 17 executions, were more than one half fewer than they had been
+in the former long period with exactly double the number of
+executions.  This appears to us to be as conclusive upon our
+argument as any statistical illustration can be upon any argument
+professing to place successive events in the relation of cause and
+effect to each other.  How justly then is it said in that able and
+useful periodical work, now in the course of publication at Glasgow,
+under the name of the Magazine of Popular Information on Capital and
+Secondary Punishment, 'the greater the number of executions, the
+greater the number of murders; the smaller the number of executions,
+the smaller the number of murders.  The lives of her Majesty's
+subjects are less safe with a hundred executions a year than with
+fifty; less safe with fifty than with twenty-five.'"
+
+
+Similar results have followed from rendering public executions more
+and more infrequent, in Tuscany, in Prussia, in France, in Belgium.
+Wherever capital punishments are diminished in their number, there,
+crimes diminish in their number too.
+
+But the very same advocates of the punishment of Death who contend,
+in the teeth of all facts and figures, that it does prevent crime,
+contend in the same breath against its abolition because it does
+not!  "There are so many bad murders," say they, "and they follow in
+such quick succession, that the Punishment must not be repealed."
+Why, is not this a reason, among others, for repealing it?  Does it
+not go to show that it is ineffective as an example; that it fails
+to prevent crime; and that it is wholly inefficient to stay that
+imitation, or contagion, call it what you please, which brings one
+murder on the heels of another?
+
+One forgery came crowding on another's heels in the same way, when
+the same punishment attached to that crime.  Since it has been
+removed, forgeries have diminished in a most remarkable degree.  Yet
+within five and thirty years, Lord Eldon, with tearful solemnity,
+imagined in the House of Lords as a possibility for their Lordships
+to shudder at, that the time might come when some visionary and
+morbid person might even propose the abolition of the punishment of
+Death for forgery.  And when it was proposed, Lords Lyndhurst,
+Wynford, Tenterden, and Eldon--all Law Lords--opposed it.
+
+The same Lord Tenterden manfully said, on another occasion and
+another question, that he was glad the subject of the amendment of
+the laws had been taken up by Mr. Peel, "who had not been bred to
+the law; for those who were, were rendered dull, by habit, to many
+of its defects!"  I would respectfully submit, in extension of this
+text, that a criminal judge is an excellent witness against the
+Punishment of Death, but a bad witness in its favour; and I will
+reserve this point for a few remarks in the next, concluding,
+Letter.
+
+
+III
+
+
+The last English Judge, I believe, who gave expression to a public
+and judicial opinion in favour of the punishment of Death, is Mr.
+Justice Coleridge, who, in charging the Grand Jury at Hertford last
+year, took occasion to lament the presence of serious crimes in the
+calendar, and to say that he feared that they were referable to the
+comparative infrequency of Capital Punishment.
+
+It is not incompatible with the utmost deference and respect for an
+authority so eminent, to say that, in this, Mr. Justice Coleridge
+was not supported by facts, but quite the reverse.  He went out of
+his way to found a general assumption on certain very limited and
+partial grounds, and even on those grounds was wrong.  For among the
+few crimes which he instanced, murder stood prominently forth.  Now
+persons found guilty of murder are more certainly and unsparingly
+hanged at this time, as the Parliamentary Returns demonstrate, than
+such criminals ever were.  So how can the decline of public
+executions affect that class of crimes?  As to persons committing
+murder, and yet not found guilty of it by juries, they escape solely
+because there are many public executions--not because there are none
+or few.
+
+But when I submit that a criminal judge is an excellent witness
+against Capital Punishment, but a bad witness in its favour, I do so
+on more broad and general grounds than apply to this error in fact
+and deduction (so I presume to consider it) on the part of the
+distinguished judge in question.  And they are grounds which do not
+apply offensively to judges, as a class; than whom there are no
+authorities in England so deserving of general respect and
+confidence, or so possessed of it; but which apply alike to all men
+in their several degrees and pursuits.
+
+It is certain that men contract a general liking for those things
+which they have studied at great cost of time and intellect, and
+their proficiency in which has led to their becoming distinguished
+and successful.  It is certain that out of this feeling arises, not
+only that passive blindness to their defects of which the example
+given by my Lord Tenterden was quoted in the last letter, but an
+active disposition to advocate and defend them.  If it were
+otherwise; if it were not for this spirit of interest and
+partisanship; no single pursuit could have that attraction for its
+votaries which most pursuits in course of time establish.  Thus
+legal authorities are usually jealous of innovations on legal
+principles.  Thus it is described of the lawyer in the Introductory
+Discourse to the Description of Utopia, that he said of a proposal
+against Capital Punishment, "'this could never be so established in
+England but that it must needs bring the weal-public into great
+jeopardy and hazard', and as he was thus saying, he shaked his head,
+and made a wry mouth, and so he held his peace".  Thus the Recorder
+of London, in 1811, objected to "the capital part being taken off"
+from the offence of picking pockets.  Thus the Lord Chancellor, in
+1813, objected to the removal of the penalty of death from the
+offence of stealing to the amount of five shillings from a shop.
+Thus, Lord Ellenborough, in 1820, anticipated the worst effects from
+there being no punishment of death for stealing five shillings worth
+of wet linen from a bleaching ground.  Thus the Solicitor General,
+in 1830, advocated the punishment of death for forgery, and "the
+satisfaction of thinking" in the teeth of mountains of evidence from
+bankers and other injured parties (one thousand bankers alone!)
+"that he was deterring persons from the commission of crime, by the
+severity of the law".  Thus, Mr. Justice Coleridge delivered his
+charge at Hertford in 1845.  Thus there were in the criminal code of
+England, in 1790, one hundred and sixty crimes punishable with
+death.  Thus the lawyer has said, again and again, in his
+generation, that any change in such a state of things "must needs
+bring the weal-public into jeopardy and hazard".  And thus he has,
+all through the dismal history, "shaked his head, and made a wry
+mouth, and held his peace".  Except--a glorious exception!--when
+such lawyers as Bacon, More, Blackstone, Romilly, and--let us ever
+gratefully remember--in later times Mr. Basil Montagu, have striven,
+each in his day, within the utmost limits of the endurance of the
+mistaken feeling of the people or the legislature of the time, to
+champion and maintain the truth.
+
+There is another and a stronger reason still, why a criminal judge
+is a bad witness in favour of the punishment of Death.  He is a
+chief actor in the terrible drama of a trial, where the life or
+death of a fellow creature is at issue.  No one who has seen such a
+trial can fail to know, or can ever forget, its intense interest.  I
+care not how painful this interest is to the good, wise judge upon
+the bench.  I admit its painful nature, and the judge's goodness and
+wisdom to the fullest extent--but I submit that his prominent share
+in the excitement of such a trial, and the dread mystery involved,
+has a tendency to bewilder and confuse the judge upon the general
+subject of that penalty.  I know the solemn pause before the
+verdict, the bush and stifling of the fever in the court, the
+solitary figure brought back to the bar, and standing there,
+observed of all the outstretched heads and gleaming eyes, to be next
+minute stricken dead as one may say, among them.  I know the thrill
+that goes round when the black cap is put on, and how there will be
+shrieks among the women, and a taking out of some one in a swoon;
+and, when the judge's faltering voice delivers sentence, how awfully
+the prisoner and he confront each other; two mere men, destined one
+day, however far removed from one another at this time, to stand
+alike as suppliants at the bar of God.  I know all this, I can
+imagine what the office of the judge costs in this execution of it;
+but I say that in these strong sensations he is lost, and is unable
+to abstract the penalty as a preventive or example, from an
+experience of it, and from associations surrounding it, which are
+and can be, only his, and his alone.
+
+Not to contend that there is no amount of wig or ermine that can
+change the nature of the man inside; not to say that the nature of a
+judge may be, like the dyer's hand, subdued to what it works in, and
+may become too used to this punishment of death to consider it quite
+dispassionately; not to say that it may possibly be inconsistent to
+have, deciding as calm authorities in favour of death, judges who
+have been constantly sentencing to death;--I contend that for the
+reasons I have stated alone, a judge, and especially a criminal
+judge, is a bad witness for the punishment but an excellent witness
+against it, inasmuch as in the latter case his conviction of its
+inutility has been so strong and paramount as utterly to beat down
+and conquer these adverse incidents.  I have no scruple in stating
+this position, because, for anything I know, the majority of
+excellent judges now on the bench may have overcome them, and may be
+opposed to the punishment of Death under any circumstances.
