why, then, enact laws which are not, or cannot, be enforced? Why is the statute-book to be at variance with our practice? and why are crimes of the greatest die to pass almost wholly unpunished? It has ever been considered a maxim in all criminal codes, that restitution was the first object, and punishment the second: this principle formed the basis of the Mosaic law; "If a man shall steal an ox, or a sheep, and kill it, or sell it, he shall restore five oxen for an ox, and four sheep for a sheep."-Exod. xxii. 1. But in our law if one man rob another, unless the actual property be discovered, the principle of restitution is not recognized, although the culprit may be a rich man ; besides, the restitution of property stolen is so very slovenly provided for, that few prosecutors can or ever do recover their own; the lowest officer in the law (the thief-taker) has charge of it. Again, a man may, under our unjust laws, be robbed of one hundred pounds; convict the offender, and see five hundred pounds of the culprit's property taken possession of by the sheriffs, while he (the prosecutor) walks home with empty pockets, and the loss of much time he has spent in supporting a sys tem of jurisprudence which assists the thief in robbery. Custom has, in some measure, reconciled the people of this country to these absurdities, or they could not have been so long tolerated. In the case of the insurance fraud, restitution was not thought of; and if the judge could, and had, inflicted a fine as well as imprisonment, the injured party who lost the money would have had none of it. Who shall say our laws are founded upon a principle of justice? the guilty man in the case here alluded to, after the first impressions of a prison had evaporated, actually felicitated himself, as he had retired from business rather early in life, on being compelled to spend the first year and a half of his otium cum dignitate upon an economical and prudential system, saying, in addition to the £100 obtained for the insurance office, that it was another £500 in his pocket; and as for the circumstance, what cared he? he could go anywhere, had money-and could always be respected.

Legislators-meditate! meditate upon these things. "It is a scandal" as Sir William Shelly once said of the government, "that a system of jurisprudence, so sick at heart, should be made to look so well in the face."

How horror-struck would John Bull be with the sight of this ancillary of his household, if once a fairer one were placed beside her. John is a peculiarly obtuse mortal, and stupid enough to admire anything at first sight; and it is only by repeated comparisons that he can at any time be brought to exercise a sound judgment.

The last malefactors I shall notice which came within my experience are Bishop and Williams, who were executed for the murder of an Italian boy, in order to sell his body for dissection; having treated of the subject of supplying the anatomical schools with subjects in the former part of this work, it will only be necessary briefly to speak of these men.

If anything were further required to prove the expediency of adopting some such system as I have proposed, surely these men's crimes of murder furnish the legislature with that proof. I knew them both, as I did also their associate May, as men engaged in their trade, being

for a series of more than sixteen years the most active resurrectionists in London. Williams, in his confession, admitted that he had sold from five hundred to a thousand bodies in his time; but the truth lies nearer one thousand four hundred or one thousand five hundred, making an average of about two a-week. If we suppose they received 87. for each body, and that there were three men engaged in each transaction, they must, during the whole of their career, have been in the receipt of 57. 6s. 8d. each per week, a sum, from their mode of living, not at all improbable. I should not have reverted to this case were it not to give my opinion, that, although the supply from workhouses now adopted has lessened the practice of plundering the churchyards, yet the demand for bodies is still greater than the supply, and that further measures should be taken totally to put a stop to the illicit traffic of supplying the profession by robbing the grave.

Next to the class of rogues who are so by fate, if I may use a term familiar to my ears in earlier life, none, in the more regular grades of society, add so much to our criminal calendar as the body of London shopmen: out of one house, Messrs. S and Co., sixteen or seventeen have been transported, and nearly half that number executed, in my time. This firm, it must be observed, carries on an extensive business in the drapery line. The judges at the Old Bailey, at length, having expressed their surprise that so many offenders should come out of one shop of business, for a time lessened in some degree the numbers prosecuted from this particular house: notwithstanding, since my attention was by their conduct directed to this class of men, I have every year observed an increasing number of shopmen, clerks, &c. presenting themselves at the Old Bailey.

