his teeth, clenched his fist, and expired."- the novel, we refer our readers to the (Vol. II. p. 92.) We quote this, and such passages as these, to show the great power of description which Mr. Hope possesses. The vindictive man standing with his arms folded, and watching the blood flowing from the wound of his enemy, is very new and very striking. description of the burial-places near Constantinople, vol. iii. pp. 11-13.; the account of Djezzar Pacha's retirement to his harem during the revolt, - equal to anything in Tacitus; and, above all, to the landing of Anastasius with his sick child, and the death of the infant. It is impossible not to see that this last picture is faithfully drawn from a sad and cruel reality. The account of the Wahabees is very interesting, vol. iii. p. 128.; and nothing is more so than the story of Euphrosyne. Anastasius had gained the affections of Euphrosyne, and ruined her reputation; he then wishes to cast her off, and to remove her from his house. vulsively clasping my knees: 'be not so "Ah, no!' now cried Euphrosyne, conbarbarous! Shut not your own door against her, against whom you have barred every once friendly door. Do not deny her whom you have dishonoured the only asylum she has left. If I cannot be your wife, let me however mean, shall I recoil from when be your slave, your drudge. No service, you command. At least before you I shall not have to blush. In your eyes I shall not be what I must seem in those of others; I shall not from you incur the contempt, which I must expect from my former com. After the death of his wife, he collects his property, quits Egypt, and visits Mekkah, and acquires the title and prerogatives of an Hadjee. After this he returns to the Turkish capital, renews his acquaintance with Spiridion, the friend of his youth, who in vain labours to reclaim him, and whom he at last drives away, disgusted with the vices and passions of Anastasius. We then find our Oriental profligate fighting as a Turkish captain in Egypt, against his old friends the Mamelukes; and afterwards employed in Wallachia, under his old friend Mavroyeni, against the Russians and Austrians. In this part of the work we strongly recommend to our readers to look at the Massulmans in a pastrycook's shop during the Rhamadam, vol. iii. p. 164.; the village of beggars, vol. ii. p. 266.; the death of the Hungarian officer, vol. ii. p. 327.; and the last days of Mav-panions: and my diligence to execute the royeni, vol. ii. p. 356. ; lowest offices you may require, will earn not forgetting the walk over a field of battle, vol. ii. for me, not only as a bare alms at your p. 252. The character of Mavroyeni I can elsewhere only receive as an unhands, that support which, however scanty, is extremely well kept up through the merited indulgence. Since I did a few whole of the book; and his decline days please your eye, I may still please it a and death are drawn in a very spirited few days longer :- perhaps a few days and masterly manner. The Spiridion longer therefore I may still wish to live; part of the novel we are not so much and when that last blessing, your love, is struck with; we entirely approve of gone by,-when my cheek, faded with Spiridion, and ought to take more in-grief, has lost the last attraction that could terest in him; but we cannot disguise the melancholy truth that he is occasionally a little long and tiresome. The next characters assumed by Anastasius are, a Smyrna debauchee, a robber of the desert, and a Wahabee. After serving some time with these sectaries, he returns to Smyrna, finds his child missing, whom he had left there, traces the little boy to Egypt, covers him, then loses him by sickness; and wearied of life, retires to end his days in a cottage in Carinthia. For striking passages in this part of VOL. I. - re arrest your favour, then speak, then tell me so, that, burthening you no longer, I may retire-and die!'"-(Vol. III. pp. 64, 65.) Her silent despair, and patient misery, when she finds that she has not only ruined herself with the world, but lost his affections also, has the beauty of the deepest tragedy. "Nothing but the most unremitting tenhave revived her drooping spirits.- But derness on my part could in some degree when, after my excursion, and the act of justice on Sophia in which it ended, I reappeared before the still trembling Euphro Y syne, she saw too soon that that cordial of Tom Jones. There are no sensual and the heart must not be expected. One look glowing descriptions in Anastasius, she cast upon my countenance, as I sat nothing which corrupts the morals by down in silence, sufficed to inform her of inflaming the imagination of youth; my total change of sentiments;-and the responsive look by which it was met, tore and we are quite certain that every for ever from her breast the last seeds of reader ends this novel with a greater hope and confidence. Like the wounded disgust at vice, and a more thorough snail she shrunk within herself, and thence- conviction of the necessity of subjuforth, cloked in unceasing sadness, never gating passion, than he feels from readmore expanded to the sunshine of joy, ing either of the celebrated