MAN; and looked to what he could get, rather than to what he could wish for. Fine a man five pounds, and perhaps he may pay it; fine the same man fifty, and you only perhaps send him to prison. Are there not steps in the scale of moral, as well as of political offence? A larceny is less mischievous to society than a burglary; a burglary without personal outrage, better than a burglary with personal outrage; a robbery on the highway bad, but better than a "cutting and maiming," or a murder. And why should we look nowhere but in the Old Bailey, at redeeming the circumstances of crime? Mark, when you hear any act of very outrageous baseness or folly-when a man is a town jest for his mummeries; a published dupe to courtesans and black-legs; a rioter in the streets par excellence; a brute, or, in other words, a choice spirit"-Mark if he be not some parvenu, or halftrained lad broke loose from school. Why! up to the last moment before a man starts in life, is not the world so described to him, that he must find it rather anything than the thing it has been represented? The grand fault of our moral instruction, is the high tone in which it is conveyed. Sin, we are told, is death; and there the teacher leaves us. The restraint is peremptorily insisted upon, and even the advantages of it are not half explained. We are not only commanded to be angels, and, if we cannot be angels, left to be anything we please; but really little or no pains are taken to shew us why we should be angels if we could.

Say that a thoughtless lad, just launched from college into a society like your present circle, seduces a girl of decent family, and abandons her, like a scoundrel, to her fate.-You and I must not talk about such cases "not occurring;" we know that they do occur, and that men are damned for them, if men are damned at all. This booby has been told that seduction is a "high crime;" and he sees many "high crimes," hourly, in very respectable commission. He has heard that punishment for such offences will follow in "another world,"and he believes that "other world" to be a very long way off. What would be the effect upon thieves of twenty, if a law were to enact, that present highwaymen (bating repentance)

should be hanged at the age of eighty years? Has any creature, friend, or relative, pointed out to this silly boy the immediate consequences (which pass repentance) of the crime which he has committed? Has any one asked-will he sell his favourite horse to be whipped to death in a sand cart? or his spaniel to be worried and fought by butchers?-or on what principle is it that he is dooming a creature, for whom he has once felt affection-to ruin, insult, want, and public infainy? He hears nothing at all of this from his associates-and yours. They congratulate him upon his triumph. He is a "fine fellow"he has" bonne fortune"—the world will "hear of him"-the women find him "irresistible!" Is it not so?-Has any one said to a wretched unthinking blockhead like this-who-what-are these people to whose commendation you are listening? They are "friends." Ay-as you have been-" friends," to their own gratification.-Friends! Why-you are boon companionssworn brothers-every one of you!— When the last of the club was carried to prison, who came forward to give bail for him?—When the bankrupt, last week, destroyed himself-one less -Was it not so ?-sat down to table. Is there a man among these, your "friends," in whom you even think you can confide? Is there one who (if you were in want) you believe would help you with a shilling?Their talents, or their worth-Come!

which is it you would first bear witness to? Is it the gentleman who packed the "fight" at Moulsey, that you love best; or he who poisoned the "favourite" at Newmarket ;-he who fled yesterday (this was your "dear friend") from his bail; or he who, the day before, "gave" the Insolvent act to his creditors? Nay, answer-for these "friends" are all complimenting you upon your "success"

except the one who whispers (and lies) that he was acquainted with the lady before you are you most proud of the gentleman's applause who appears in the long skirted coat, or of his who has pinned his character in life, to the short jacket? Is it he who was thrashed (last) by the "boxer, that immortalizes you; or he who backed "the bull dog" to eat "the monkey" in " four minutes?"-Come! look at your triumph-'tis as noble at least

