It is clear that either the Courts of Quarter Session should be made fit to be entrusted with capital cases-or there should be a winter gaoldelivery on all the circuits as well as the Home. The former, we think, would be much the better course; as then all the gaols in the kingdom would be cleared six times a-year.

17th. Mr. Warburton has brought in his bill for the supply of anatomical subjects, in pursuance of the recommendation of the Committee, the labours of which we noticed at length in our number for February. The plan is, as is known, to give up for dissection all the bodies not claimed by any relations or friends, of persons who die in hospitals and poor-houses. In the article to which we have alluded, we have, we believe, shewn the absolute necessity of some supply-as also that this mode secures the supply being sufficient, and gives the absolute certainty of its being impossible that the feelings of any human being can be injured by it. We still, however, adhere, and the more strongly the longer we have thought of it, to the inexpediency of the giving up the bodies being made permissive instead of compulsory. To whom is the discretion given?-To parish overseers and hospital officers, who can have no earthly motives to withhold the bodies, unless they be bad ones. We hope Mr. Warburton will re-consider this. It being only unclaimed bodies that are in any case to be given up, it is totally beyond our power to conceive how vesting this discretion in officers of the kind described should be calculated in any degree to be more favourably received by prejudiced persons, than a compulsory statute-namely, that unclaimed bodies should be given to the surgeon under the regulations to be there laid down-for, to win over prejudice is the ground assigned for the present plan. We cannot see how it will do any such thing, and we see quite plainly that it is placing power in very improper hands.

We have noticed this subject to-day, on account of seeing two articles upon it in the Morning Herald,' written either in the most odious bad faith, or in the most total ignorance of the whole question. The leading article comments upon the city one, which asserts that it is a city matter, inasmuch as the bill proposes to make dead bodies a sort of legal traffic." This is aimed evidently at the one objection we have felt it to be our duty to make to the provisions of the bill, and it might be a lesson, as it has enabled such a person as this writer must manifestly be, to make, out of twenty accusations, one with a very slight shadow of justice. Such may be the result of one clause ;—it were a thousand times better than the present system if these officers did sell unclaimed bodies, than that the surgeons should have none— but it is false to say that the bill " proposes" any such thing. But there are two allegations more strikingly ungrounded than the rest, which this writer propounds to excite the feelings against the means being afforded for a proper study of surgery. He says that bodies may be unclaimed, because the relations or friends are too poor to bury them, and that their feelings would in that case be lacerated. The public may well agree with the proposition thus put, and it is dwelt on in every possible variety of circumstance. But the truth is, that bodies

claimed by relations or friends too poor to pay their funeral expenses, are always buried at the parish expense, the friends being allowed to shew every mark of respect and sorrow that they may desire. It is only the bodies unclaimed by any one, even merely as mourner, that it is proposed should be given up. Here no feelings can be wounded -for if any were possessed by the relations, or friends, supposing there to be any, they would come forward. The other false allegation is that the proposed measure will deprive the bodies of Christian burial. It is quite the reverse. In every case, the ritual of our service will be duly performed. We shall dismiss this writer with the assertion that all the other objections he makes to the measure are quite as unsound as these.

The leading article of the 'Herald' is written very much in the same spirit as this. It abuses the surgeons, and the members of Parliament, for not leaving their own bodies to be dissected, while they make laws for those of the poor being so used: and it alleges that all this is done from the mere fact of the poor being poor. Now it is quite manifest that this is all absurd. Here, the feelings of relations would be hurt, which in the case of such of the poor as we have described would not be. We respect the feelings of the poor every jot as much as those of the rich-but the arrangement proposed would not hurt the feelings of rich, or poor, or of any one on the face of the earth. Such productions as these which we have commented upon, are equally foolish and pernicious. The measure is an almost unexceptionable provision for the means for competent medical practitioners to exist in this country. And this is a measure in which the poor are even more interested than the rich for there will always be capable men to be procured for money-whereas the poor must be contented with the " surgeon and apothecary," who is nearest at hand-and if matters go on as they do now, a few years hence all these must be in a state of the blindest ignorance. We are sure, if our readers have looked at the first article in the present number, they will not attribute what we have now said to unmindfulness of the poor.