If we inquire for the causes of this species of delinquency, we shall find that all parties participate in promoting the crime. Of late years, since I have read much, and thought more, I have learnt to despise the system taught by the fraternity in which I was educated, and the nonsense of depending upon the horoscope of man. I have discovered that effects have a cause; although we have not always mind enough to trace and explain them to our own understanding, or to that of others; the idleness of the generality of mankind in this particular, (neglecting to search for the causes which produce effects in the social arrangement,) together with the outrageous bias which the mind of man has taken in the pursuit of wealth, mainly contributes to our present muddled state of social existence.

"Man is supreme lord and master
Of his own ruin and disaster,
Controls his fate, but in nothing less
Than in ordering his own happiness."

There are no roads known to men which must inevitably lead to happiness in this world; but those which lead to “ruin and disaster," are broad and passable enough for all, among which, none is more apparent than a false and misdirected education-by education, I mean bringing up, for our education begins with our birth, nor ends until our dying day. The ambition of our fathers was to teach their children their own trade, or some similar one, corres

ponding to the same walk of life-to inculcate the principle of honest industry, as the only certain course to avoid disgrace, poverty, and a jail. But since the days of Pitt, who established in Threadneedle Street a gambling company, the whole of society have been diverted, and their steady and regular energies brought to operate, not as heretofore, in the pursuit of one lawful object, but in wild and chimerical schemes of adventure. The stories of the fortunes which have been made in modern days, by Bob Smith the carpenter's son, who was a genius, and being above his father's trade, went to London, and the Jack Joneses, &c. &c., who all did the same, are told and remembered in every parish throughout the kingdom. The honest mechanic, and the hard-working man, listens with attention to the history of some successful youth; and then looks round upon his family, and exclaims, "Times are sure enow altered. Tom, thee must gang up to Lunnun, and see if thee can't make a better man than thy father," addressing his eldest son.

"And why shouldn't I go, father?" says Bill, the next brother. "I'm sure I sha'n't stay at home to work like a negur, at our trade, if Tom goes to Lunnun, and is made a gentleman."

"No, no! it isn't fair," exclaims the mother, "to make flesh of one, and fowl of the other; I say, let 'em both go and seek their fortunes: who knows but they may come back with one as big as Squire Hopkins's? I heard say he was once only a shopboy: and from all I can learn, he's no mortal wonder of a genius."

Thus the tales, fictitious and real, of sudden rises in life, which have been so industriously circulated in print and otherwise, with a view of stimulating the rising generation to habits of industry, have, in reality, created a false taste, and a dangerous ambition, which occasions youth to break out of the bounds marked for their sphere of action by birth.

It is said that only among one branch of shopmen, the linen-drapers, there are twenty thousand constantly out of employ in London, besides the new-comers, who are continually flocking into the market for employment.

Parents encourage their sons to abandon pursuits of handicraft to preserve soft hands, daily trim their nails, wear the best kind of clothes they can procure for show more than use, and ape the gentleman, without having a shilling, when they become young men, to give them; and then are perfectly astonished when they hear that they are in the hands of the law. Shopkeepers, on the other hand, instead of selecting steady and thoughtful young men for assistants in retail shops, consider only exterior qualifications; choosing those possessed of personal advantages, and who, for lack of mental cultivation, are full of vanity, can lie with a grace, and talk nonsense to every description of customer which enters the shop.

Encouraged in their coxcombry and foppery in business-treated like the lowest menials in accommodations of board and lodging—-suspected in point of honesty at every turn, and, in consequence, all confidence withheld-fenced and hedged round by every precaution, to prevent any act of embezzlement; and, under the present system, engaged not on a more secure tenure than an extra waiter at a Sunday

tea-gardens, who may be discharged on the instant, to spend many months in idleness or in fruitless search for another engagement, what essentially good can be expected in the character of a class of men so educated and thus situated?

