for throughout all nature God has given us, as it were, the raw material; and has, in the gift of mind, at the same time presented us with a power to fashion and improve it. Lands and seeds, flowers and fruits, are from his hand; but he has endowed us with a capacity to increase fertility, to heighten flavour, and to brighten colours, but we cannot change the principles of their na ture. Man himself is the rawest of all materials in his natural or savage state, but God has given to him, with the body, the glorious attribute of intelligence,* to discover, to improve, but not to extinguish, that which his Almighty hand has planted. In the human mind he has seated conscience, or a sense of right and wrong. This, coupled with the instinct of self-preservation, furnished as it is with natural weapons for carrying that principle into execution, forms a brief code of justice, a tablet of crime and punishment, instinctively engraven on the human heart. Resentment, the natural law of justice, growing from the deep root of self-preservation, looks out of the heart to be satisfied, and it must be satisfied. If the Burkite can, after having deliberately prepared his vessel of suffocation, as deliberately kidnap my child, and as deliberately immerse the head of my un offending innocent, till murder consign it to the knife of the anatomiser, for the bloody wages of this monster crime, I ask, shall this boa-constrictor of human nature, this wolf, breathe on the same earth with me, and I be satisfied? God forbid! and I pity the puling legislators who, in their sleepy intoxication, could do so: for it is not more a virtue to love and shelter innocence, than with a holy indignation to rise up against bloody and ferocious vice, and sweep it with the hand of destruction from the face of the living. I ask, while this monster, covered with the blood of my child, and steeped as he is in my agony, lived, can any law made by the artifice of man root out of my heart that right feeling, planted in it by the hand of God Almighty himself? I ask, rather, shall I not have the right of demanding of society, and of human law, as my just vengeance, the life of this miscreant? And shall not society and human law have the right of inflicting on the guilty, for the good of society, that which the guilty has inflicted on the innocent, for the evil of society? One is an unjust death, inflicted by vice on virtue, which does not merit it; and the other is a just death, executed by virtue on vice, who does merit it to the completest point of execution. This natural law of resentment, though it may be abused, must yet be the basis of moral law. If I am attacked I use my powers of self-defence in repelling the attack; but, my anger being roused, and my reason prostrate, I may carry my self-defence beyond the bounds of reason or of justice; and thus my defence may become offence: vengeance predominates, and may be called disproportionate or unjust justice; for its root is in justice, though it may have branched into wrong. The source of my self-defence is right, though my defence in its progress may have grown to wrong. If I succeed in seizing the weapon of my aggressor, and thus put it out of his power to injure me more, and yet, from the state of my excitement, I kill him, it may be argued, that the punishment is disproportionate to the crime. Had I killed him in my efforts to obtain his weapon, it had been strict justice, because he was still armed against me; but when unarmed, the death I deal to him, though commenced justly, ends unjustly. Thus the legislature, as far as it can, wisely takes the law out of the hand of the individual, and keeps it in its own, because it can weigh with dispassionate calmness between the crime, and the punishment due to the crime. Yet nature cannot be altered. The outraged feeling must be satisfied: and the aggressor visited by a proportionate punishment. Wilful murder calls for death, and that is justice: and not what the abolitionists, by way of reproach, call revenge; or, to speak more precisely, it is honest revenge, a just vengeance, or that law inherent in self-preservation, regulated and matured by reason, and makes up what we feel and understand by moral and retributive justice. The satisfaction demanded of the murderer's life, is the payment owed by him to the principle of self * With our sight He gave us intellect; and intel- preservation, self-defence, and to that re lect gave to nature almost a new sense, in the microscope and telescope. sentment, founded on our instinct, and ratified by our conscience. During the debate on the punishment of death, agitated in the French parliament two years ago,* M. Salverte, in reply to the argument founded on the denial of the right of society to dispose of the life of any of its members, observed, "While society arrogates to itself the right of exposing each of its members to death, in forcing him to make war, it would be singular that it could not dispose of the life of a guilty man." This admirable and unanswerable position might be placed even in a stronger