+
+I mentioned that I would devote a portion of this letter to a few
+prominent illustrations of each head of objection to the punishment
+of Death.  Those on record are so very numerous that selection is
+extremely difficult; but in reference to the possibility of mistake,
+and the impossibility of reparation, one case is as good (I should
+rather say as bad) as a hundred; and if there were none but Eliza
+Fenning's, that would be sufficient.  Nay, if there were none at
+all, it would be enough to sustain this objection, that men of
+finite and limited judgment do inflict, on testimony which admits of
+doubt, an infinite and irreparable punishment.  But there are on
+record numerous instances of mistake; many of them very generally
+known and immediately recognisable in the following summary, which I
+copy from the New York Report already referred to.
+
+
+"There have been cases in which groans have been heard in the
+apartment of the crime, which have attracted the steps of those on
+whose testimony the case has turned--when, on proceeding to the
+spot, they have found a man bending over the murdered body, a
+lantern in the left hand, and the knife yet dripping with the warm
+current in the blood-stained right, with horror-stricken
+countenance, and lips which, in the presence of the dead, seem to
+refuse to deny the crime in the very act of which he is thus
+surprised--and yet the man has been, many years after, when his
+memory alone could be benefited by the discovery, ascertained not to
+have been the real murderer!  There have been cases in which, in a
+house in which were two persons alone, a murder has been committed
+on one of them--when many additional circumstances have fastened the
+imputation upon the other--and when, all apparent modes of access
+from without, being closed inward, the demonstration has seemed
+complete of the guilt for which that other has suffered the doom of
+the law--yet suffered innocently!  There have been cases in which a
+father has been found murdered in an outhouse, the only person at
+home being a son, sworn by a sister to have been dissolute and
+undutiful, and anxious for the death of the father, and succession
+to the family property--when the track of his shoes in the snow is
+found from the house to the spot of the murder, and the hammer with
+which it was committed (known as his own), found, on a search, in
+the corner of one of his private drawers, with the bloody evidence
+of the deed only imperfectly effaced from it--and yet the son has
+been innocent!--the sister, years after, on her death-bed,
+confessing herself the fratricide as well as the parricide.  There
+have been cases in which men have been hung on the most positive
+testimony to identity (aided by many suspicious circumstances), by
+persons familiar with their appearance, which have afterwards proved
+grievous mistakes, growing out of remarkable personal resemblance.
+There have been cases in which two men have been seen fighting in a
+field--an old enmity existing between them--the one found dead,
+killed by a stab from a pitchfork known as belonging to the other,
+and which that other had been carrying, the pitch-fork lying by the
+side of the murdered man--and yet its owner has been afterwards
+found not to have been the author of the murder of which it had been
+the instrument, the true murderer sitting on the jury that tried
+him.  There have been cases in which an innkeeper has been charged
+by one of his servants with the murder of a traveller, the servant
+deposing to having seen his master on the stranger's bed, strangling
+him, and afterwards rifling his pockets--another servant deposing
+that she saw him come down at that time at a very early hour in the
+morning, steal into the garden, take gold from his pocket, and
+carefully wrapping it up bury it in a designated spot--on the search
+of which the ground is found loose and freshly dug, and a sum of
+thirty pounds in gold found buried according to the description--the
+master, who confessed the burying of the money, with many evidences
+of guilt in his hesitation and confusion, has been hung of course,
+and proved innocent only too late.  There have been cases in which a
+traveller has been robbed on the highway of twenty guineas, which he
+had taken the precaution to mark--one of these is found to have been
+paid away or changed by one of the servants of the inn which the
+traveller reaches the same evening--the servant is about the height
+of the robber, who had been cloaked and disguised--his master
+deposes to his having been recently unaccountably extravagant and
+flush of gold--and on his trunk being searched the other nineteen
+marked guineas and the traveller's purse are found there, the
+servant being asleep at the time, half-drunk--he is of course
+convicted and hung, for the crime of which his master was the
+author!  There have been cases in which a father and daughter have
+been overheard in violent dispute--the words "barbarity", "cruelly",
+and "death", being heard frequently to proceed from the latter--the
+former goes out locking the door behind him--groans are overheard,
+and the words, "cruel father, thou art the cause of my death!"--on
+the room being opened she is found on the point of death from a
+wound in her side, and near her the knife with which it had been
+inflicted--and on being questioned as to her owing her death to her
+father, her last motion before expiring is an expression of assent--
+the father, on returning to the room, exhibits the usual evidences
+of guilt--he, too, is of course hung--and it is not till nearly a
+year afterwards that, on the discovery of conclusive evidence that
+it was a suicide, the vain reparation is made, to his memory by the
+public authorities, of--waving a pair of colours over his grave in
+token of the recognition of his innocence."
+
+
+More than a hundred such cases are known, it is said in this Report,
+in English criminal jurisprudence.  The same Report contains three
+striking cases of supposed criminals being unjustly hanged in
+America; and also five more in which people whose innocence was not
+afterwards established were put to death on evidence as purely
+circumstantial and as doubtful, to say the least of it, as any that
+was held to be sufficient in this general summary of legal murders.
+Mr. O'Connell defended, in Ireland, within five and twenty years,
+three brothers who were hanged for a murder of which they were
+afterwards shown to have been innocent.  I cannot find the reference
+at this moment, but I have seen it stated on good authority, that
+but for the exertions, I think of the present Lord Chief Baron, six
+or seven innocent men would certainly have been hanged.  Such are
+the instances of wrong judgment which are known to us.  How many
+more there may be in which the real murderers never disclosed their
+guilt, or were never discovered, and where the odium of great crimes
+still rests on guiltless people long since resolved to dust in their
+untimely graves, no human power can tell.
+
+The effect of public executions on those who witness them, requires
+no better illustration, and can have none, than the scene which any
+execution in itself presents, and the general Police-office
+knowledge of the offences arising out of them.  I have stated my
+belief that the study of rude scenes leads to the disregard of human
+life, and to murder.  Referring, since that expression of opinion,
+to the very last trial for murder in London, I have made inquiry,
+and am assured that the youth now under sentence of death in Newgate
+for the murder of his master in Drury Lane, was a vigilant spectator
+of the three last public executions in this City.  What effects a
+daily increasing familiarity with the scaffold, and with death upon
+it, wrought in France in the Great Revolution, everybody knows.  In
+reference to this very question of Capital Punishment, Robespierre
+himself, before he was
+
+
+"in blood stept in so far",
+
+
+warned the National Assembly that in taking human life, and in
+displaying before the eyes of the people scenes of cruelty and the
+bodies of murdered men, the law awakened ferocious prejudices, which
+gave birth to a long and growing train of their own kind.  With how
+much reason this was said, let his own detestable name bear witness!
+If we would know how callous and hardened society, even in a
+peaceful and settled state, becomes to public executions when they
+are frequent, let us recollect how few they were who made the last
+attempt to stay the dreadful Monday-morning spectacles of men and
+women strung up in a row for crimes as different in their degree as
+our whole social scheme is different in its component parts, which,
+within some fifteen years or so, made human shambles of the Old
+Bailey.
+
+There is no better way of testing the effect of public executions on
+those who do not actually behold them, but who read of them and know
+of them, than by inquiring into their efficiency in preventing
+crime.  In this respect they have always, and in all countries,
+failed.  According to all facts and figures, failed.  In Russia, in
+Spain, in France, in Italy, in Belgium, in Sweden, in England, there
+has been one result.  In Bombay, during the Recordership of Sir
+James Macintosh, there were fewer crimes in seven years without one
+execution, than in the preceding seven years with forty-seven
+executions; notwithstanding that in the seven years without capital
+punishment, the population had greatly increased, and there had been
+a large accession to the numbers of the ignorant and licentious
+soldiery, with whom the more violent offences originated.  During
+the four wickedest years of the Bank of England (from 1814 to 1817,
+inclusive), when the one-pound note capital prosecutions were most
+numerous and shocking, the number of forged one-pound notes
+discovered by the Bank steadily increased, from the gross amount in
+the first year of 10,342 pounds, to the gross amount in the last of
+28,412 pounds.  But in every branch of this part of the subject--the
+inefficiency of capital punishment to prevent crime, and its
+efficiency to produce it--the body of evidence (if there were space
+to quote or analyse it here) is overpowering and resistless.
