DESPOTIC POWER.-NUNNERIES.

53

hang him in the last page. This is not teaching virtue, but gilding the gallows, and raising up splendid associations in favour of being hanged.-[E. R. 1803.]

PUBLIC OPINION AND DESPOTIC POWER.

MANY governments are despotic in law, which are not despotic in fact; not because they are restrained by their own moderation, but because, in spite of their theoretical omnipotence, they are compelled, in many important points, to respect either public opinion or the opinion of other balancing powers, which without the express recognition of law, have gradually sprung up in the state. Russia, and Imperial Rome, had its prætorian guards. Turkey has its uhlema. Public opinion almost always makes some exceptions to its blind and slavish submission; and in bowing its neck to the foot of a sultan, stipulates how hard he shall tread.--[E. R. 1803.]

NUNNERIES.

SOCIETIES of this sort might perhaps be extended to other classes, and to other countries, with some utility. The only objection to a nunnery is, that those who change their minds cannot change their situation. That a number of unmarried females should collect together into one mass, and subject themselves to some few rules of convenience, is a system which might afford great resources and accommodation to a number of helpless individuals, without proving injurious to the community; unless, indeed, any very timid statesman shall be alarmed at the progress of celibacy, and imagine that the increase and multiplication of the human race may become a mere antiquated habit.-[E. R. 1803.]

54 PROTECTION OF THE ACCUSED.-HOMERIC MORALITY.

PROTECTION OF THE ACCUSED.

Ir is a principle that should never be lost sight of, that an accused person is presumed to be innocent; and that no other vexation should be imposed upon him. than what is absolutely necessary for the purposes of future investigation. The imprisonment of a poor man, because he cannot find bail, is not a gratuitous vexation, but a necessary severity; justified only, because no other, nor milder mode of security can, in that particular instance, be produced.-[E. R. 1803.]

ATTRACTION OF HANGING.

A VERY curious circumstance took place in the kingdom of Denmark, in the middle of the last century, relative to the infliction of capital punishments upon malefactors. They were attended from the prison to the place of execution by priests, accompanied by a very numerous procession, singing psalms, &c. &c.: which ended, a long discourse was addressed by the priest to the culprit, who was hung as soon as he had heard it. This spectacle, and all the pious cares bestowed upon the criminals, so far seduced the imaginations of the common people, that many of them committed murder purposely to enjoy such inestimable advantages, and the government was positively obliged to make hanging dull as well as deadly, before it ceased to be an object of popular ambition.—[E. R. 1802.]

HOMERIC MORALITY.

THERE is, every now and then, some plain coarse morality in Homer; but the most bloody revenge, and

BLACK FOPS.-MEN OF PARADOX.

55

the most savage cruelty in warfare, the ravishing of women, and the sale of men, &c. &c. &c., are circumstances which the old bard seems to relate as the ordinary events of his times, without ever dreaming that there could be much harm in them; and if it be urged that Homer took his ideas of right and wrong from a barbarous age, that is just saying, in other words, that Homer had very imperfect ideas of natural law. — [E. R. 1802.]

BLACK FOPS.

THERE is a class of fops not usually designated by that epithet-men clothed in profound black, with large canes, and strange amorphous hats-of big speech, and imperative presence talkers about Plato

great affecters of senility — despisers of women, and all the graces of life-fierce foes to common sense abusive of the living, and approving no one who has not been dead for at least a century. Such fops, as vain, and as shallow as their fraternity in Bond Street, differ from these only as Gorgonius differed from Rufillus.-[E. R. 1803.]

MEN OF PARADOX.

THERE are some men who continue to astonish and please the world, even in the support of a bad cause. They are mighty in their fallacies, and beautiful in their [E. R.]

errors.

SUPERFLUITY OF POETS.

THOUGH we praise Mr. Broughton for his book, and praise him very sincerely, we must warn him against that dreadful propensity which young men have for

56

COLONIAL GOVERNORS.-NOVELS.

writing verses. There is nothing of which Nature has been more bountiful than poets. They swarm like the spawn of cod-fish, with a vicious fecundity, that invites and requires destruction. To publish verses is become a sort of evidence that a man wants sense; which is repelled not by writing good verses, but by writing excellent verses.[E. R.]

COLONIAL GOVERNORS.

Ir is common, we know, to send a person who is somebody's cousin: but, when a new empire is to be founded, the Treasury should send out, into some other part of the town, for a man of sense and character. R.]

-[E.

QUALIFICATION OF GOVERNORS.

YOUNG surgeons are examined in Surgeons' Hall on the methods of cutting off legs and arms before they are allowed to practise surgery. An examination on the principles of Adam Smith, and a license from Mr. Ricardo, seem to be almost a necessary preliminary for the appointment of governors.— [E. R.]

NOVELS.

THE main question as to a novel is did it amuse? were you surprised at dinner coming so soon? did you mistake eleven for ten, and twelve for eleven? were you too late to dress? and did you sit up beyond the usual hour? If a novel produces these effects, it is good; if it does not story, language, love, scandal itself cannot

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CONGRUITY IN FICTION.-A BORE.

57

save it. It is only meant to please; and it must do that, or it does nothing. The objection, indeed, to these compositions, when they are well done, is, that it is impossible to do anything, or perform any human duty, while we are engaged in them. Who can read Mr. Hallam's Middle Ages, or extract the root of an impossible quantity, or draw up a bond, when he is in the middle of Mr. Trebeck and Lady Charlotte Duncan? How can the boy's lesson be heard, about the Jovenourished Achilles, or his six miserable verses upon Dido be corrected, when Henry Granby and Mr. Courtenay are both making love to Miss Jermyn? Common life palls in the middle of these artificial scenes. All is emotion when the book is open-all dull, flat, and feeble when it is shut. [E. R. 1826.]

CONGRUITY IN FICTION.

NOBODY should suffer his hero to have a black eye, or to be pulled by the nose. The Iliad would never have come down to these times if Agamemnon had given Achilles a box on the ear. We should have trembled for the Æneid, if any Tyrian nobleman had kicked the pious Æneas in the 4th book. Eneas may have deserved it; but he could not have founded the Roman Empire after so distressing an accident.— [E. R. 1826.]

A BORE.

LORD CHESTERTON we have often met with; and suffered a good deal from his Lordship: a heavy, pompous, meddling peer, occupying a great share of the conversation— saying things in ten words which required only two, and evidently convinced that he is making a great impres