lative punishment! That victim is the recognised servant of a Sovereign, whose still early youth would promise benign and civilising influences. He is the subject of a princess, whose woman-nature would seem to imply the impossibility of her assent to the mangling and laceration of human flesh. He has given his allegiance to the descendant of an illustrious line.Surely he should be too proud to number among her defenders, a being liable to agonies which, if inflicted on a beast, would ensure to the torturer an unrepealable odium. The Queen is clad in purple and fine raiment ; her couch is of down; her dwelling is a land of pleasaunce; her wish is an enchantment which the rarest and most costly treasures obey; melodies greet her ear; beauties her eye; but her acknowledged servant is a poverty-stricken man. All coarseness of fare, all hardness of pillow, all inclemency of season does he bear for her; and yet for a fault comparatively slight, sanguinary appliances are put into activity, which a word from the fair tenant of Windsor's pleasant halls, might perchance arrest-and she does not ulter it.

Such are the thoughts that must arise in the minds of those to whom outraged nature forbids nicely distinguishing consideration. It would be equally cruel and absurd to ascribe to your Majesty's wish, the continuance of those practices for which Woolwich has of late become so infamously notorious. Long-established precedent, the sanction of the bravest commanders defend them; while the expedients which, on everrecurring ministerial emergencies, require the exercise of all Court ingenuity, will scarcely allow this painful question to rivet your attention. But while an apology may perhaps be made for previous neglect, a long protraction of it would render justification, nay even palliation, impracticable. The permission of the sovereign must eventually be more or less connected with those laws, which, while deeply odious to the public, are never brought under the notice of parliament by her ministers; at all events it will be asked whether this is not a case so urgent, as to call for an expression of feeling from your Majesty, as a member of that sex, whose best sympathies are insulted by naval and military torture. Be the court-etiquette whatever it may, in cases where party-spirit originates the question; the present one is more extensive. It appeals to you as a daughter of heaven; and your interference is warranted, because your name is registered in the calendar of humanity.

I cannot part from this subject without reminding you, that the existence of the censured punishment, necessarily implies an executioner; and an executioner, in this instance, necessarily presumes a moral abasement almost too fearful for reflection. Just heaven! Of what are the heart-resolves manufactured, which, in being wound up to the infliction of so much agony, do not break?

All laws which enjoin the punishment of death are likewise inconsistent with that merciful tone which should characterise the reign of a female sovereign. Our sanguinary code is equally horrid and inutile. The legitimate object of punishment is the protection of society, and the benefit of the criminal himself. From the forgiving love of God, the vilest of his breathing creatures is not excluded; that earthly law therefore, which proscribes the culprit from hope and pardon, corresponds not with the law of heaven.

J

The moral portion (so called) and the criminal portion (so called) of a community require, in their respective degrees, improvement and reformation to an almost infinite degree. The tenacious selfishness of the former, and the lawless retaliation of the latter, must disappear before a social system based on the eternal sympathies which dwell in every heart, though recognised and acknowledged only by a subdivided fraction of the people.

It is in vain for Government to expect kindly and pacific exhibitions from a class to which it appeals by the extremest modes of relentless antagonism. Worse than idle is it to direct a vengeful artillery against the acts of transgressors, while the passions which generate them are roused into activity by its voice. The minimum of punishment and the maximum of benevolent consideration, must be the objects of a peacefacilitating administration. Our present legislators forget that the criminal is but a phase of the man, and that the most atrocious actions must not be ascribed to essential depravity; but to the holiest principles working through an organisation unhappily modified in circumstances, not only subsequent, but antecedent to itself. A queen should feel that a child of the Creator is in no case to be prohibited from making an earthly atonement for his offences. Conscience must show your Majesty that under our present penal laws contrasts may take place, the consideration of which you could hardly endure. A day, opening with a Newgate tragedy, and concluding with a Court ball, involves an antithesis-from the contemplation of which every finer sensibility revolts.

I have thus, Madam, endeavoured to draw your attention to two notorious evils, in the abrogation of which royal influence might aid. It is scarcely necessary to add that the feminine principle must be excited on all similar or analogous cases.

A more unrestricted intercourse with your subjects would greatly aid in the developement of that affectionate loyalty which cannot but be grateful to your Majesty's heart. It is much to be regretted that she, whose position requires of her a national friendship, should be almost inaccessible to the greater portion of her subjects. Your agency, however kind, should not be an invisible one; your acts of love should meet the eye, as well as the ear, of your people. How delightful for every individual to feel that his Sovereign was personally co-operating with him in the advancement of public weal.

The regal dispensation must be one of love, and not of coercion : the former must gradually displace the latter. Sympathetic energies must reform society: all other instruments are valueless. Would your Majesty rule a religious people? "Love is the fulfilling of the law." Would your Majesty rule a chivalric people? Every noble disinterested deed must be generated by love. Would your Majesty rule sons and daughters of Genius? It is love that inspires every feeling of the poet-that creates every conception of the artist-that lives in every embodiment of the actor. A loveless country is a barbarous one-a barbarous one is characterised by moral and intellectual apathy.