+
+I have purposely deferred until now any reference to one objection
+which is urged against the abolition of capital punishment:  I mean
+that objection which claims to rest on Scriptural authority.
+
+It was excellently well said by Lord Melbourne, that no class of
+persons can be shown to be very miserable and oppressed, but some
+supporters of things as they are will immediately rise up and
+assert--not that those persons are moderately well to do, or that
+their lot in life has a reasonably bright side--but that they are,
+of all sorts and conditions of men, the happiest.  In like manner,
+when a certain proceeding or institution is shown to be very wrong
+indeed, there is a class of people who rush to the fountainhead at
+once, and will have no less an authority for it than the Bible, on
+any terms.
+
+So, we have the Bible appealed to in behalf of Capital Punishment.
+So, we have the Bible produced as a distinct authority for Slavery.
+So, American representatives find the title of their country to the
+Oregon territory distinctly laid down in the Book of Genesis.  So,
+in course of time, we shall find Repudiation, perhaps, expressly
+commanded in the Sacred Writings.
+
+It is enough for me to be satisfied, on calm inquiry and with
+reason, that an Institution or Custom is wrong and bad; and thence
+to feel assured that IT CANNOT BE a part of the law laid down by the
+Divinity who walked the earth.  Though every other man who wields a
+pen should turn himself into a commentator on the Scriptures--not
+all their united efforts, pursued through our united lives, could
+ever persuade me that Slavery is a Christian law; nor, with one of
+these objections to an execution in my certain knowledge, that
+Executions are a Christian law, my will is not concerned.  I could
+not, in my veneration for the life and lessons of Our Lord, believe
+it.  If any text appeared to justify the claim, I would reject that
+limited appeal, and rest upon the character of the Redeemer, and the
+great scheme of His Religion, where, in its broad spirit, made so
+plain--and not this or that disputed letter--we all put our trust.
+But, happily, such doubts do not exist.  The case is far too plain.
+The Rev. Henry Christmas, in a recent pamphlet on this subject,
+shows clearly that in five important versions of the Old Testament
+(to say nothing of versions of less note) the words, "by man", in
+the often-quoted text, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his
+blood be shed", do not appear at all.  We know that the law of Moses
+was delivered to certain wandering tribes in a peculiar and
+perfectly different social condition from that which prevails among
+us at this time.  We know that the Christian Dispensation did
+distinctly repeal and annul certain portions of that law.  We know
+that the doctrine of retributive justice or vengeance, was plainly
+disavowed by the Saviour.  We know that on the only occasion of an
+offender, liable by the law to death, being brought before Him for
+His judgment, it was not death.  We know that He said, "Thou shalt
+not kill".  And if we are still to inflict capital punishment
+because of the Mosaic law (under which it was not the consequence of
+a legal proceeding, but an act of vengeance from the next of kin,
+which would surely be discouraged by our later laws if it were
+revived among the Jews just now) it would be equally reasonable to
+establish the lawfulness of a plurality of wives on the same
+authority.
+
+Here I will leave this aspect of the question.  I should not have
+treated of it at all in the columns of a newspaper, but for the
+possibility of being unjustly supposed to have given it no
+consideration in my own mind.
+
+In bringing to a close these letters on a subject, in connection
+with which there is happily very little that is new to be said or
+written, I beg to be understood as advocating the total abolition of
+the Punishment of Death, as a general principle, for the advantage
+of society, for the prevention of crime, and without the least
+reference to, or tenderness for any individual malefactor
+whomsoever.  Indeed, in most cases of murder, my feeling towards the
+culprit is very strongly and violently the reverse.  I am the more
+desirous to be so understood, after reading a speech made by Mr.
+Macaulay in the House of Commons last Tuesday night, in which that
+accomplished gentleman hardly seemed to recognise the possibility of
+anybody entertaining an honest conviction of the inutility and bad
+effects of Capital Punishment in the abstract, founded on inquiry
+and reflection, without being the victim of "a kind of effeminate
+feeling".  Without staying to inquire what there may be that is
+especially manly and heroic in the advocacy of the gallows, or to
+express my admiration of Mr. Calcraft, the hangman, as doubtless one
+of the most manly specimens now in existence, I would simply hint a
+doubt, in all good humour, whether this be the true Macaulay way of
+meeting a great question?  One of the instances of effeminacy of
+feeling quoted by Mr. Macaulay, I have reason to think was not quite
+fairly stated.  I allude to the petition in Tawell's case.  I had
+neither hand nor part in it myself; but, unless I am greatly
+mistaken, it did pretty clearly set forth that Tawell was a most
+abhorred villain, and that the House might conclude how strongly the
+petitioners were opposed to the Punishment of Death, when they
+prayed for its non-infliction even in such a case.
+
+
+
+THE SPIRIT OF CHIVALRY IN WESTMINSTER HALL
+
+
+
+"Of all the cants that are canted in this canting world," wrote
+Sterne, "kind Heaven defend me from the cant of Art!"  We have no
+intention of tapping our little cask of cant, soured by the thunder
+of great men's fame, for the refreshment of our readers:  its freest
+draught would be unreasonably dear at a shilling, when the same
+small liquor may be had for nothing, at innumerable ready pipes and
+conduits.
+
+But it is a main part of the design of this Magazine to sympathise
+with what is truly great and good; to scout the miserable
+discouragements that beset, especially in England, the upward path
+of men of high desert; and gladly to give honour where it is due, in
+right of Something achieved, tending to elevate the tastes and
+thoughts of all who contemplate it, and prove a lasting credit to
+the country of its birth.
+
+Upon the walls of Westminster Hall, there hangs, at this time, such
+a Something.  A composition of such marvellous beauty, of such
+infinite variety, of such masterly design, of such vigorous and
+skilful drawing, of such thought and fancy, of such surprising and
+delicate accuracy of detail, subserving one grand harmony, and one
+plain purpose, that it may be questioned whether the Fine Arts in
+any period of their history have known a more remarkable
+performance.
+
+It is the cartoon of Daniel Maclise, "executed by order of the
+Commissioners", and called The Spirit of Chivalry.  It may be left
+an open question, whether or no this allegorical order on the part
+of the Commissioners, displays any uncommon felicity of idea.  We
+rather think not; and are free to confess that we should like to
+have seen the Commissioners' notion of the Spirit of Chivalry stated
+by themselves, in the first instance, on a sheet of foolscap, as the
+ground-plan of a model cartoon, with all the commissioned
+proportions of height and breadth.  That the treatment of such an
+abstraction, for the purposes of Art, involves great and peculiar
+difficulties, no one who considers the subject for a moment can
+doubt.  That nothing is easier to render it absurd and monstrous, is
+a position as little capable of dispute by anybody who has beheld
+another cartoon on the same subject in the same Hall, representing a
+Ghoule in a state of raving madness, dancing on a Body in a very
+high wind, to the great astonishment of John the Baptist's head,
+which is looking on from a corner.
+
+Mr. Maclise's handling of the subject has by this time sunk into the
+hearts of thousands upon thousands of people.  It is familiar
+knowledge among all classes and conditions of men.  It is the great
+feature within the Hall, and the constant topic of discourse
+elsewhere.  It has awakened in the great body of society a new
+interest in, and a new perception and a new love of, Art.  Students
+of Art have sat before it, hour by hour, perusing in its many forms
+of Beauty, lessons to delight the world, and raise themselves, its
+future teachers, in its better estimation.  Eyes well accustomed to
+the glories of the Vatican, the galleries of Florence, all the
+mightiest works of art in Europe, have grown dim before it with the
+strong emotions it inspires; ignorant, unlettered, drudging men,
+mere hewers and drawers, have gathered in a knot about it (as at our
+back a week ago), and read it, in their homely language, as it were
+a Book.  In minds, the roughest and the most refined, it has alike
+found quick response; and will, and must, so long as it shall hold
+together.
