Were child's play to confront, compared with this. Whereof relief will some day surely come.

Grope round and round, thinks of his distant home-Will act as though our death-beds were at home,
Those dearest to him-glancing rapidly
Through his past life-then with a wailful sigh
And a brief prayer, his soul becomes a blank.
1st Man. This is despair-I'll hear no more of it.
We have provisions still.

on this occasion, enveloped in an ordinary subject of inquiry lay at a baker's shop, 'a surtout, sitting at the head of a table, and few doors round the corner,'-to use the toposurrounded by a knot of good-humoured graphical formula of the parish functionary faces, who might, if judged from mere ap--and thither he ushered us. A few of the pearances, have rallied round their president window shutters of the shop were up, but in for some social purpose-only that the cigars all other respects there was as little to indicate and spirits and water had not yet come in. a house of death as there was to show it to be There was nothing official to be seen but a few a house of mourning. If the journeyman had pens, a sheet or two of paper, an inkstand, not been standing at the end of the counter in and a parish beadle. his holiday coat, it would have seemed as if When we entered, the Coroner was holding business was going on as usual. There was a friendly conversation with some of the jury, the same tempting display of tarts, the same the beadle, and the gentlemen of the press, heaps of biscuits, the same supply of loaves, respecting the inferiority of the accommoda- the same ranges of flour in paper bags as is tion; and, considering the number of persons to be observed in ordinary bakers' shops on present, and the accessions expected from ordinary occasions. Yet the mistress of this more jurymen, parochial officers, and witnesses, the subject was suggested naturally enough for the private apartment of the landlord was of exceedingly moderate dimensions; and that had been appropriated as the temporary Court.

particular baker's shop lay dead only a few paces within, and its master was in gaol on suspicion of having murdered her.

from blows and kicks, not to be beheld without strong indignation. Yet this was not all.

"The cause of death,' said the beadle-his mind was quite made up-'is on the back; it 's covered with bruises: but I suppose you won't want to see that, gentlemen.'

Through a parlour and a sort of passage with a bed and a sink in it, the jury were shown into a confined kitchen. Here, on a mahogany Here then, to a back parlour of the Old dining-table, lay the remains covered with a Drury Tavern, Vinegar Yard, Drury Lane, dirty sheet. To describe the spectacle which London, the Queen's representative was con- presented itself when the beadle, with busisigned-by no fault of his own, but from that ness-like immobility turned down the covering, of a system of which he is rather a victim does not happily fall within our present than a promoter-to institute one of the object. It is, however, necessary to say that most important inquiries which the law of it presented evidences of continued ill usage England prescribes. A human being had been prematurely sent into eternity, and the coroner was called upon-amidst several implements of conviviality, the odour of gin and the smell of tobacco-smoke to inquire in this manner: that is, to wit, if they [the witnesses] know where the person was slain, whether it were in any house, field, bed, tavern, or company, and who were there; who are culpable, either of the act, or of the force; and who were present, either men or women, and of what age soever they be, if they can speak or have any discretion; and how many soever be found culpable they shall be taken and delivered to the sheriff, and shall be committed to the gaol.' So runs the clause of the act of parliament, still in force by which the coroner and jury were now assembled. It is the second statute of the fourth year of Edward I., and is the identical law which is discussed by the grave-diggers in Hamlet.

The pleasant colloquy about the size of the room ended in a resolution to adjourn the Court to the Two Spies,' in a neighbouring alley. Time appeared, throughout the proceedings, to be as valuable as space, and the rest of the jurors having dropped in, the coroner-with a bible supplied from the bar, -at once delivered the oath to the foreman. The other jurors were rapidly sworn in batches, upon the Old Drury Bible, under an abridged dispensation administered, if our memory be correct, by the beadle.

By no means. Everybody had seen enough ; for they were surrounded by whatever could increase distress and engender disgust. The apartment was so small, that the table left only room for the jurors to edge round it one by one; and it was hardly possible to do this, without actual contact with the head or feet of the corpse. A gridiron and other black utensils were hanging against the wall, and could only be escaped by the exercise on the part of the spectators of great ingenuity of motion. This and the bed-place (bed-room is no word for it) indicated squalid poverty; but the scene was changed in the parlour. There, appearances were at least kept up. It was filled with decent furniture-even elegancies; including a pianoforte and a couple of portraits.