works we With her buoyancy of spirits she seemed have just mentioned. The sum of our even to lose all her quickness of intellect, eulogium is, that Mr. Hope, without nay all her readiness of speech; so that, not only fearing to embark with her in being very successful in his story, or serious conversation, but even finding no remarkably skilful in the delineation response in her mind to lighter topics, of character, has written a novel, which I at last began to nauseate her seeming all clever people of a certain age should torpor and dulness, and to roam abroad read, because it is full of marvellously even more frequently than before a partner fine things, of my fate remained at home, to count the tedious hours of my absence; while she, poor miserable creature- dreading the sneers of an unfeeling world, passed her time under my roof in dismal and heart-breaking solitude.-Had the most patient endurance of the most intemperate sallies been able to soothe my disappointment and to soften my hardness, Euphrosyne's angelic sweetness must at last have conquered: but in my jaundiced eye her resignation only tended to strengthen the conviction of her shame: and I saw in her forbearance nothing but the consequence of her debasement, and the consciousness of her guilt. Did her heart,' thought I, 'bear witness to a purity on which my audacity dared first to cast a blemish, she could not remain thus tame, thus spiritless, under such an aggravation of my wrongs; and either she would be the first to quit my merciless roof, or at least she would not so fearfully avoid giving me even the most unfounded pretence for denying her its shelter. She must merit her sufferings to bear them so meekly!'-Hence, even when moved to real pity by gentleness so enduring, I seldom relented in my apparent sternness."-(Vol. III, pp. 7274.) SPRING GUNS. (E. REVIEW, 1821.) The Shooter's Guide. By J. B. Johnson. 12mo. Edwards and Knibb. 1819. WHEN Lord Dacre (then Mr. Brand) brought into the House of Commons his bill for the amendment of the Game Laws, a system of greater mercy and humanity was in vain recommended to that popular branch of the Legis lature. The interests of humanity, and the interests of the lord of the manor, were not, however, opposed to each other; nor any attempt made to deny the superior importance of the last. No such bold or alarming topics were agitated; but it was contended that, if laws were less ferocious, there would be more partridges -if the lower orders of mankind were not torn from their families and banished to Botany Bay, hares and pheasants would be increased in number, or, at least, not diminished. It is not, however, till after long ex perience, that mankind ever think of recurring to humane expedients for effecting their objects. The rulers who ride the people never think of coaxing and patting till they have worn out the lashes of their whips, and broken the rowels of their spurs. The legis lators of the trigger replied, that two laws had lately passed which would answer their purpose of preserving game: the one, an act for transporting spring gun, or any other machine, an unqualified person trespassing upon your woods or fields in pursuit of game, and who has received due notice of your intention, and of the risk to which he is exposed?" This, we think, is stating the question as fairly as can men found with arms in their hands for the purposes of killing game in the night; the other, an act for rendering the buyers of the game equally guilty with the seller, and for involving both in the same penalty. Three seasons have elapsed since the last of these laws was passed; and we appeal to the ex-be stated. We purposely exclude garperience of all the great towns in Eng- dens, orchards, and all contiguity to land, whether the difficulty of procuring the dwelling-house. We exclude, also, game is in the slightest degree in all felonious intention on the part of creased?-whether hares, partridges, the deceased. The object of his expeand pheasants are not purchased with dition shall be proved to be game; as much facility as before the pass- and the notice he received of his danger ing this act?whether the price of shall be allowed to be as complete as such unlawful commodities is even in possible. It must also be part of the the slightest degree increased? Let case, that the spring-gun was placed the Assize and Sessions' Calendars bear there for the express purpose of dewitness, whether the law for transport- fending the game, by killing or wounding poachers has not had the most ing the poacher, or spreading terror, or direct tendency to encourage brutal doing anything that a reasonable man assaults and ferocious murders, There ought to know would happen from is hardly now a jail-delivery in which such a proceeding. some gamekeeper has not murdered a poacher-or some poacher a game-notice that all other persons must abkeeper. If the question concerned the payment of five pounds, a poacher would hardly risk his life rather than be taken; but when he is to go to Botany Bay for seven years, he summons together his brother poachers they get brave from rum, numbers, and despair and a bloody battle