+
+For how can it be otherwise?  Look up, upon the pressing throng who
+strive to win distinction from the Guardian Genius of all noble
+deeds and honourable renown,--a gentle Spirit, holding her fair
+state for their reward and recognition (do not be alarmed, my Lord
+Chamberlain; this is only in a picture); and say what young and
+ardent heart may not find one to beat in unison with it--beat high
+with generous aspiration like its own--in following their onward
+course, as it is traced by this great pencil!  Is it the Love of
+Woman, in its truth and deep devotion, that inspires you?  See it
+here!  Is it Glory, as the world has learned to call the pomp and
+circumstance of arms?  Behold it at the summit of its exaltation,
+with its mailed hand resting on the altar where the Spirit
+ministers.  The Poet's laurel-crown, which they who sit on thrones
+can neither twine or wither--is that the aim of thy ambition?  It is
+there, upon his brow; it wreathes his stately forehead, as he walks
+apart and holds communion with himself.  The Palmer and the Bard are
+there; no solitary wayfarers, now; but two of a great company of
+pilgrims, climbing up to honour by the different paths that lead to
+the great end.  And sure, amidst the gravity and beauty of them all-
+-unseen in his own form, but shining in his spirit, out of every
+gallant shape and earnest thought--the Painter goes triumphant!
+
+Or say that you who look upon this work, be old, and bring to it
+grey hairs, a head bowed down, a mind on which the day of life has
+spent itself, and the calm evening closes gently in.  Is its appeal
+to you confined to its presentment of the Past?  Have you no share
+in this, but while the grace of youth and the strong resolve of
+maturity are yours to aid you?  Look up again.  Look up where the
+spirit is enthroned, and see about her, reverend men, whose task is
+done; whose struggle is no more; who cluster round her as her train
+and council; who have lost no share or interest in that great rising
+up and progress, which bears upward with it every means of human
+happiness, but, true in Autumn to the purposes of Spring, are there
+to stimulate the race who follow in their steps; to contemplate,
+with hearts grown serious, not cold or sad, the striving in which
+they once had part; to die in that great Presence, which is Truth
+and Bravery, and Mercy to the Weak, beyond all power of separation.
+
+It would be idle to observe of this last group that, both in
+execution and idea, they are of the very highest order of Art, and
+wonderfully serve the purpose of the picture.  There is not one
+among its three-and-twenty heads of which the same remark might not
+be made.  Neither will we treat of great effects produced by means
+quite powerless in other hands for such an end, or of the prodigious
+force and colour which so separate this work from all the rest
+exhibited, that it would scarcely appear to be produced upon the
+same kind of surface by the same description of instrument.  The
+bricks and stones and timbers of the Hall itself are not facts more
+indisputable than these.
+
+It has been objected to this extraordinary work that it is too
+elaborately finished; too complete in its several parts.  And Heaven
+knows, if it be judged in this respect by any standard in the Hall
+about it, it will find no parallel, nor anything approaching to it.
+But it is a design, intended to be afterwards copied and painted in
+fresco; and certain finish must be had at last, if not at first.  It
+is very well to take it for granted in a Cartoon that a series of
+cross-lines, almost as rough and apart as the lattice-work of a
+garden summerhouse, represents the texture of a human face; but the
+face cannot be painted so.  A smear upon the paper may be
+understood, by virtue of the context gained from what surrounds it,
+to stand for a limb, or a body, or a cuirass, or a hat and feathers,
+or a flag, or a boot, or an angel.  But when the time arrives for
+rendering these things in colours on a wall, they must be grappled
+with, and cannot be slurred over in this wise.  Great
+misapprehension on this head seems to have been engendered in the
+minds of some observers by the famous cartoons of Raphael; but they
+forget that these were never intended as designs for fresco
+painting.  They were designs for tapestry-work, which is susceptible
+of only certain broad and general effects, as no one better knew
+than the Great Master.  Utterly detestable and vile as the tapestry
+is, compared with the immortal Cartoons from which it was worked, it
+is impossible for any man who casts his eyes upon it where it hangs
+at Rome, not to see immediately the special adaptation of the
+drawings to that end, and for that purpose.  The aim of these
+Cartoons being wholly different, Mr. Maclise's object, if we
+understand it, was to show precisely what he meant to do, and knew
+he could perform, in fresco, on a wall.  And here his meaning is;
+worked out; without a compromise of any difficulty; without the
+avoidance of any disconcerting truth; expressed in all its beauty,
+strength, and power.
+
+To what end?  To be perpetuated hereafter in the high place of the
+chief Senate-House of England?  To be wrought, as it were, into the
+very elements of which that Temple is composed; to co-endure with
+it, and still present, perhaps, some lingering traces of its ancient
+Beauty, when London shall have sunk into a grave of grass-grown
+ruin,--and the whole circle of the Arts, another revolution of the
+mighty wheel completed, shall be wrecked and broken?
+
+Let us hope so.  We will contemplate no other possibility--at
+present.
+
+
+
+IN MEMORIAM--W. M. THACKERAY
+
+
+
+It has been desired by some of the personal friends of the great
+English writer who established this magazine, {1} that its brief
+record of his having been stricken from among men should be written
+by the old comrade and brother in arms who pens these lines, and of
+whom he often wrote himself, and always with the warmest generosity.
+
+I saw him first nearly twenty-eight years ago, when he proposed to
+become the illustrator of my earliest book.  I saw him last, shortly
+before Christmas, at the Athenaeum Club, when he told me that he had
+been in bed three days--that, after these attacks, he was troubled
+with cold shiverings, "which quite took the power of work out of
+him"--and that he had it in his mind to try a new remedy which he
+laughingly described.  He was very cheerful, and looked very bright.
+In the night of that day week, he died.
+
+The long interval between those two periods is marked in my
+remembrance of him by many occasions when he was supremely humorous,
+when he was irresistibly extravagant, when he was softened and
+serious, when he was charming with children.  But, by none do I
+recall him more tenderly than by two or three that start out of the
+crowd, when he unexpectedly presented himself in my room, announcing
+how that some passage in a certain book had made him cry yesterday,
+and how that he had come to dinner, "because he couldn't help it",
+and must talk such passage over.  No one can ever have seen him more
+genial, natural, cordial, fresh, and honestly impulsive, than I have
+seen him at those times.  No one can be surer than I, of the
+greatness and the goodness of the heart that then disclosed itself.
+
+We had our differences of opinion.  I thought that he too much
+feigned a want of earnestness, and that he made a pretence of under-
+valuing his art, which was not good for the art that he held in
+trust.  But, when we fell upon these topics, it was never very
+gravely, and I have a lively image of him in my mind, twisting both
+his hands in his hair, and stamping about, laughing, to make an end
+of the discussion.
+
+When we were associated in remembrance of the late Mr. Douglas
+Jerrold, he delivered a public lecture in London, in the course of
+which, he read his very best contribution to Punch, describing the
+grown-up cares of a poor family of young children.  No one hearing
+him could have doubted his natural gentleness, or his thoroughly
+unaffected manly sympathy with the weak and lowly.  He read the
+paper most pathetically, and with a simplicity of tenderness that
+certainly moved one of his audience to tears.  This was presently
+after his standing for Oxford, from which place he had dispatched
+his agent to me, with a droll note (to which he afterwards added a
+verbal postscript), urging me to "come down and make a speech, and
+tell them who he was, for he doubted whether more than two of the
+electors had ever heard of him, and he thought there might be as
+many as six or eight who had heard of me".  He introduced the
+lecture just mentioned, with a reference to his late electioneering
+failure, which was full of good sense, good spirits, and good
+humour.
+
+He had a particular delight in boys, and an excellent way with them.
+I remember his once asking me with fantastic gravity, when he had
+been to Eton where my eldest son then was, whether I felt as he did
+in regard of never seeing a boy without wanting instantly to give
+him a sovereign?  I thought of this when I looked down into his
+grave, after he was laid there, for I looked down into it over the
+shoulder of a boy to whom he had been kind.