These strange evidences of refinement only brought out the squalor, smallness, and unfitness for any part of a judicial inquiry of the inner apartments, into more glaring relief. Surely so important a function as that of a coroner and his jury should not be conducted amidst such a scene! Besides other obvious objections, the danger of keeping corpses in confined apartments, and in close neighbourhoods, was here strongly exemplified: The smell was so 'close' and insanitary, that the first man who entered the den where the Not without alacrity the entire company body lay, caused the window to be opened. left their confined quarters to breathe such Two children, the offspring of the victim and air as is vouchsafed in Vinegar Yard. The the accused, lived in these apartments; and

'Now, then, gentlemen,' said the coroner, we 'll view the body.'

above stairs the house was crowded with lodgers, to all of whom any sort of infection would have proved the more disastrous from living next door, as it were, to Death. It is terrible to reflect that every decease happening among the myriads of the population a little lower in circumstances than this baker, deals around it its proportion of destruction to the living, from the same causes. True, that had it been impossible to retain the body where death occurred-as chances when several persons live in the same room-it would have been removed. But where.-The coroner and jury would have had to view it in the tap-room of a public-house.

the squalid kitchen, must have excited new throes of indignation and pity. One portrait was that of the bruised and crushed corpse when living and young. Then she must have been comely; now no feature could be recognised as ever having been human. Then, she was cleanly and neatly dressed, and, if the pictured smile might be trusted, happy; now, she lay amidst dirt, the victim of long, long illusage and lingering misery, ended in premature death. The other, was a likeness of her husband. Had words of love ever passed between the originals of those painted effigies? Had they ever courted? It seemed that one of the jurors was inwardly asking some such question while gazing at the portraits, for he was visibly affected.

There is another objection-all-powerful in the eyes of a lawyer. He recognises as a first necessity that the jurors should have no We all at length made our way to the opportunity of communicating with witnesses, 'Two Spies' in Whitehart Yard, Brydges except when before the Court. But here the Street. The accommodation afforded was a melancholy honours of the baker's shop and little more spacious than those of the Old parlour were performed by the two persons Drury; but the delegated Majesty of the from whose evidence the cause of death was Crown had no dignity imparted to it from to be chiefly elicited;-the journeyman and a the coroner's figure being brought out in female relative of the deceased, who were in relief by a clothes-horse and table cloth the house when the last blows were dealt, which were, during the inquiry, placed behind and when the woman died. They received him to serve as a fire-screen. Neither did the fifteen jurymen who were presently to the case of stuffed birds, the sampler of judge of their testimony; and there was Moses in the bulrushes, the picture of the nothing but the strong sense of propriety licensed victuallers' school, or the portraits of which actuated these gentlemen on the pre- the rubicund host and of his 'good lady,' sent occasion, to prevent the witnesses from tend to impress the minds of jury, witnesses, telling their own story privately in their or spectators, with that awe for the supremacy own way, to any one or half dozen of the of the Law which a court of justice is expected inquest, and thus to give a premature bent to inspire. to opinions, the materials for forming which, The circumstances as detailed by the witought to be strictly reserved for the public nesses are already familiar to the readers of Court. Many examples can be supplied in newspapers; but from the insecutive manner illustration of this evil. We select one: in which the evidence was produced, it is Some years ago, an old woman in the most difficult to frame a coherent narrative. It all wretched part of Westminster, was found tended to prove that the husband had for dead in her bed-strangled. When the several years exercised great harshness toCoroner and jury went to view the body, they wards his wife. That boxing her ears and were ushered by a young female-a relative kicking her were among his 'habits.' On -who lived with the deceased. She ex- the Friday previous to her decease, the plained there and then all about the death. journeyman had been, as usual, bolted When the Court re-assembled, she was-down in the bake-house for the night, chiefly, it was understood, in consequence of (such, he said, being the custom in the trade) what had previously passed-examined as and from eleven o'clock till three in the mornfirst and principal witness, and upon her evi- ing he heard a great noise overhead as of two dence, the verdict arrived at, was Temporary persons quarrelling, and of one person draginsanity. The case, however, subsequently ging the other across the room. passed through more formal judicial ordeals, cries of distress from the deceased woman. and the result was, that the coroner's prime Another witness-a second cousin of the wife witness was hanged for the murder of the called on Saturday afternoon. She found old woman. We must have it distinctly the wife in a pitiable state from ill-usage understood that not the faintest shade of and want of rest. Her left ear and all that parallel exists between the two cases. We part of the head was much bruised. There bring them together solely to illustrate the were cuts, and the hair was matted with conevils of a system. gealed blood. The husband was told how On passing into the baker's parlour, dumb much she was injured, but he did not appear witnesses presented themselves, which-pro- to take any notice of it. A trait of the dread perly or improperly-must have had their in which the woman lived of the man was here effect on the promoters of the inquiry. The mentioned; she asked the witness to ask her piano indicated hours formerly spent, and husband to allow her to lie down. She dared thoughts once indulged, which, when imagined not prefer so reasonable a request herself; by minds fresh from the appalling reality in although she had been up all the previous