light, when we consider that every soldier is condemned to the field of battle in a twofold capacity. Society sends him, innocent as he is, as an executioner, to slay the innocent; and, innocent as he is, as a culprit, to die by the hand of an executioner. Surely that is squeamish legislation which, while it forces thousands and hundreds of thousands, without any individual animosity, to cut each other's throats, yet denies the sacrifice of a single murderer for the well-being of millions. In the same debate, adverting to the example brought forward of Russia and Tuscany, M. Salverte observed, "It is true that the punishment of death was abolished in Russia during the reign of Elizabeth; but we forget, that the punishment which succeeded to it, after inflicting long sufferings on the culprit, generally terminated in his death. In Tuscany the punishment of death was suspended during twenty years, the effect of this measure, if we believe what is reported of it, resuscitated the blessings of the golden age in that happy country; but they forget to explain to us, for what reason the punishment of death was reestablished there?† That society has a right to dispose of the life of its guilty members, seems well confirmed, if it have a right over its inno to put itself in the place of the person injured; and feels that the punishment should be considered, not only as a principle of determent, but also as a satisfac tion to the injured party. This appears to be natural, moral, wise, and wholesome justice, worth all the cant of a methodistical love of mercy, or the cold-blooded stupidity of a bastard philanthropy. The hyenas of human nature should be extirpated. No mercy was made for them. Lord Kaimes' principle is founded on the true construction of our nature; and it appears to my humble conception, that no principle can be more logically deduced: for, if the innocent victim had been strong enough, he would, by the first law of nature-self preservation, justly have killed the murderer, in his attempt only. This would have been that which the guilty amply merited. Then how much greater the right to take away the life of the aggressor, when not only the attempt is made, but the deed itself consummated. The deed being a greater crime than the attempt, the greater right of the murdered to the life of the murderer. But as this right cannot be carried into execution by a man deceased, society, of which he formed a part (every member of which society being governed by the same instinct and natural laws, and identified in him), is bound to perform for him, that justice which he cannot do for himself. The aggregate body represents the injured in his rights, individually; just as the injured, in the wrong sustained, represents the whole body generally, which is wounded in him; for, as a member or limb of that body, its suffering nerve branches, lives, and feels throughout the whole frame, and intensely communicates with the sympathy of the whole system. Society has thus a twofold duty to perform on removing this beast from the earth, not only for the safety of the great body of society, but also, in visiting the blood-spiller with that natural resentment, that natural law of individual justice, which is the right of the murdered against the murderer. And even further: for that same law of just retribution, awakened ia the hearts of the survivors of the murdered, to appease that just vengeance, and to still that cry of grief and indignation, which a murdered father, child, or other of those kindred affections that tie the hearts of the living to the dead, call from a husband, wife, parent, or disconsolate friend. THE DYING CRUSADER. BY C. T. B. [It was not unfrequent for thousands of these deluded victims (the Crusaders) to sink under the difficulties of their journey, and it is computed that not a half of all that set out from Europe ever reached their destination, being destroyed in the terrible fastnesses of the Taurus, either by the hostilities of the natives or the more frequent and formidable terrors of nature herself. Many a daring knight has been known to fall exhausted from fatigue and sickness, and to have been left by the great body of the army to perish miserably alone in the solitudeds of Asia Minor, so little sympathy for one another's sufferings influencing the general conduct.