+
+These are slight remembrances; but it is to little familiar things
+suggestive of the voice, look, manner, never, never more to be
+encountered on this earth, that the mind first turns in a
+bereavement.  And greater things that are known of him, in the way
+of his warm affections, his quiet endurance, his unselfish
+thoughtfulness for others, and his munificent hand, may not be told.
+
+If, in the reckless vivacity of his youth, his satirical pen had
+ever gone astray or done amiss, he had caused it to prefer its own
+petition for forgiveness, long before:-
+
+
+I've writ the foolish fancy of his brain;
+The aimless jest that, striking, hath caused pain;
+The idle word that he'd wish back again.
+
+
+In no pages should I take it upon myself at this time to discourse
+of his books, of his refined knowledge of character, of his subtle
+acquaintance with the weaknesses of human nature, of his delightful
+playfulness as an essayist, of his quaint and touching ballads, of
+his mastery over the English language.  Least of all, in these
+pages, enriched by his brilliant qualities from the first of the
+series, and beforehand accepted by the Public through the strength
+of his great name.
+
+But, on the table before me, there lies all that he had written of
+his latest and last story.  That it would be very sad to any one--
+that it is inexpressibly so to a writer--in its evidences of matured
+designs never to be accomplished, of intentions begun to be executed
+and destined never to be completed, of careful preparation for long
+roads of thought that he was never to traverse, and for shining
+goals that he was never to reach, will be readily believed.  The
+pain, however, that I have felt in perusing it, has not been deeper
+than the conviction that he was in the healthiest vigour of his
+powers when he wrought on this last labour.  In respect of earnest
+feeling, far-seeing purpose, character, incident, and a certain
+loving picturesqueness blending the whole, I believe it to be much
+the best of all his works.  That he fully meant it to be so, that he
+had become strongly attached to it, and that he bestowed great pains
+upon it, I trace in almost every page.  It contains one picture
+which must have cost him extreme distress, and which is a
+masterpiece.  There are two children in it, touched with a hand as
+loving and tender as ever a father caressed his little child with.
+There is some young love as pure and innocent and pretty as the
+truth.  And it is very remarkable that, by reason of the singular
+construction of the story, more than one main incident usually
+belonging to the end of such a fiction is anticipated in the
+beginning, and thus there is an approach to completeness in the
+fragment, as to the satisfaction of the reader's mind concerning the
+most interesting persons, which could hardly have been better
+attained if the writer's breaking-off had been foreseen.
+
+The last line he wrote, and the last proof he corrected, are among
+these papers through which I have so sorrowfully made my way.  The
+condition of the little pages of manuscript where Death stopped his
+hand, shows that he had carried them about, and often taken them out
+of his pocket here and there, for patient revision and
+interlineation.  The last words he corrected in print were, "And my
+heart throbbed with an exquisite bliss".  GOD grant that on that
+Christmas Eve when he laid his head back on his pillow and threw up
+his arms as he had been wont to do when very weary, some
+consciousness of duty done and Christian hope throughout life humbly
+cherished, may have caused his own heart so to throb, when he passed
+away to his Redeemer's rest!
+
+He was found peacefully lying as above described, composed,
+undisturbed, and to all appearance asleep, on the twenty-fourth of
+December 1863.  He was only in his fifty-third year; so young a man
+that the mother who blessed him in his first sleep blessed him in
+his last.  Twenty years before, he had written, after being in a
+white squall:
+
+
+And when, its force expended,
+The harmless storm was ended,
+And, as the sunrise splendid
+Came blushing o'er the sea;
+I thought, as day was breaking,
+My little girls were waking,
+And smiling, and making
+A prayer at home for me.
+
+
+Those little girls had grown to be women when the mournful day broke
+that saw their father lying dead.  In those twenty years of
+companionship with him they had learned much from him; and one of
+them has a literary course before her, worthy of her famous name.
+
+On the bright wintry day, the last but one of the old year, he was
+laid in his grave at Kensal Green, there to mingle the dust to which
+the mortal part of him had returned, with that of a third child,
+lost in her infancy years ago.  The heads of a great concourse of
+his fellow-workers in the Arts were bowed around his tomb.
+
+
+
+ADELAIDE ANNE PROCTER
+INTRODUCTION TO HER "LEGENDS AND LYRICS"
+
+
+
+In the spring of the year 1853, I observed, as conductor of the
+weekly journal Household Words, a short poem among the proffered
+contributions, very different, as I thought, from the shoal of
+verses perpetually setting through the office of such a periodical,
+and possessing much more merit.  Its authoress was quite unknown to
+me.  She was one Miss Mary Berwick, whom I had never heard of; and
+she was to be addressed by letter, if addressed at all, at a
+circulating library in the western district of London.  Through this
+channel, Miss Berwick was informed that her poem was accepted, and
+was invited to send another.  She complied, and became a regular and
+frequent contributor.  Many letters passed between the journal and
+Miss Berwick, but Miss Berwick herself was never seen.
+
+How we came gradually to establish, at the office of Household
+Words, that we knew all about Miss Berwick, I have never discovered.
+But we settled somehow, to our complete satisfaction, that she was
+governess in a family; that she went to Italy in that capacity, and
+returned; and that she had long been in the same family.  We really
+knew nothing whatever of her, except that she was remarkably
+business-like, punctual, self-reliant, and reliable:  so I suppose
+we insensibly invented the rest.  For myself, my mother was not a
+more real personage to me, than Miss Berwick the governess became.
+
+This went on until December, 1854, when the Christmas number,
+entitled The Seven Poor Travellers, was sent to press.  Happening to
+be going to dine that day with an old and dear friend, distinguished
+in literature as Barry Cornwall, I took with me an early proof of
+that number, and remarked, as I laid it on the drawing-room table,
+that it contained a very pretty poem, written by a certain Miss
+Berwick.  Next day brought me the disclosure that I had so spoken of
+the poem to the mother of its writer, in its writer's presence; that
+I had no such correspondent in existence as Miss Berwick; and that
+the name had been assumed by Barry Cornwall's eldest daughter, Miss
+Adelaide Anne Procter.
+
+The anecdote I have here noted down, besides serving to explain why
+the parents of the late Miss Procter have looked to me for these
+poor words of remembrance of their lamented child, strikingly
+illustrates the honesty, independence, and quiet dignity, of the
+lady's character.  I had known her when she was very young; I had
+been honoured with her father's friendship when I was myself a young
+aspirant; and she had said at home, "If I send him, in my own name,
+verses that he does not honestly like, either it will be very
+painful to him to return them, or he will print them for papa's
+sake, and not for their own.  So I have made up my mind to take my
+chance fairly with the unknown volunteers."
+
+Perhaps it requires an editor's experience of the profoundly
+unreasonable grounds on which he is often urged to accept unsuitable
+articles--such as having been to school with the writer's husband's
+brother-in-law, or having lent an alpenstock in Switzerland to the
+writer's wife's nephew, when that interesting stranger had broken
+his own--fully to appreciate the delicacy and the self-respect of
+this resolution.
+
+Some verses by Miss Procter had been published in the Book of
+Beauty, ten years before she became Miss Berwick.  With the
+exception of two poems in the Cornhill Magazine, two in Good Words,
+and others in a little book called A Chaplet of Verses (issued in
+1862 for the benefit of a Night Refuge), her published writings
+first appeared in Household Words, or All the Year Round.  The
+present edition contains the whole of her Legends and Lyrics, and
+originates in the great favour with which they have been received by
+the public.
+
+Miss Procter was born in Bedford Square, London, on the 30th of
+October, 1825.  Her love of poetry was conspicuous at so early an
+age, that I have before me a tiny album made of small note-paper,
+into which her favourite passages were copied for her by her
+mother's hand before she herself could write.  It looks as if she
+had carried it about, as another little girl might have carried a
+doll.  She soon displayed a remarkable memory, and great quickness
+of apprehension.  When she was quite a young child, she learned with
+facility several of the problems of Euclid.  As she grew older, she
+acquired the French, Italian, and German languages; became a clever
+pianoforte player; and showed a true taste and sentiment in drawing.
