he is touched afterwards, and repents when punished. Benevolent people forget the dual existence in the human mind of good and evil; they do not remember the perpetual conflict going on. Basil Montagu should have borne this in mind. When the Rev. Mr. Hackman murdered Miss Reay he no more thought of the consequences than he did of the Council of Trent. He had a long combat with evil : he had fled from it, had returned, and had been prostrated by his passion, committed the murder, and was then full of remorse, that staunch bloodhound which dogs Guilt's steps, but which never lets its deep and horrible baying be fully heard until the crime is committed.

It seems certain, then, that punishment must not be looked at in all aspects as preventing crime. We must begin before the criminal's habits are formed: we must teach the young, and plant the seeds of good in their minds. A wise farmer well knows that a seed-plot of thistles, which one year is in a corner of his field, will the next year be all over his farm, so far as the wind blows, if he does not take due precautions. But if he does, he may get his land clear. It would be much cheaper to take up every little helpless vagabond, and to teach him what is right, than to punish him when he has grown up a rogue, and badness is ingrained. But there is one grand objection to this: why should we teach the criminal, and neglect the virtuous poor? We must, then (and we shall yet be met with objections), arrest crime when it first crops out. The thistles, alas! must first be sown, and then "stubbed " when young; and for this purpose our Juvenile

Reformatories are most admirable institutions. With old offenders transportation should again be resorted to. There are splendid tracts of country in the north of Australia, or, as suggested by Captain Burton, on the west coast of Africa, which might be taken by the Government, cleared, drained, and built upon, and then, with roads made and prepared, with spaces ready for extra habitations, given up to colonists at an advanced price, while the convicts should be withdrawn. This would surely meet the wishes of the most fastidious and exigeant colonist, even if he wished for all the honey-sweet protection of England without paying any of the taxes. We cannot again go back to the horrors of Norfolk Island. We have had enough of them. The convict pioneers, such as we have described, should, we think, be managed under Captain Crofton's excellent scheme, which has proved so successful in Ireland, and which so admirably illustrates the folly of crime and the wisdom of virtuous life.

Finally, tickets-of-leave, notwithstanding the philandering philanthropists and the deputation to Sir George Grey, should be retained, but used more sparingly. When a man is evidently a reformed person, then he should be set free under certain surveillance. If he can earn his living, and under a changed name build up a good reputation, then, in the name of all that is good, let society not bind him, but rejoice that he shall turn from his wickedness and live. There are many thousands of ticket-of-leave men in our midst; and of these, thousands are now honest, reformed men, working away with the best of their companions. It would be gross cruelty to

rescind the favour which has been shown to them, even if we had one hundred proved cases of garrotting, which we have not. Lastly, to reduce crime, society must make up its mind to reward and honour honesty and virtuous poverty much more than it does. At present it often seems that, on the surface at least, vice has the best of it, and that it is pleasant and gay to be vicious; a sad and utterly revolutionary state of things, and contrary to the inspired assertions that Vice lays hold of hell, and dwells in misery, while Virtue's ways are ways of pleasantness, and "all her paths are peace.”

ON LOOKING ABOUT US.

ISS NIGHTINGALE, whose opinion upon subjects which she has rendered known is always to be mentioned with the highest respect, complains

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that one of the great wants in nursing (or rather of nurses) is "observation." That is to say, that those very useful and excellent persons who tend our sick-beds, and wait upon our birth and our death, do not sufficiently know how to use their eyes; that Mrs. Gamp and Mrs. Harris, who have spent their lives in hospitals, and who ought to know the meaning of every groan, the expression of each sigh, the intention of every small breath which issues from the suffering, are hard-hearted and incapable, nay, often useless, or worse than useless, because they do not know "how to observe." This would very likely be news to Mrs. Gamp, and she would be quite "rampagious" at it. "Not know my bizness!" she would say. "Have not I been years and years at it? Don't I know the ins and outs of all the patients, drat 'em? Aint I acquaintaged with all their little ways? Here have I been, gal and woman, a matter o' forty year in a hospital, and am I to be told by a mere chit of a gal to

Sairey Gamp as I don't know how to hobserve? A likely thing, indeed! a stuck-up minx! I'll take a night case, or a day case, or a fever case, or a consumptive case, or a monthly, with any nurse in the three kingdoms and St. Thomas's parish, which is well beknown to all the medical gentlemen at Bartlemy's!"

Mrs. Gamp's vindication of herself would be founded on precisely the same basis as that of any one else. She and most people argue that experience makes fools wise; to which we answer, Not always. It all depends upon one thing-upon knowing how to observe. Experience, for instance, does not make a naturally vicious man wise; nor did it make our Charles I. wise, or he would not have lost his head and the three kingdoms. It did not make the Bourbons wise, or they would be reigning still. They had learnt one cuckoo lesson "that liberty was fatal to the Bourbons "—and they therefore repressed liberty. It was said of them that they never learnt nor ever forgot anything; and it seems to have been true. Experience did not make the Israelites wise: they learnt little or nothing in forty years. And so, in common life, we shall see people going through their existence from boy to man, from girl to woman, just as silly as ever: indeed, most people are better when young than when old. It is a hard task to grow old gracefully, to scatter our follies away as a child lays by his toys; to relinquish our tastes, and take up new ones; to act consistently and wisely; to melt imperceptibly, like a fine summer's day, from morning to noon, from noon to evening, and so on to sunset, quietly, calmly,