The days of Faction are numbered; the empire of Faction is departing from it. The names of princes have been generally (sometimes, perhaps, invidiously) associated with the partial and sectarian. O, Madam! that you would disown such an alliance! that in consecrating yourself to

love, you would call into activity all that is hallowing in the heart of earth's first kingdom-a queen sympathising with her people-interesting herself in every plan for the cultivation of their feelings and faculties— lending her influence to the abolition of every cruel and uncivilised law— regarding the integrity of the man more than the opinions of the partizan ! O such a queen should transform the bard-visions of past ages into faint types of herself! Chivalry casting off the meretricious form of feudality, should appear in the more consonant one of loving exhibition, and Most Excellent Majesty" should be transformed from a term of courtesy into an expression of heartfelt loyalty.

OUR MONTHLY CRYPT.

SINCE the foundation of our Monthly Crypt, we find that other periodicals have become cryptic too. There is, in the current number of the Edinburgh Review, an article entirely cryptic on Dr. Channing and False Taste, in refer. ence to that American critic's essay on Milton. Whatever concerns Milton, concerns us-and of Dr. Channing we have already spoken. Much that is unintelligible in the writings of the Boston divine to the Edinburgh reviewer, is unintelligible, by reason of the reviewer's, not the writer's, own defect. Where the writer is sentimental, the reviewer demands of him to be intellectual; and the utterance of the highest feelings he would bring before the bar of the understanding. Nay, such feelings as are above this faculty, are to him absurd and ridiculous, we should suppose-but this is his own fault, and not Dr. Channing's. Touching style, however, the reviewer is eminently correct. This is a matter altogether within his province and his ability. The same opinions, nevertheless, have been already expressed. The meretricious styles produced by periodical literature are remarked upon with much verve and precision in Southey's Colloquies with Sir Thomas More. The following remarks of the reviewer, show that, in the judgment of persons of taste, such a magazine was much wanted as we have endeavoured (and we are told not in vain) to render the MONTHLY.

"Much of the evil taste," says the Reviewer," of which we complain, no doubt arises from the prevalence of periodical writings, and the daily demand of the reading public for matter of amusement or excitement. The reader's appetite gets thus to be somewhat depraved by being jaded; so that it requires incessant stimulants; and then the demand is to be supplied by those, who being allowed a very limited time in which to cater for the propensity they have helped to create, must be content to do the best they can; so they drug the potion high, which they have not the leisure to make delicate; and, above all, they take the materials nearest at hand, and which may be compounded with the least labour or skill. As ever happens in such cases, things act and react on one another; and while the constant and easy supply of highly though coarsely seasoned matter, vitiates the public more and more, this degradation renders it necessary to make the stuff more coarse and stinging to the palate.

"The necessities of the Quarterly Purveyor, are considerably less urgent, and less hurtful in this respect; but we are very far indeed from standing aloof, taking ourselves out of the caste to which we belong, and, with folded arms and self satisfied aspect, thanking God that we are not as other writers are. Nay, we know, we lament, we complain, that we have often had the chargethe awful charge-of dulness, or heaviness, brought against numbers of the Journal, containing various papers of the utmost ability, the greatest originality, the purest composition, on subjects of the highest importance,-but

not variegated, or set off by what are called brilliant or striking articles. We hope that we have not yielded to such clamours in the exercise of our functions; but we are conscious, upon the retrospect, of being sometimes obliged to surrender our own better judgement to the prevailing taste; although, upon the graver charges which we have been discussing, our principle has uniformly been to conform to the standard, long established, of correct taste; to make head against all innovation in it; and to cry down all base coin, by whomsoever uttered.

"Yet, let us add, that as evil example is eminently contagious, the corruption of which we are complaining has extended to works, the composition of which offered no such excuse as the necessities of periodical publication; and the subject of which renders the offence far more inexplicable. The scientific writings of later years have been debased by the vitious taste, the foolish vanity of running after ornaments on matters that deny themselves to the ornamental; and should be content with the didactic. The yearly assemblages of scientific men; professedly to argue and confer, where investigation or even consultation is impossible, really to display themselves before multitudes, wholly incapable of appreciating any valuable matter uttered before them, and only likely to comprehend the trash unavoidably spoken on such occasions; have greatly lowered the standard of taste among our men of science. There lies before us a book, in which you can perpetually trace an unnatural twisting of the subject under consideration, in a page or more, and cannot tell what it is the author is running after; till, behold a long quotation in blank verse or rhyme makes its appearance, and shows that all the effort was to introduce it. Another really writes on some of the stricter sciences, in tropes and metaphors; nor he among the least of our mathematicians. A third, and one the greatest of all, will have it, that Laplace's great work is a kind of scientific poem.' Let us hope that the contagion will spread no further; or if it does, that we shall no longer speak of French tinsel;' for assuredly, no name of any renown, amongst our neighbours, can be cited as giving the least countenance to aberrations like these. The offenders should learn to be content with their own domains, and bear in mind, that, even if they possessed the arts, the inferior arts, of the orator or the poet, to use them on their own subjects, in any connexion with these, would be just as absurd as if Mr. Wordsworth, or Mr. Campbell were to put Euclid into a ballad, or an orator in some public meeting were to declaim upon the principles of dynamics."