+But, as soon as she had completely vanquished the difficulties of
+any one branch of study, it was her way to lose interest in it, and
+pass to another.  While her mental resources were being trained, it
+was not at all suspected in her family that she had any gift of
+authorship, or any ambition to become a writer.  Her father had no
+idea of her having ever attempted to turn a rhyme, until her first
+little poem saw the light in print.
+
+When she attained to womanhood, she had read an extraordinary number
+of books, and throughout her life she was always largely adding to
+the number.  In 1853 she went to Turin and its neighbourhood, on a
+visit to her aunt, a Roman Catholic lady.  As Miss Procter had
+herself professed the Roman Catholic Faith two years before, she
+entered with the greater ardour on the study of the Piedmontese
+dialect, and the observation of the habits and manners of the
+peasantry.  In the former, she soon became a proficient.  On the
+latter head, I extract from her familiar letters written home to
+England at the time, two pleasant pieces of description.
+
+
+A BETROTHAL
+
+
+"We have been to a ball, of which I must give you a description.
+Last Tuesday we had just done dinner at about seven, and stepped out
+into the balcony to look at the remains of the sunset behind the
+mountains, when we heard very distinctly a band of music, which
+rather excited my astonishment, as a solitary organ is the utmost
+that toils up here.  I went out of the room for a few minutes, and,
+on my returning, Emily said, 'Oh!  That band is playing at the
+farmer's near here.  The daughter is fiancee to-day, and they have a
+ball.'  I said, 'I wish I was going!'  'Well,' replied she, 'the
+farmer's wife did call to invite us.'  'Then I shall certainly go,'
+I exclaimed.  I applied to Madame B., who said she would like it
+very much, and we had better go, children and all.  Some of the
+servants were already gone.  We rushed away to put on some shawls,
+and put off any shred of black we might have about us (as the people
+would have been quite annoyed if we had appeared on such an occasion
+with any black), and we started.  When we reached the farmer's,
+which is a stone's throw above our house, we were received with
+great enthusiasm; the only drawback being, that no one spoke French,
+and we did not yet speak Piedmontese.  We were placed on a bench
+against the wall, and the people went on dancing.  The room was a
+large whitewashed kitchen (I suppose), with several large pictures
+in black frames, and very smoky.  I distinguished the Martyrdom of
+Saint Sebastian, and the others appeared equally lively and
+appropriate subjects.  Whether they were Old Masters or not, and if
+so, by whom, I could not ascertain.  The band were seated opposite
+us.  Five men, with wind instruments, part of the band of the
+National Guard, to which the farmer's sons belong.  They played
+really admirably, and I began to be afraid that some idea of our
+dignity would prevent me getting a partner; so, by Madame B.'s
+advice, I went up to the bride, and offered to dance with her.  Such
+a handsome young woman!  Like one of Uwins's pictures.  Very dark,
+with a quantity of black hair, and on an immense scale.  The
+children were already dancing, as well as the maids.  After we came
+to an end of our dance, which was what they called a Polka-Mazourka,
+I saw the bride trying to screw up the courage of her fiance to ask
+me to dance, which after a little hesitation he did.  And admirably
+he danced, as indeed they all did--in excellent time, and with a
+little more spirit than one sees in a ball-room.  In fact, they were
+very like one's ordinary partners, except that they wore earrings
+and were in their shirt-sleeves, and truth compels me to state that
+they decidedly smelt of garlic.  Some of them had been smoking, but
+threw away their cigars when we came in.  The only thing that did
+not look cheerful was, that the room was only lighted by two or
+three oil-lamps, and that there seemed to be no preparation for
+refreshments.  Madame B., seeing this, whispered to her maid, who
+disengaged herself from her partner, and ran off to the house; she
+and the kitchenmaid presently returning with a large tray covered
+with all kinds of cakes (of which we are great consumers and always
+have a stock), and a large hamper full of bottles of wine, with
+coffee and sugar.  This seemed all very acceptable.  The fiancee was
+requested to distribute the eatables, and a bucket of water being
+produced to wash the glasses in, the wine disappeared very quickly--
+as fast as they could open the bottles.  But, elated, I suppose, by
+this, the floor was sprinkled with water, and the musicians played a
+Monferrino, which is a Piedmontese dance.  Madame B. danced with the
+farmer's son, and Emily with another distinguished member of the
+company.  It was very fatiguing--something like a Scotch reel.  My
+partner was a little man, like Perrot, and very proud of his
+dancing.  He cut in the air and twisted about, until I was out of
+breath, though my attempts to imitate him were feeble in the
+extreme.  At last, after seven or eight dances, I was obliged to sit
+down.  We stayed till nine, and I was so dead beat with the heat
+that I could hardly crawl about the house, and in an agony with the
+cramp, it is so long since I have danced."
+
+
+A MARRIAGE
+
+
+The wedding of the farmer's daughter has taken place.  We had hoped
+it would have been in the little chapel of our house, but it seems
+some special permission was necessary, and they applied for it too
+late.  They all said, "This is the Constitution.  There would have
+been no difficulty before!" the lower classes making the poor
+Constitution the scapegoat for everything they don't like.  So as it
+was impossible for us to climb up to the church where the wedding
+was to be, we contented ourselves with seeing the procession pass.
+It was not a very large one, for, it requiring some activity to go
+up, all the old people remained at home.  It is not etiquette for
+the bride's mother to go, and no unmarried woman can go to a
+wedding--I suppose for fear of its making her discontented with her
+own position.  The procession stopped at our door, for the bride to
+receive our congratulations.  She was dressed in a shot silk, with a
+yellow handkerchief, and rows of a large gold chain.  In the
+afternoon they sent to request us to go there.  On our arrival we
+found them dancing out of doors, and a most melancholy affair it
+was.  All the bride's sisters were not to be recognised, they had
+cried so.  The mother sat in the house, and could not appear.  And
+the bride was sobbing so, she could hardly stand!  The most
+melancholy spectacle of all to my mind was, that the bridegroom was
+decidedly tipsy.  He seemed rather affronted at all the distress.
+We danced a Monferrino; I with the bridegroom; and the bride crying
+the whole time.  The company did their utmost to enliven her by
+firing pistols, but without success, and at last they began a series
+of yells, which reminded me of a set of savages.  But even this
+delicate method of consolation failed, and the wishing good-bye
+began.  It was altogether so melancholy an affair that Madame B.
+dropped a few tears, and I was very near it, particularly when the
+poor mother came out to see the last of her daughter, who was
+finally dragged off between her brother and uncle, with a last
+explosion of pistols.  As she lives quite near, makes an excellent
+match, and is one of nine children, it really was a most desirable
+marriage, in spite of all the show of distress.  Albert was so
+discomfited by it, that he forgot to kiss the bride as he had
+intended to do, and therefore went to call upon her yesterday, and
+found her very smiling in her new house, and supplied the omission.
+The cook came home from the wedding, declaring she was cured of any
+wish to marry--but I would not recommend any man to act upon that
+threat and make her an offer.  In a couple of days we had some rolls
+of the bride's first baking, which they call Madonnas.  The
+musicians, it seems, were in the same state as the bridegroom, for,
+in escorting her home, they all fell down in the mud.  My wrath
+against the bridegroom is somewhat calmed by finding that it is
+considered bad luck if he does not get tipsy at his wedding."
+
+
+Those readers of Miss Procter's poems who should suppose from their
+tone that her mind was of a gloomy or despondent cast, would be
+curiously mistaken.  She was exceedingly humorous, and had a great
+delight in humour.  Cheerfulness was habitual with her, she was very
+ready at a sally or a reply, and in her laugh (as I remember well)
+there was an unusual vivacity, enjoyment, and sense of drollery.
+She was perfectly unconstrained and unaffected:  as modestly silent
+about her productions, as she was generous with their pecuniary
+results.  She was a friend who inspired the strongest attachments;
+she was a finely sympathetic woman, with a great accordant heart and
+a sterling noble nature.  No claim can be set up for her, thank God,
+to the possession of any of the conventional poetical qualities.