There were

persons concerned in it directly or remotely. Our wish is to point out the exceeding looseness, informality, and difficulty of ensuring sound judgment, which the system occasions. Indeed we were told by a competent authority that the proceedings at the Old Drury and "Two Spies' taverns, formed an orderly and superior specimen of their class.

night being beaten. He refused. The cousin sat down to dinner with the wretched pair; only for the purpose of being between them to prevent further violence, for she had dined. She remained until half past three o'clock, and during that interval the husband frequently boxed his wife's ears as hard as he could; and once kicked her with great force. Her usual remonstrance was, 'Man alive, don't There is a mischief of some gravity, which touch me.' The visitor returned in the even- we have yet to notice. The essential check ing, and she, with the journeyman, saw another upon all judicial or private dereliction is pubbrutal attack, some minutes after which the licity, and publicity gained through the press victim fell as if in a fit. She was assisted into in all cases which require it; but the existing an inner room, sank down and never rose system gives the coroner the power of exagain. She lay till the following Sunday cluding reporters. He can, if he pleases, make morning in a state of insensibility, and no a Star-chamber of his court, hold it in a private attempt had been made to procure surgical house, and conduct it in secret. Instancesassistance. A practitioner at last was sum- though very rare ones-can be adduced of this moned, gave no hope, and the poor creature having been actually done. Here opens a died on Monday morning. The post-mortem door to another abuse ;-it is known that a examination, described by the surgeon, re- certain few among newspaper hangers-onvealed the cause of death in the blows at the persons only connected with the press by the side of the head, which he said was like 'beef- precarious and slender tenure of a pennysteaks when beaten by cooks.' No trace of a-line'-find it profitable to attend inquests habitual drunkenness appeared. The de--not for legitimate purposes- for their ceased had been, in the course of the inquiry, copy is seldom inserted by editors-but charged with that. to obtain money from relatives and parA lawyer would have felt especially fidgetty, ties interested in the deceased for what while these facts were being elicited. The they are pleased to call 'suppressing' their questions were put in an undecided rambling reports. This generally happens in cases which manner, and were so interrupted by half-made from their having no public interest whatever remarks from the jurors and other parties in the room, that it was a wonder how the report of the proceedings, which appeared in the morning newspapers, could have been so cleverly cleared as it was of the chaff from which it was winnowed. One or two circumstances occurred during this time which tended to throw over the whole affair the air of an ill-played farce. At an interesting point of the evidence, the door was opened, and a scream from a female voice announced 'Please sir, the beadle's wanted!' There were four gentlemen sitting on a horse-hair sofa close behind some of the jury, with whom more than once they entered into conversation, doubtless about the case in hand. The way in which the coroner took notice of this Let us here put up another guard against breach of every judisprudential rule, was ex-misconception. No imputation can rest upon tremely characteristic: he said, in effect, that any accredited member of the press; the high there was, perhaps, no actual harm in it, but state dignities which some men who have been it might be objected to-the parties conversing reporters now so well support, are a guarantee might be relatives of the accused. In fact, he against that. Neither do we wish to undermildly insinuated that such unprivileged com- value the important services sometimes permunications might warp the jurymen's judg- formed by occasional or 'penny-a-line' rements-that's all ! porters; among whom there are honourable and clever men. We only point out a small body of exceptional characters who are no more than what we have described-'hangers-on' of the press.

After the coroner had summed up, the jury returned a verdict of manslaughter against the husband. The Queen's representative then retired, and so did the jury and the beadle; a little extra business was done at the bar of the 'Two Spies,' and, to use a reporter's pet phrase, the proceedings terminated.'

It is far from our desire, in describing this particular inquest, in any way to disparagesupposing anything we have said can be construed into disparagement-any person or

would not, under any circumstances, be admitted into the crowded columns of the journals; for we can with confidence say that any case in which the public interests are likely to be staked, once before the editors of any London Journal, and supplied by a gentleman of their own establishment, no power on earth could suppress it. It has happened again occasionally that, from the suddenness with which the coroner is summoned, and the slovenly manner in which his office is performed, an inquest that ought to have been made public has wholly escaped the knowledge of newspaper conductors and their accredited reporters, and has thus passed over in silence.

We now proceed to suggest a remedy for the inherent vices of 'Crowner's quests.'