ensues. Another method by which it is attempted to defeat the depredations of the poacher is, by setting spring guns to murder any person who comes within their reach; and it is to this last new feature in the supposed Game Laws, to which, on the present occaston, we intend principally to contine Suppose any gentleman were to give stain from his manors; that he himself and his servants paraded the woods and fields with loaded pistols and blunderbusses, and would shoot anybody who fired at a partridge; and suppose he were to keep his word, and shoot through the head some rash trespasser who defied this bravado, and was determined to have his sport:-is there any doubt that he would be guilty of murder? We suppose no resistance on the part of the trespasser; but that, the moment he passes the line of demarcation with his dogs and gun, he is shot dead by the proprietor of the land from behind a tree. If this is not murder, what is murder? We will make the case a little better for the homicide squire. It shall be night; the poacher, an unqualified person, steps over the line of demarcation with his nets and snares, and is instantly shot through the head by the pistol of the proprietor. We have no doubt that this would be murder - that it ought to be considered as murder, and punished as murder. We think this so clear, that it would be a waste of time to argue it. There is no kind of resistance on the part of the deceased; "Is it lawful to put to death by a no attempt to run away; he is not our notice. We utterly disclaim all hostility to the Game Laws in general. Game ought to belong to those who feed it. All the landowners in England are fairly entitled to all the game in England. These laws are constructed upon a basis of substantial justice; but there is a great deal of absurdity and tyranny mingled with them, and a perpetual and vehement desire on the part of the country gentlemen to push the provisions of these laws up to the highest point of tyrannical severity. But even challenged: but instantly shot | life and death to esquires, would be by dead by the proprietor of the wood, far the most humane. For, as we have for no other crime than the intention of observed in a previous Essay on the killing game unlawfully. We do not Game Laws, a live armigeral spring suppose that any man, possessed of the gun would distinguish an accidental elements of law and common sense, trespasser from a real poacher-a would deny this to be a case of woman or a boy from a man-perhaps murder, let the previous notice to the might spare a friend or an acquaintdeceased have been as perfect as it ance-or a father of a family with could be. It is true, a trespasser in a ten children-or a small freeholder park may be killed; but then it is who voted for Administration. when he will not render himself to the this new rural artillery must destroy, keepers, upon a hue and cry to stand without mercy and selection, every one to the king's peace. But deer are pro- who approaches it. perty, game is not; and this power of In the case of Ilot versus Wilks, Esq., slaying deer-stealers is by the 21st the four judges, Abbot, Bailey, HolEdward I., de Malefactoribus in Parcis, royd, and Best, gave their opinions and by the 3d and 4th William & Mary, seriatim on points connected with this c. 10. So rioters may be killed, house- question. In this case, as reported in burners, ravishers, felons refusing to be Chetwynd's edition of Burn's Justice, arrested, felons escaping, felons break-1820, vol. ii. p. 500., Abbot C. J. ob ing jail, men resisting a civil process serves as follows:may all be put to death. All these cases of justifiable homicide are laid down and admitted in our books. But who ever heard that to pistol a poacher was justifiable homicide? It has long been decided, that it is unlawful to kill a dog who is pursuing game in a manor. "To decide the contrary," says Lord Ellenborough, "would outrage reason and sense.' (Vere v. Lord Cawdor and King, 11 East, 386.) Pointers have always been treated by the Legislature with great delicacy and consideration. To "wish to be a - dog, and to lay the moon," is not quite so mad a wish as the poet thought it. If these things are so, what is the difference between the act of firing yourself, and placing an engine which does the same thing? In the one case, your hand pulls the trigger; in the other, it places the wire which communicates with the trigger, and causes the death of the trespasser. There is the same intention of slaying in both cases-there is precisely the same human agency in both cases; only the steps are rather more numerous in the latter case. As to the bad effects of allowing proprietors of game to put trespassers to death at once, or to set guns that will do it, we can have no hesitation in saying, that the first method, of giving the power of ing acts of aggression may not reasonably "I cannot say that repeated and increas call for increased means of defence and protection. I believe that many of the persons who cause engines of this description to be placed in their grounds, do not do so with an intention to injure any person, but really believe that the publication of notices