+She never by any means held the opinion that she was among the
+greatest of human beings; she never suspected the existence of a
+conspiracy on the part of mankind against her; she never recognised
+in her best friends, her worst enemies; she never cultivated the
+luxury of being misunderstood and unappreciated; she would far
+rather have died without seeing a line of her composition in print,
+than that I should have maundered about her, here, as "the Poet", or
+"the Poetess".
+
+With the recollection of Miss Procter as a mere child and as a
+woman, fresh upon me, it is natural that I should linger on my way
+to the close of this brief record, avoiding its end.  But, even as
+the close came upon her, so must it come here.
+
+Always impelled by an intense conviction that her life must not be
+dreamed away, and that her indulgence in her favourite pursuits must
+be balanced by action in the real world around her, she was
+indefatigable in her endeavours to do some good.  Naturally
+enthusiastic, and conscientiously impressed with a deep sense of her
+Christian duty to her neighbour, she devoted herself to a variety of
+benevolent objects.  Now, it was the visitation of the sick, that
+had possession of her; now, it was the sheltering of the houseless;
+now, it was the elementary teaching of the densely ignorant; now, it
+was the raising up of those who had wandered and got trodden under
+foot; now, it was the wider employment of her own sex in the general
+business of life; now, it was all these things at once.  Perfectly
+unselfish, swift to sympathise and eager to relieve, she wrought at
+such designs with a flushed earnestness that disregarded season,
+weather, time of day or night, food, rest.  Under such a hurry of
+the spirits, and such incessant occupation, the strongest
+constitution will commonly go down.  Hers, neither of the strongest
+nor the weakest, yielded to the burden, and began to sink.
+
+To have saved her life, then, by taking action on the warning that
+shone in her eyes and sounded in her voice, would have been
+impossible, without changing her nature.  As long as the power of
+moving about in the old way was left to her, she must exercise it,
+or be killed by the restraint.  And so the time came when she could
+move about no longer, and took to her bed.
+
+All the restlessness gone then, and all the sweet patience of her
+natural disposition purified by the resignation of her soul, she lay
+upon her bed through the whole round of changes of the seasons.  She
+lay upon her bed through fifteen months.  In all that time, her old
+cheerfulness never quitted her.  In all that time, not an impatient
+or a querulous minute can be remembered.
+
+At length, at midnight on the second of February, 1864, she turned
+down a leaf of a little book she was reading, and shut it up.
+
+The ministering hand that had copied the verses into the tiny album
+was soon around her neck, and she quietly asked, as the clock was on
+the stroke of one:
+
+"Do you think I am dying, mamma?"
+
+"I think you are very, very ill to-night, my dear!"
+
+"Send for my sister.  My feet are so cold.  Lift me up?"
+
+Her sister entering as they raised her, she said:  "It has come at
+last!"  And with a bright and happy smile, looked upward, and
+departed.
+
+Well had she written:
+
+
+Why shouldst thou fear the beautiful angel, Death,
+Who waits thee at the portals of the skies,
+Ready to kiss away thy struggling breath,
+Ready with gentle hand to close thine eyes?
+
+Oh what were life, if life were all?  Thine eyes
+Are blinded by their tears, or thou wouldst see
+Thy treasures wait thee in the far-off skies,
+And Death, thy friend, will give them all to thee.
+
+
+
+CHAUNCEY HARE TOWNSHEND
+EXPLANATORY INTRODUCTION TO "RELIGIOUS
+OPINIONS" BY THE LATE REVEREND
+CHAUNCEY HARE TOWNSHEND
+
+
+
+Mr. Chauncey Hare Townshend died in London, on the 25th of February
+1868.  His will contained the following passage:-
+
+
+"I appoint my friend Charles Dickens, of Gad's Hill Place, in the
+County of Kent, Esquire, my literary executor; and beg of him to
+publish without alteration as much of my notes and reflections as
+may make known my opinions on religious matters, they being such as
+I verily believe would be conducive to the happiness of mankind."
+
+
+In pursuance of the foregoing injunction, the Literary Executor so
+appointed (not previously aware that the publication of any
+Religious Opinions would be enjoined upon him), applied himself to
+the examination of the numerous papers left by his deceased friend.
+Some of these were in Lausanne, and some were in London.
+Considerable delay occurred before they could be got together,
+arising out of certain claims preferred, and formalities insisted on
+by the authorities of the Canton de Vaud.  When at length the whole
+of his late friend's papers passed into the Literary Executor's
+hands, it was found that Religious Opinions were scattered up and
+down through a variety of memoranda and note-books, the gradual
+accumulation of years and years.  Many of the following pages were
+carefully transcribed, numbered, connected, and prepared for the
+press; but many more were dispersed fragments, originally written in
+pencil, afterwards inked over, the intended sequence of which in the
+writer's mind, it was extremely difficult to follow.  These again
+were intermixed with journals of travel, fragments of poems,
+critical essays, voluminous correspondence, and old school-exercises
+and college themes, having no kind of connection with them.
+
+To publish such materials "without alteration", was simply
+impossible.  But finding everywhere internal evidence that Mr.
+Townshend's Religious Opinions had been constantly meditated and
+reconsidered with great pains and sincerity throughout his life, the
+Literary Executor carefully compiled them (always in the writer's
+exact words), and endeavoured in piecing them together to avoid
+needless repetition.  He does not doubt that Mr. Townshend held the
+clue to a precise plan, which could have greatly simplified the
+presentation of these views; and he has devoted the first section of
+this volume to Mr. Townshend's own notes of his comprehensive
+intentions.  Proofs of the devout spirit in which they were
+conceived, and of the sense of responsibility with which he worked
+at them, abound through the whole mass of papers.  Mr. Townshend's
+varied attainments, delicate tastes, and amiable and gentle nature,
+caused him to be beloved through life by the variously distinguished
+men who were his compeers at Cambridge long ago.  To his Literary
+Executor he was always a warmly-attached and sympathetic friend.  To
+the public, he has been a most generous benefactor, both in his
+munificent bequest of his collection of precious stones in the South
+Kensington Museum, and in the devotion of the bulk of his property
+to the education of poor children.
+
+
+
+ON MR. FECHTER'S ACTING
+
+
+
+The distinguished artist whose name is prefixed to these remarks
+purposes to leave England for a professional tour in the United
+States.  A few words from me, in reference to his merits as an
+actor, I hope may not be uninteresting to some readers, in advance
+of his publicly proving them before an American audience, and I know
+will not be unacceptable to my intimate friend.  I state at once
+that Mr. Fechter holds that relation towards me; not only because it
+is the fact, but also because our friendship originated in my public
+appreciation of him.  I had studied his acting closely, and had
+admired it highly, both in Paris and in London, years before we
+exchanged a word.  Consequently my appreciation is not the result of
+personal regard, but personal regard has sprung out of my
+appreciation.
+
+The first quality observable in Mr. Fechter's acting is, that it is
+in the highest degree romantic.  However elaborated in minute
+details, there is always a peculiar dash and vigour in it, like the
+fresh atmosphere of the story whereof it is a part.  When he is on
+the stage, it seems to me as though the story were transpiring
+before me for the first and last time.  Thus there is a fervour in
+his love-making--a suffusion of his whole being with the rapture of
+his passion--that sheds a glory on its object, and raises her,
+before the eyes of the audience, into the light in which he sees
+her.  It was this remarkable power that took Paris by storm when he
+became famous in the lover's part in the Dame aux Camelias.  It is a
+short part, really comprised in two scenes, but, as he acted it (he
+was its original representative), it left its poetic and exalting
+influence on the heroine throughout the play.  A woman who could be
+so loved--who could be so devotedly and romantically adored--had a
+hold upon the general sympathy with which nothing less absorbing and
+complete could have invested her.  When I first saw this play and
+this actor, I could not in forming my lenient judgment of the
+heroine, forget that she had been the inspiration of a passion of
+which I had beheld such profound and affecting marks.  I said to
+myself, as a child might have said:  "A bad woman could not have
+been the object of that wonderful tenderness, could not have so
+subdued that worshipping heart, could not have drawn such tears from
+such a lover".  I am persuaded that the same effect was wrought upon
+the Parisian audiences, both consciously and unconsciously, to a
+very great extent, and that what was morally disagreeable in the
+Dame aux Camelias first got lost in this brilliant halo of romance.