21st. Really it is melancholy to see how strongly prejudices, which ought by common consent to be scouted both as wicked and foolish, still prevail. Here the Duke of Wellington has thought it necessary to fight a duel with Lord Winchilsea-for certain expressions reflecting upon him in a fanatical letter, written by the very peculiar nobleman last-mentioned. The reflections were perfectly unjustifiable, as most of the proceedings of a mind capable of admitting the narrowest fanaticism, usually are. But they should have been treated by the Duke with the same quiet contempt, into which the public had silently suffered them to sink. The pernicious attempts to inflame the people to madness, in a former composition of the noble lord, had fallen dead. There was more sound sense and right feeling among those addressed, than in him who addressed them. Even the terrible nature of the end could not ennoble the poverty of the means. Every body treated what Lord Winchilsea said, as nonsense-and every body was quite right.

It must be quite clear, then, we think, that nothing but the most una

voidable necessity should have induced the Duke of Wellington to risk, against such a life as that of Lord Winchilsea, one on which the happiness of many millions of his fellow-creatures is, at this moment, depending. It is really nothing short of awful, to think of the consequences which would have ensued, had the Duke of Wellington been killed. But they are on the surface, and we need not detail them. The real question is, did the necessity exist for the risk being incurred? We really cannot see that it did. Were the imputations brought forward under such circumstances as to have tarnished the Duke of Wellington's honour, if he had not noticed them at all? We cannot think that they were. Take his own position and character into consideration, and those of his adversary-take all the circumstances attending the case, and we really think that the Duke was in no degree called upon to take up that absurd letter in the way he did. Who would have thought of blaming him if he had not? That Lord Winchelsea acted wrongly, or his friend Lord Falmouth for him, we think quite clear. A man who determines to make an apology, after having stood a shot; ought, except in a few very extreme cases, to make it without going out. It is the course of true manliness, to express that regret which it is your ultimate purpose to express, without exposing the man whose right to call upon you for redress you thus allow, to the chance of having the weight of bloodshed upon his conscience. It is the course, we think, which the world, even with all its preposterous notions on this most preposterous of subjects, admits, and which every high-minded man should act upon. The temperance of the Duke of Wellington's first application, left a field fully open for this, without the possibility of the least imputation being cast upon Lord Winchilsea, We wish, upon all accounts, that this duel had not taken placebut chiefly from the encouragement which it may give to the abominable custom itself. We cannot conceive anything more in contradiction to every principle of religion, of morals, or of common sense, than this practice of duelling. It is most rare, indeed, that either party desires the blood of the other-he goes out because the world expects him so to do-because he would be coldly looked upon if he did not. If a man be really injured, it is certainly the most ingeniously-contrived method to procure him the very reverse of redress, that he shall be exposed to the same risk as the injurer-and, at all events, we think every man of common sense must consider the fact, that a person possessing, and every day exerting, all manner of evil and unamiable qualities, will be better received in society, than one who has refused to fight a duel-to be nothing short of disgusting. As for the objection of its being impossible that people could be kept in order, if the appeal to the pistol were discontinued, it is on the face of it groundless. Are gentleman less civilized than the middle classes of society, where exceedingly good behaviour exists without any need of duelling to keep it so? The thing is too plain for argument. The ordinary customs of society are quite strong enough to preserve themselves-and, for graver matters, the law and public opinion would be amply sufficient. But, it may be said, the practice exists; how stop it? We will tell you. In every duel in which death ensues, let the surviving principal and the two seconds,-for they are

often the most in fault,-be hanged for the murder;-which it is both legally and morally-though juries are in the habit of perjuring themselves in finding it otherwise, and both magistrates and judges have shewn a very disgraceful departure from their duty, in their partial mode of administering the law in such matters. (See Baron Garrow's charge at Horsham, only last week.) Duellists are gentlemen, and when they have been found guilty of manslaughter, they have been sentenced to fine and imprisonment, instead of being transported or sent to the hulks, as a poor man is for a similar offence. The law is quite sufficient as it stands; let it be duly executed, shewing no respect to persons, and but very few years would elapse before an end would be put to a custom, teeming with all the barbarism of its feudal origin, and, in itself, equally unchristian, inhuman, and absurd.