will prevent any person from sus taining an injury; and that no person having the notice given him will be weak and foolish enough to expose himself to the perilous consequences of his trespass. Many persons who place such engines in their grounds, do so for the purpose of prevent. ing, by means of terror, injury to their property, rather than from any motive of doing malicious injury." "Increased means of defence and protection," but increased (his Lordship should remember) from the payment of five pounds to instant deathand instant death inflicted, not by the arm of law, but by the arm of the proprietor;-could the Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench intend to say, that the impossibility of putting an end to poaching by other means would justify the infliction of death upon the offender? Is he so ignorant of the philosophy of punishing, as to imagine he has nothing to do but to give ten stripes instead of two, a hundred instead of ten, and a thousand, if a hundred will not do? to substitute the prison for pecuniary fines, and the | and a few come, then he must mean to gallows instead of the jail? It is im- shoot those few. He who believes his possible so enlightened a Judge can gun will never be called upon to do its forget, that the sympathies of mankind duty, need set no gun, and trust to must be consulted; that it would be rumour of their being set, or being wrong to break a person upon the loaded, for his protection. Against wheel for stealing a penny loaf, and the gun and the powder we have no that gradations in punishments must complaint; they are perfectly fair and be carefully accommodated to grada- admissible our quarrel is with the tions in crime; that if poaching is bullets, He who sets a loaded gun panished more than mankind in ge- means it should go off if it is touched. neral think it ought to be punished, But what signifies the mere empty wish the fault will either escape with im- that there may be no mischief, when I punity, or the delinquent be driven to perform an action which my common desperation; that if poaching and mur- sense tells me may produce the worst der are punished equally, every poacher mischief? If I hear a great noise in will be an assassin. Besides, too, if the street, and fire a bullet to keep the principle is right in the unlimited people quiet, I may not perhaps have and unqualified manner in which the intended to kill; may have wished Chief Justice puts it-if defence goes to have produced quiet, by mere terror, on increasing with aggression, the and I may have expressed a strong Legislature at least must determine hope that my object has been effected upon their equal pace. If an act of without the destruction of human life. Parliament made it a capital offence Still I have done that which every to poach upon a manor, as it is to man of sound intellect knows is likely commit a burglary in a dwelling-house, to kill; and if any one fall from my it might then be as lawful to shoot a act, I am guilty of murder. "Further" person for trespassing upon your manor, (says Lord Coke), if there be an as it is to kill a thief for breaking into evil intent, though that intent exyour house. But the real question is tendeth not to death, it is murder. -and so in sound reasoning his Lord- Thus, if a man, knowing that many ship should have put it-"If the law people are in the street, throw a stone at this moment determine the aggres-over the wall, intending only to frighten sion to be in such a state, that it merits them, or to give them a little hurt, only a pecuniary fine after summons and thereupon one is killed - this is and proof, has any sporadic squire the for he had an ill intent; right to say, that it shall be punished though that intent extended not to with death, before any summons and death, and though he knew not the any proof?" party slain." (3 Inst. 57.) If a man be not mad, he must be presumed to foresee common consequences; if he puts a bullet into a spring gun - he must be supposed to foresee that it will kill any poacher who touches the wire and to that consequence he must stand. We do not suppose all preservers of game to be so bloodily inclined that they would prefer the death of a poacher to his staying away. Their object is to preserve game; they have no objection to preserve the lives of their fellow-creatures also, if both can exist at the same time; if not, the least worthy of God's creatures must fall-the rustic without a soul, — not the Christian partridge—not the in without It appears to us, too, very singular, to say, that many persons who cause engines of this description to be placed in their ground, do not do so with an intention of injuring any person, but really believe that the publication of notices will prevent any person from sustaining an injury, and that no person, having the notice giving him, will be weak and foolish enough to expose himself to the perilous consequences of his trespass. But if this be the real belief of the engineer—if he think the mere notice will keep people away then he must think it a mere inutility that the guns should be placed at all: if he think that many will be deterred, murder --- |