+I have seen the same play with the same part otherwise acted, and in
+exact degree as the love became dull and earthy, the heroine
+descended from her pedestal.
+
+In Ruy Blas, in the Master of Ravenswood, and in the Lady of Lyons--
+three dramas in which Mr. Fechter especially shines as a lover, but
+notably in the first--this remarkable power of surrounding the
+beloved creature, in the eyes of the audience, with the fascination
+that she has for him, is strikingly displayed.  That observer must
+be cold indeed who does not feel, when Ruy Blas stands in the
+presence of the young unwedded Queen of Spain, that the air is
+enchanted; or, when she bends over him, laying her tender touch upon
+his bloody breast, that it is better so to die than to live apart
+from her, and that she is worthy to be so died for.  When the Master
+of Ravenswood declares his love to Lucy Ashton, and she hers to him,
+and when in a burst of rapture, he kisses the skirt of her dress, we
+feel as though we touched it with our lips to stay our goddess from
+soaring away into the very heavens.  And when they plight their
+troth and break the piece of gold, it is we--not Edgar--who quickly
+exchange our half for the half she was about to hang about her neck,
+solely because the latter has for an instant touched the bosom we so
+dearly love.  Again, in the Lady of Lyons:  the picture on the easel
+in the poor cottage studio is not the unfinished portrait of a vain
+and arrogant girl, but becomes the sketch of a Soul's high ambition
+and aspiration here and hereafter.
+
+Picturesqueness is a quality above all others pervading Mr.
+Fechter's assumptions.  Himself a skilled painter and sculptor,
+learned in the history of costume, and informing those
+accomplishments and that knowledge with a similar infusion of
+romance (for romance is inseparable from the man), he is always a
+picture,--always a picture in its right place in the group, always
+in true composition with the background of the scene.  For
+picturesqueness of manner, note so trivial a thing as the turn of
+his hand in beckoning from a window, in Ruy Blas, to a personage
+down in an outer courtyard to come up; or his assumption of the
+Duke's livery in the same scene; or his writing a letter from
+dictation.  In the last scene of Victor Hugo's noble drama, his
+bearing becomes positively inspired; and his sudden assumption of
+the attitude of the headsman, in his denunciation of the Duke and
+threat to be his executioner, is, so far as I know, one of the most
+ferociously picturesque things conceivable on the stage.
+
+The foregoing use of the word "ferociously" reminds me to remark
+that this artist is a master of passionate vehemence; in which
+aspect he appears to me to represent, perhaps more than in any
+other, an interesting union of characteristics of two great
+nations,--the French and the Anglo-Saxon.  Born in London of a
+French mother, by a German father, but reared entirely in England
+and in France, there is, in his fury, a combination of French
+suddenness and impressibility with our more slowly demonstrative
+Anglo-Saxon way when we get, as we say, "our blood up", that
+produces an intensely fiery result.  The fusion of two races is in
+it, and one cannot decidedly say that it belongs to either; but one
+can most decidedly say that it belongs to a powerful concentration
+of human passion and emotion, and to human nature.
+
+Mr. Fechter has been in the main more accustomed to speak French
+than to speak English, and therefore he speaks our language with a
+French accent.  But whosoever should suppose that he does not speak
+English fluently, plainly, distinctly, and with a perfect
+understanding of the meaning, weight, and value of every word, would
+be greatly mistaken.  Not only is his knowledge of English--
+extending to the most subtle idiom, or the most recondite cant
+phrase--more extensive than that of many of us who have English for
+our mother-tongue, but his delivery of Shakespeare's blank verse is
+remarkably facile, musical, and intelligent.  To be in a sort of
+pain for him, as one sometimes is for a foreigner speaking English,
+or to be in any doubt of his having twenty synonymes at his tongue's
+end if he should want one, is out of the question after having been
+of his audience.
+
+A few words on two of his Shakespearian impersonations, and I shall
+have indicated enough, in advance of Mr. Fechter's presentation of
+himself.  That quality of picturesqueness, on which I have already
+laid stress, is strikingly developed in his Iago, and yet it is so
+judiciously governed that his Iago is not in the least picturesque
+according to the conventional ways of frowning, sneering,
+diabolically grinning, and elaborately doing everything else that
+would induce Othello to run him through the body very early in the
+play.  Mr. Fechter's is the Iago who could, and did, make friends,
+who could dissect his master's soul, without flourishing his scalpel
+as if it were a walking-stick, who could overpower Emilia by other
+arts than a sign-of-the-Saracen's-Head grimness; who could be a boon
+companion without ipso facto warning all beholders off by the
+portentous phenomenon; who could sing a song and clink a can
+naturally enough, and stab men really in the dark,--not in a
+transparent notification of himself as going about seeking whom to
+stab.  Mr. Fechter's Iago is no more in the conventional
+psychological mode than in the conventional hussar pantaloons and
+boots; and you shall see the picturesqueness of his wearing borne
+out in his bearing all through the tragedy down to the moment when
+he becomes invincibly and consistently dumb.
+
+Perhaps no innovation in Art was ever accepted with so much favour
+by so many intellectual persons pre-committed to, and preoccupied
+by, another system, as Mr. Fechter's Hamlet.  I take this to have
+been the case (as it unquestionably was in London), not because of
+its picturesqueness, not because of its novelty, not because of its
+many scattered beauties, but because of its perfect consistency with
+itself.  As the animal-painter said of his favourite picture of
+rabbits that there was more nature about those rabbits than you
+usually found in rabbits, so it may be said of Mr. Fechter's Hamlet,
+that there was more consistency about that Hamlet than you usually
+found in Hamlets.  Its great and satisfying originality was in its
+possessing the merit of a distinctly conceived and executed idea.
+From the first appearance of the broken glass of fashion and mould
+of form, pale and worn with weeping for his father's death, and
+remotely suspicious of its cause, to his final struggle with Horatio
+for the fatal cup, there were cohesion and coherence in Mr.
+Fechter's view of the character.  Devrient, the German actor, had,
+some years before in London, fluttered the theatrical doves
+considerably, by such changes as being seated when instructing the
+players, and like mild departures from established usage; but he had
+worn, in the main, the old nondescript dress, and had held forth, in
+the main, in the old way, hovering between sanity and madness.  I do
+not remember whether he wore his hair crisply curled short, as if he
+were going to an everlasting dancing-master's party at the Danish
+court; but I do remember that most other Hamlets since the great
+Kemble had been bound to do so.  Mr. Fechter's Hamlet, a pale,
+woebegone Norseman with long flaxen hair, wearing a strange garb
+never associated with the part upon the English stage (if ever seen
+there at all) and making a piratical swoop upon the whole fleet of
+little theatrical prescriptions without meaning, or, like Dr.
+Johnson's celebrated friend, with only one idea in them, and that a
+wrong one, never could have achieved its extraordinary success but
+for its animation by one pervading purpose, to which all changes
+were made intelligently subservient.  The bearing of this purpose on
+the treatment of Ophelia, on the death of Polonius, and on the old
+student fellowship between Hamlet and Horatio, was exceedingly
+striking; and the difference between picturesqueness of stage
+arrangement for mere stage effect, and for the elucidation of a
+meaning, was well displayed in there having been a gallery of
+musicians at the Play, and in one of them passing on his way out,
+with his instrument in his hand, when Hamlet, seeing it, took it
+from him, to point his talk with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
+
+This leads me to the observation with which I have all along desired
+to conclude:  that Mr. Fechter's romance and picturesqueness are
+always united to a true artist's intelligence, and a true artist's
+training in a true artist's spirit.  He became one of the company of
+the Theatre Francais when he was a very young man, and he has
+cultivated his natural gifts in the best schools.  I cannot wish my
+friend a better audience than he will have in the American people,
+and I cannot wish them a better actor than they will have in my
+friend.
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+{1}  Cornhill Magazine
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext Miscellaneous Papers by Charles Dickens
+
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