25th. GOOD FIRES.-The Catholic Bill is not yet in the House of Lords-but they have managed to make as much fight about it, there, or nearly, as in the Commons. Now, although it must be by this time most manifest to our readers, that we attach as strong an interest as is possible to "the one subject"-yet we very much lament that its monopoly should be so strictly enforced-to the total exclusion, for instance, of the measures with regard to the police, the prisons, and the prevention of crime generally, with many others of great moment. Still, in the lower house, just now, it cannot be helped: but we really think their Lordships" needna' ha' fash'd their thumbs" about the matter quite so constantly. We, therefore, are exceedingly obliged to Lord Londonderry, for bringing forward the subject of London coals, in the House of Lords last night. Good dwellers in this ancient city and the circumjacent parts, know ye that we are all robbed. Yes, robbedof nearly a third of the price of every chaldron that comes into our cellar. Just think of that! Why a sea-coal fire is among the greatest glories of England! Nay, we are even very strongly inclined to believe, that it occasioned the introduction of the word Comfort into our language, of the sole possession of which we are so deservedly proud. Talk of London smoke! Pooh! what does that signify in winter; it keeps us warm even out of doors ;-talk of the fires from which it springs-then we'll listen to you. There is no other fire fit to hold a candle to a sea. coal fire. Wood burns too rapidly-it does not make a substantial fire→ though a billet or so intermixed, in a large grate, with coal, is commendable. As for turf-Hibernicè-Scoticè, peat-it makes a beautiful fire for about a dozen minutes. You heap on a cart-load (there is always an enormous basket of it in the room)-there is a splendid fire in seventy seconds--you take up a book-it chances to be Old Mortality or the Heart of Mid-Lothian-you have not read it above thirteen times-you become, of course, wholly engrossed in the meeting between Jeanie Deans and Young Staunton, at Muschat's cairn,—you think of nothing but that(we cannot find a word to describe it)—you heave a deep sigh, as you turn over the leaf into a fresh chapter, which brings you into the thick of the thief-takers of the guid town-and you feel very cold. The fire has been dead out these five minutes! No-there's nothing like the comforts of a good sea-coal fire. Think of the luxury of stirring it! Why, that alone

would give it a superiority over all fires, as great as that of Rhenish wine over London water. Think of just stirring it, and then seeing the small flames spring up, like a smile in its first sparkling outbreak on a beautiful face-and then settle into a full, warm, rich brilliancy, like the same face in its expression of bright and inspiring cheerfulness. There's a simile for you!-aye and a very exact one too, as those who have the happiness of possessing the immediate means of comparison, must fully know. Think, ye enviable people, of the delight of drawing round the fire, en famille, after dinner, with the blaze reflected upon little merry faces, turned up towards yours, with the bright, sweet, happy expression such faces wear. Think, ye bachelors, upon the good-humoured welcome your fire gives you when you come home, and with what double zest you sit down to your occupation-be it of amusement, be it of business, when your library-chair, or your writing-table, is placed at a skilful angle from the hearth. Think of these things-and learn that you pay nearly twice what you ought for your coals, including the original cost, and a fair sum for the carriage, the landing, and the profit of the coal-merchant.

But there is another thing to think of besides-namely the effect of this price upon the poor. Just conceive what it must be in the damp drizzling weather which is so common in our winters-still more in the occasional hard frosts-to have a dark, low, miserable fire, barely emitting any warmth-certainly not enough for any thing approaching to comfort, scarcely sufficient for mere health. Just conceive the pinched, shrunken, shivering, little figures which crowd around such a hearth as this, and the piteous glance which they cast up into their parents' face!-in what touching contrast to the group we have sketched above!-This is no fancy-picture. We are convinced that Cold ranks among the foremost of the sufferings of our poor in winter. What must they have endured in the frost of last January!

But how have we all of a sudden discovered that the price of coals is so much more than it ought to be? Simply from what passed last night in the House of Lords. Lord Londonderry and Lord Durham are both great owners of coal-mines; and the Duke of Wellington, in his visit last autumn to the north, seems to have looked into the subject of the coal-trade with great minuteness. Lord Londonderry states, that coals cost at the mouth of the pit from sixteen to eighteen shillings per chaldron, and that the cost of bringing them to London is ten shillings more;—and that thus the difference between the price paid by the consumer, which is at the least fifty shillings, and that at which the coals arrive at London is, at the lowest computation, twentytwo shillings. The difference, he says, arises from the government duties, and the city dues of various kinds. The Duke of Wellington says he considers the difference greater than Lord Londonderry. We do not understand the calculation of his Grace, as stated in figures in the reports (we have looked into two or three papers); there must be a mistake somewhere, for they make him attribute statements to Lord Londonderry which vary from those given to his lordship by the same reports. However, the Duke says, in plain words, that he thinks the difference even greater than that named by Lord Londonderry. He adds, the government duty is six shillings a chaldron, having been re