initial commit of ebook 1435HEADmain

1 files changed, 2685 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/1435-0.txt b/1435-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..05896bf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/1435-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,2685 @@
+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.
+
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 1435-0.txt or 1435-0.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/3/1435
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will
+be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
+law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
+so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United
+States without permission and without paying copyright
+royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
+of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
+and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks, unless you receive
+specific permission. If you do not charge anything for copies of this
+eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may use this eBook
+for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports,
+performances and research. They may be modified and printed and given
+away--you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks
+not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the
+trademark license, especially commercial redistribution.
+
+START: FULL LICENSE
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
+Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at
+www.gutenberg.org/license.
+
+Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+
+1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
+destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your
+possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
+Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
+by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the
+person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph
+1.E.8.
+
+1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
+paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this
+agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the
+Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
+of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual
+works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
+States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
+United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
+claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
+displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
+all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
+that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting
+free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm
+works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
+Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily
+comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
+same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when
+you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
+in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
+check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
+agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
+distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
+other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no
+representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
+country outside the United States.
+
+1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
+immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear
+prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work
+on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed,
+performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
+
+  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.
+
+1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is
+derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
+contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
+copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
+the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
+redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
+either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
+obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm
+trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
+additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
+will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works
+posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
+beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
+any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
+to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format
+other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official
+version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site
+(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
+to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
+of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain
+Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the
+full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+provided that
+
+* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+  the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+  you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
+  to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has
+  agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
+  Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
+  within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
+  legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
+  payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
+  Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
+  Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
+  Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+  you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+  does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+  License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
+  copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
+  all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm
+  works.
+
+* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
+  any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+  electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
+  receipt of the work.
+
+* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+  distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than
+are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
+from both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and The
+Project Gutenberg Trademark LLC, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
+Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
+contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
+or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
+other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
+cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
+with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
+with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
+lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
+or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
+opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
+the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
+without further opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO
+OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
+damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
+violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
+agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
+limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
+unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
+remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in
+accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
+production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
+including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
+the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
+or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or
+additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any
+Defect you cause.
+
+Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
+computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
+exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
+from people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future
+generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
+Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at
+www.gutenberg.org 
+
+Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary 
+Archive Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
+U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is in Fairbanks, Alaska, with the
+mailing address: PO Box 750175, Fairbanks, AK 99775, but its
+volunteers and employees are scattered throughout numerous
+locations. Its business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt
+Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to
+date contact information can be found at the Foundation's web site and
+official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+
+    Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+    Chief Executive and Director
+    gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
+DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular
+state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
+donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be
+freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
+distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of
+volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
+the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
+necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
+edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search
+facility: www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+