This is all very well: but was not the example of the very style now condemned, first set in The Edinburgh Review? Do we not all recollect Jeffrey's brilliancies? Not an article, however, written by that soidisant critic, but what was false in style and substance. We are glad to see a sounder spirit presiding over that periodical. The Quarterly seldom or never sinned in that way-its main fault was mostly a conventionalism, that brought all topics down to the same dead level. Mr. Lockhart has well striven against this sombre influence. By the bye-" The Ballantyne Humbug handled, in a letter to Sir Adam Fergusson, by the Author of Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott" is a master-piece of vindication. So much generosity and true nobility was never exercised by one man towards others, as by the Waverley novelist to the Ballantynes. Nothing can show more clearly than the whole account, how alien to the spirit of Trade is that of authorship. One would take, the other will give. Genius is spontaneously liberal, Commerce is necessarily avaricious. Two such yoke-fellows drag different ways. Let the story of Sir Walter Scott operate as a splendid caution to men of letters. It is quite clear, that the Ballantynes had made up their minds, that they and their family were to be kept by the exertions of Sir Walter Scott, and in costly style, too, as "merchant princes” of Auld Reekie.

"The British and Foreign Review, or European Quarterly Journal. Nos. XV. and XVI."-We cannot but admire the chaste and sober spirit in which this periodical is conducted: it rigidly rejects whatever is ad captandum, and

rests solely on its sterling merits. The improved taste of the public will demand works of this kind: Education is doing something, and not a little: As one evidence of this, we may instance the number of Prize Essays that have lately been published, and the number of worthy competitors that are brought into play by the several experiments. We have before us, one on behalf of “ The Animal Creation; its Claims on our Humanity stated and enforced by the Rev. John Styles, D. D." Those of Dr. Drummond and Mr. Youatt, we have not seen; but the selection of the present for the prize, seems to have been judicious. The Adjudicators were the Right Honourable the Earl of Carnarvon, the Honourable and Rev. B. W. Noel, and Mr. Serjeant Talfourd, M. P. There should always in such cases be three arbitrators, at least. The adjudication should never be left, as in some instances, to one person; because the question of literary merit should never be decided by individual taste or opinion. Dr. Styles argues, that animals are capable of suffering; and that while suffering generally pervades their economy, cruelty does not exist in the administration of the Divine government, separate and apart from the agency of man; but that by his cruel agency, a large proportion do suffer. He then proceeds to show that the claims of the inferior creatures are founded on the dictates of nature, religion, and morality; are recognised and enforced in the Holy Scriptures, and especially by the Christian religion. How debasing is the influence of cruelty on the individual character-how important and numerous are the evils it inflicts on society! On the other hand, the humane treatment of them cannot fail to induce a pleasurable and virtuous train of feelings and habits. The Essay is written in a popular manner, and alludes gracefully at the end, to Wordsworth's ballad of Hart Leap Well, which teaches us : "Never to blend our pleasure or our pride,

With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels."

Still something more positive is required, to subdue the prejudices of those classes," who are, to the warm and generous feelings of humanity, what the torpedo is to the touch." "A man of a humane disposition will not," says Dr. Styles," easily taste of a dish in which cruelty has been mingled; it is true, he did not inflict the torture, his feelings would not have permitted him; but it was perhaps, inflicted on his account; or if not, he ought at least to show his disapprobation of the cruel act, by strictly abstaining from the meats it has infected." We told our readers, that the tribe of vegetable-eaters was increasing. The society that takes charge of animals, should consider, we think, the subject of Flesh-eating in itself. There have been and are, fine spirits who shrink from contact with blood. In our opinion, the different kinds of food eaten at different periods of the world, are symbolical of the moral state and condition of man at those times. Man begins as a vegetable eater and clother; next he is habited in the skins of beasts; and then he eats their flesh.

"The Drunkard," writes to us, one of this class of thinkers-" comes in for a large share of public indignation, as far as words are concerned. Temperance advocates do somehow manage, without blushing, to become the focus of virtuous wrath, and reprobation of a dreadfully bad propensity, while they themselves continue in the plenitude of habits, scarcely less degrading and soul-destroying, than those they, in their knight-errantry, sally forth to condemn. A change of stimulants from one description of gratifications to another, is but poor progress towards the ultimate truth, as relates to Human Food. The subject is so fatally mixed up with all sorts of views, motives, and habits, except the right and proper ones, that it is not an easy matter to perceive, in what way the hard-frozen ice of accustomed selfishness may most successfully be broken. When man's nature has become subdued to what it works in,' it is not a mild appeal, that will persuade him to wash his hands entirely clean : and as the first effort is pretty sure to fail of that result, such solitary and unsupported experiment serves rather to confirm than to loosen him. 4 F

N. S.-VOL. I.