-History of the Crusades.] Weary and lone by the stream there lay His spirit was faint, and he wish'd to be Exhausted he lay on the barren turf, Till the beams of the morning awoke the day. Now lured by the visions he'd strive to rise, And he sunk 'neath the pressure of cold despair. Aain was the blast of the chilly morn, And tho' fann'd by the zephyrs that freshly blew, And the strength that had nerved each arm for fight, Wretched and weary as man could be, Is there none that will watch the live-long day, Is there none that at dead of night will go To Our Lady's shrine with a holy vow, And weeping, repeat her countless beads, And tell to the Virgin her hero's deeds? How bravely he fights for the holy shrine, And wars with the crescent in Palestine ? Is there none that has sworn to be ever thine, Is there none that will sorrow, Sir Knight, in vain, Sealed are those eyes in endless night, TO A POET. BY A******. To thee, thou lover of the beautiful, I raise my voice, that answ'ring, thou may'st tell When evening's shadows o'er the landscape fall, ODES FROM HAFIZ. No. II. BY E. B. COWELL. Reviews. Heidelberg, a Romance. By G. P. R. James. London, Smith and Elder. Mr. George Payne Ransford James (not George Prince Regent, as he has often been seriously called) has in the work before us fully supported that reputation which he has gained as one of the most pleasing and delightful of modern writers of fiction. We do not say that his novels are either "solid or philosophical," simply because they do not pretend so to be, while all no vels that do make such pretence are into lerably dull and stupid; and we therefore differ widely from an able contemporary, considering their popular, exciting, and highly amusing pages as equally deserving of being preserved to posterity as those of any living novelist, Dickens alone excepted. Modern novelists do not generally aim at great profundity, justly keeping this quality for works to which this quality is adapted. Bulwer, when he philosophises, is an intolerable bore; so was the author of " Tremaine;" and so, we fain must own, was Mr. James, when he Joyful news have come, my heart, the days of grief made his experiment in the only disagree will soon be past, able romance he ever published, "Morley Dickens never does, except Fate, the veiler, hastens onward, bearing all things in which genius, in whatever line, must alwhen he scatters, pearl-like, the truths Pleasure flies on golden wings, but sorrow alsofi ies as Ernstein." fast! its flight, And the closest haunts of silence all are open in its sight. Why, for fortune good or ill, to joy or grief thy soul deliver? On the pages of existence see the writing changes ever! From the times of ancient Jumsheed * comes the re frain of the song, “Hasten, friends, and bring the wine-cup, earth will have no Jumsheed long!" On the sapphire vault of heaven, see! the lines are written clear; “All, save acts of mercy perish, all things else are mortal here!" Let the wealthy read the lines, and make their hearts their offering, ways have in store. In " Heidelberg," we have a most exciting, mysterious, and able historical romance, the period being that when England was governed by James I, whose daughter Elizabeth, of romantic memory, was married to the elector-palatine of the Rhine. The tale opens, as usual in Mr. James's romances, with two horsemen riding along a road, but with this favourite quarrel; the one is Algernon Grey, the feature we are by no means disposed to turesquely sketched, as is the scene they other Sir William Ifford. They are picare viewing. Algernon Grey, the hero, is drawn with vigour and power, though very like most of our author's heroes, being as near perfection as man well can be. Mr. James, however, writes on the principle of placing virtue ever in the balance against vice, and virtue always triumphant in the end-a pleasant contrast to the French romancists, who leave virtue to drag the hem rides loftily in her chariot. It appears, by of her garment in the mire, while vice the conversation that ensues, that both are travelling for their pleasure, or rather seeking pleasure to pass away the time until the period of their return to their native country, England. It is at once perceptible that Algernon is suffering under the weight of some influence against which his feelings revolt, but which his nice sense of honour will not allow him to overthrow have another opportunity of gratifying you. With thanks, then, for your courtesy, I say we must go forward as the matter is." "Well, well," answered Oberntraut; "if such is your opinion, I am ready." "We had better move the cloaks out of the way," answered Algernon Grey; "I see the light will not fail us." "Oh, no fear of that," said the baron; "these things do not take long." The young Englishman smiled; and the field having been cleared, advanced, with ceremonious courtesy, and saluted his adversary. Oberntraut returned the compliment, and their swords crossed. The great school for the use of that weapon with which both gentlemen were now armed was, in the 16th and 17th cen turies, the low, fallen land of Italy, where Algernon Grey had passed several years. In point of strength, the two adversaries were very equally matched; for, What it is remains long a secret, and, in justice to the author, must remain so, as far as we are concerned; this part of the subject we therefore dismiss with the remark, that the mystery is admirably well managed. The companion of Algernon is evidently playing a double game, being deeply anxious, for some ulterior and sinister purpose, carried on under the mask of friendship, to make his friend fall in love. The travellers are men of high rank, keeping up their incognito, which causes them to be somewhat cavalierly treated by one Baron Oberntraut, whom they