Superadded to these deteriorating causes among shopmen, we may mention also the strong desire for the enjoyments of pleasure ever shown by the weak-minded and frivolously-educated classes. There is also the effect that the modern mode of conducting business has generally upon the principles of the every-day rising classes in all trades and grades.

Formerly, if prices were not fixed, profits were pretty nearly so; but now, the shopman who can, by persuasion, falsehood, and chicanery, extract the most money out of the customer's purse, regardless of any known rules of fair dealing, he it is who is held in the greatest estimation by the employer. There is a theoretical conviction upon the minds of tradesmen, that they cannot reach the goal of wealth by any direct course, and therefore they seek it by an oblique one; practical illustrations are every day before young men, of the largest fortunes being made by means the most indirect. Goldsmith, in his essays, says, "The lovers of money are generally characterised as men without honour or humanity, who live only to accumulate; and to this passion sacrifice every other happiness." And I may add, the happiness of their fellow men.

(To be continued.)

AUGUST.

BY THE AUTHOR OF LONGINUS," A TRAGEDY IN FIVE ACTS, THE ANGLO-POLISH HARP," &c.

THE scarlet poppies skirt the ripening corn,
Wave to the breeze its masses like the sea;

The tiny rustic sallies, with the dawn,

To keep from pilfering birds the produce free.

The sun's own flower, its oriflamb display'd,

Turns with the day-god's triumph through the spheres ;

The lady's bower in jessamine array'd,

The lady there, best, beautiful appears!

The early apple now, and now the pear,

The orchard-trees make tempting to the sight;

The asters dazzle in the gay parterre;

The many-coloured dahlia glows in light.

And now the reapers toil; the sheaves are bound;

The harvest wains drag home; feasting and songs go round.

THE

METROPOLITA N.

MAY, 1836.

LITERATURE.

NOTICES OF NEW WORKS.

Pericles and Aspasia. By WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR, ESQ. 2 Vols.

This is a work that must become integral with the literature of England, and, as such, we fervently hope, that in its early youth there will be no attempt to stifle it by well-meant, yet, inordinate caresses on the one hand, or to strangle it in conservative anger and indignation on the other. We know well that it is of that natural vigour, that it will survive both misplaced indulgence and vindictive cruelty; but it is not unlikely to suffer from both. As for ourselves, we will regard it without reference to its political bias, and merely as an almost preternatural resuscitation of some of the great of ancient Greece. Mr. Landor's soul must certainly be Pythagorean, and privileged. He possesses the power of Metempsychosis as regards sex, as well as person; or rather, he ensouls himself within a soul; and at will. We now perceive his mind enrobed in the graver dignity of Pericles-he walks forth a demigod-the whole mass of citizens, whose Athens he has so often saved, and so exquisitely, so nobly embellished, crowd upon his steps, to reverence, almost to adore; he speaks, he harangues-it is no longer the human voice, it is the will of destiny; and now, in the Attic elegance of the beautiful, and we fear too voluptuous Aspasia, he breathes nothing but odours, and dispenses around him flowers, and music, and poesy. And then, the turn of his sentences are so exquisite, the thought so original, and the expression at once so harmonious and so pure. His periods ring out an unstudied melody; as you read, you sigh for some beautiful mouth to utter them, and confess with gratitude that language is Heaven's best gift-at least such language. The yet uninitiated reader will ask, on what is all this eloquence, that you describe so enthusiastically, lavished? On nothing but a very falsely, yet beautifully coloured history of the unsanctified affections, or sanctified by love only, of Pericles and Aspasia. The history is narrated in letters, supposed to be written by the actors. It is in the wonderful spirit of this correspondence that the whole charm is contained. They are pre-eminently Grecian. There is nothing English in them but the mere words. Of a truth, it may be said of these epistles, that they are not written in the vulgar tongue. They are neither versified nor rhymed, yet have they a metre of their own. They want not variety, for they embrace all states of the mind; many of them are witty, delicately witty-not one of them humorous. There is a spirituality about them that disdains so May 1836.-VOL. XVI.-NO. LXI.

B