In the report of the Board of Health on intramural interments, upon which a bill now before Parliament is founded, it is proposed to erect in convenient parts of London eight reception-houses for the dead, previous to in

terment in the cemeteries to be established. The Oxford of that day suited Jeffrey ill. This will remove the mortal remains from that It suited few people well who cared for anyimmediate and fatal contact-fatal, morally as thing but cards and claret. Southey, who well as physically-which is compulsory came just after him, tells us that the Greek he among the poorer classes under the existing took there he left there, nor ever passed such system of sepulture. It appears that of the unprofitable months; and Lord Malmesbury, deaths which take place in the metropolis, in who had been there but a little time before upwards of 20,000 instances the corpse must him, wonders how it was that so many men be kept, during the interval between the death should make their way in the world creditably, and the interment, in the same room in which after leaving a place that taught nothing but the surviving members of the family live and idleness and drunkenness. But Jeffrey was sleep; while of the 8,000 deaths every year not long exposed to its temptations. He left from epidemic diseases, by far the greater part after the brief residence of a single term; and happen under the circumstances just described. what in after life he remembered most vividly If from these causes the necessity for dead-in connection with it, seems to have been the houses is so great when no inquest is neces- twelve days' hard travelling between Edinsary, how much stronger is it when the burgh and London which preceded his enservices of the coroner are requisite ? The trance at Queen's. Some seventy years before, reason given for the peripatetic nature of the another Scotch lad, on his way to become yet office, is the assumed necessity of the jury more famous in literature and law, had taken seeing the bodies on the spot and in the cir- nearly as many weeks to perform the same cumstances of death. But that such a neces-journey; but, between the schooldays of sity is unreal was proved on the inquest we Mansfield and of Jeffrey, the world had not have been detailing, by the fact of the remains been resting. having been lifted from the bed where life It was enacting its greatest modern inciceased, to a table, and having been opened by dent, the first French Revolution, when the the surgeons. Surely, removal to a wholesome young Scotch student returned to Edinburgh and convenient reception-house, would not and changed his College gown for that of the disturb such appearances as may be presumed advocate. Scott had the start of him in the to form evidence. As it is, the only place Court of Session by two years, and had become among the poor in which medical men can rather active and distinguished in the Speculaperform the important duty of examination by tive Society before Jeffrey joined it. When the post mortem dissection is a room crowded with latter, then a lad of nineteen, was introduced, inmates-or the tap-room of the nearest tavern. (one evening in 1791), he observed a heavyTo preserve, then, a degree of order, dignity, looking young man officiating as secretary, and solemnity equal at least to that which who sat solemnly at the bottom of the table is maintained to try an action for debt, and in a huge woollen night-cap, and who, before to prevent the possibility of any 'private' the business of the night began, rose from his dealings, we would strongly urge that a suit- chair, and, with imperturbable gravity seated able Coroner's Court-house be attached to on as much of his face as was discernible from each of the proposed reception-houses. A the wrappings of the 'portentous machine' clause to this effect can be easily introduced that enveloped it, apologised for having left into the new bill. With such accommodation the coroner could perform his office in a manner worthy of a delegate of the Crown, and no such informalities as tend to intercept and taint the pure stream of Justice could continue to exist.

FRANCIS JEFFREY.

home with a bad toothache. This was his quondam schoolfellow Scott. Perhaps Jeffrey was pleased with the mingled enthusiasm for the speculative, and regard for the practical, implied in the woollen nightcap; or perhaps he was interested by the Essay on Ballads which the hero of the night-cap read in the course of the evening: but before he left the meeting he sought an introduction to Mr. Walter Scott, and they were very intimate for many years afterwards.

JEFFREY was a year younger than SCOTT, whom he outlived eighteen years, and with whose career his own had some points of The Speculative Society dealt with the resemblance. They came of the same middle-usual subjects of elocution and debate prevaclass stock, and had played together as lads in the High School' yard' before they met as advocates in the Court of Session. The fathers of both were connected with that Court; and from childhood, both were devoted to the law. But Scott's boyish infirmity imprisoned him in Edinburgh, while Jeffrey was let loose to Glasgow University, and afterwards passed up to Queen's College, Oxford. The boys, thus separated, had no remembrance of having previously met, when they saw each other at the Speculative Society in 1791.

lent in similar places then and since; such as, whether there ought to be an Established Religion, and whether the Execution of Charles I. was justifiable, and if Ossian's poems were authentic? It was not a fraternity of speculators by any means of an alarming or dangerous sort. John Allen and his friends, at this very time, were spouting forth active sympathy for French Republicanism at Fortune's Tavern, under immediate and watchful superintendence of the Police; James Macintosh was parading the streets with Horne Tooke's