happen upon. They arrive at length at Heidelberg, in whose grim and gallant castle-halls the yet unelected palatine holds his court; that very evening there is a grand festival, at which Baron Oberntraut is an invited guest. The English wager that they will gain admission without giving their names. The most pleasing and novel scene in the work now ensues. The friends dress and proceed to the castle, where they, by their gallant bearing and courteous conduct, obtain ready admission. The queen, delighted at the mystery which hangs about them, and half recognising in Algernon a nobleman of high rank at her father's court, gives the two adventurers into the safe custody of two fir and lovely creatures. The scene between Algernon and Agnes is exquisitely drawn, in delightful vain. He could not approach his adversary's breast; contradiction to the somewhat doubtful courtship kept up between Sir William and the married lady into whose hands he is given. Algernon and the fair heroine make rapid acquaintance, though neither think of love, Algernon, indeed, being bound by secret and hateful ties to restrain any such emotion. Jealousy, however, ensues. Baron Oberntraut is in love with the fair demoiselle, and taking offence, challenges Algernon to a duel. Some exquisite little scenes follow, which end in a duel, which we extract: و" "Our weapons are of the usual length, I suppose," said Oberntraut, speaking through his teeth; for there was more bitterness in his heart than he wished to appear. "I really do not know," answered Algernon Grey; "but you had better measure them;" and he laid his by the side of his adversary's. There was a considerable difference, however; the English blade was not so long as the German by at least two inches; and when the baron observed it, his cheek flushed and his brow contracted; but his heart was noble and just, though somewhat impetuous and fierce; and, after a moment's pause, he said, "I cannot fight you with this disparity; we must put it off till another day. It is my fault, too; I should have sent you the measure of my weapon, or asked the length of yours." "It matters not," replied the young Englishman: "your sword is a little longer than mine. but my arm is a little longer than yours; thus the difference is made up, and nothing of this kind should ever be put off for slight punctilios. Besides, my stay in this country must be short, and I may not although the yonng Englishman was somewhat taller and more supple, yet Oberntraut was several years older, and had acquired that firmness and vigour of muscle which is obtained long enough before any portion of activity is lost. The latter was also very skilful in the use of his arms; but here Algernon Grey, from the schools in which he had studied, was undoubtedly superior. He was also superior in perfect coolness. There was no angry passion in his breast, no haste, no impetuosity. He came there to defend himself, to oppose an adversary, but neither eager nor fearful. He felt as if he were in a hall of arms with baited weapons, merely trying his skill. He was anxious to disarm his opponent, not to hurt him; and in the first three passes Oberntraut was taught that he was pitted against a complete master of the rapier. At first this discovery made him more cautious, and he used all his skill; but it was all in wherever his point turned, the blade of Algernon Grey met it; and more than once the baron felt that he had laid himself open to the riposte, but that, from some cause, his adversary had not seized the opportunity. Repeated disappointments, however, rendered him irritable and incautious. He watched, indeed, his opponent's defence, thinking to learn what he called the trick, and overcome it by another sort of attack; but whenever he changed his mode, Algernon met it with a different parry; and the clashing sword passed innocuous by his shoulder or his hip. The light began to wane perceptibly, and as cool and perhaps cooler than when he began, the young Englishman recollected his adversary's words, and thought, "These things take longer than you imagined, my good friend, with a man who knows what he is about." A slight smile curled his lip, at the same time; and thinking that he was mocking him, Oberntraut renewed the attack with tenfold fury. Algernon gave a momentary glance to the sky; the rose had died away from above; heavy clouds were driving over in detached masses; a drop of rain fell upon his hand; and he saw that, in two or three minutes, the air would become quite dark. "I must wound him," said he to himself, "or in this dull twilight I shall get hurt; he is too keen to be disarmed; I must wound him, but slightly." At the same moment Oberntraut made a furious pass; the young Englishman parried the lunge, but, though his adversary's breast was unguarded, his heart smote him, and he would not return it, lest he should touch some vital part. The baron pressed him close with pass after pass; and step by step the young Englishman retreated. Then suddenly changing his mode, Algernon assumed the attack, drove his adversary |