as to be boasting about it. It is a triumph! A notable one, God wot! You have found a woman who could love you! I grant the thing is a little surprising!-But she will " do well" eh? Marry some "fellow ;"-or "make her fortune," as "others have done before her?"-You saw her only yesterday-look at her again to-day. She has begun to " do well."-Come, and witness her career. Did you take her from home before you abandoned her, or have her parents yet to turn her out of doors?that approved wise policy, and humane, to a child when most she needs protection!-Well, then!-she is gone. She stands for herself. Houseless, pennyless, hope less, and with the hand of society against her! She has written her "last farewell" to the false address that you left with her. She has written again to you, and again-begging not to be allowed to starve-and she has waited in suspense (the pet torment, be sure, of eternity)-she has waited in suspense, and in agony-at last to receive no answer. Come! What shall her "fortune" be?-for I care not. which way you put it. She has tried every" friend," and been refused by all. She is without food now-without money-without lodging-without protection. Strange words, by some accident, are, beginning to fall upon her ear. The demons who prosper on human annihilation, are becoming clamorous for their prey. Hark! to the consolations of the old ladywho would "think scorn" to "mourn for a fellow that abandoned her!"There is her Jew husband too-he "must have his rent," and thinks "one man as good as another." Come, speak!-now, for life or death, -for your "triumph" is on the downfall-will you have one rival in her embraces, shall it be one, or shall it be a thousand? Will you find her straw hat floating in the stream, when you take your early walk to-morrow morning (it is the same which you once bought for her, and she has kept it, you see, to the last,)—or shall she live on for a short space-for your farther punishment-and her own-maltreated laughed at-desperate-degraded? See her-this is your 66 cess"-the sport and football of every midnight ruffian! See her-this is the woman that forsook her home for

suc

you!-courting injury-why, how is this ?-and outrage for her bread !—

Nay-look, I say-look on-you were used to caress her-to be proud of her? It is she who sat by your bed when you were sick; who knelt at your feet when you were wayward. Come! Do you not recollect?-think again!— how finely moulded was her form! Her eyes, how dark and expressivehow joyous and how kind her smile! You do remember how many nights you have slept upon her bosom-how many tranquil days of pleasure you have owed to her society !-Come, rouse! look up and see her!-Is this the woman that you knew? It is she that was the woman whom you knew and loved; but-Nay-never tear your flesh-she can never be that woman again.

Cut your heart into more atoms, than, were it human, it would be bursting into ;-spill your blood-to the last dregs-the blood of half mankind-the change is wrought, and, in this world, there can be no change back again!-Where is your beauty? -Speak!-Here is but a loathsome mass of hideousness and corruption.

The ringlets have fallen off. The teeth are discoloured. The eyes are lustreless and sunken. The cheeks, hollow and haggard. The lips-so ashy! The arm-'tis something wasted! This is your " triumph !"-No-noI forget-there was a mind too to be destroyed. Delicacy, if not resolute virtue-manner, if not strong moral feeling. But it is gone-not even a wreck remains behind! One degradation came from necessity; that endured, the rest were unfelt—unnoticed. The first blow-it was friendlybrought apathy to all others that could follow. The whole mind is unstrung. There is moral lunacy-the depravity of disease. Oaths-curses-words horrible to nature as to decency-filththeft-habitual intoxication-the variety of vice attendant upon semimental alienation!-Is this the " Triumph?"-Not quite-but its completion approaches. It is mendicancy--a prison-a workhouse-and a parish grave; and the moment, perhaps ten years after, when some wretched, larcenous, half-starved child, bred in the poor-house where its mother perished, and sentenced by the law to whipping or transportation for crimes which food

might have prevented, discovers, and -this is the ultra "Triumph !"-salutes you with the name of Father!" The human mind wants that its attention should be called-sometimes dragged-to the contemplation of plain truth. It is not enough to say to men merely "Be virtuous!" If you would do good-one case is worth a hundred arguments-shew them the misery that arises out of evil. Men are ill enough, Heaven knows; but, in the mass, I doubt if they are cruel. Shew the miserable, thoughtless boy whom I have described, the effect of his impertinence; shew him merely the havoc that it is making; and a hundred to one but he will shrink from it. The mere animal instinct that teaches him to quail from pain, will go far to make him honest. What is he-where is he -when consciousness overtakes him? When he finds that there is a hell the hell of vain regret and recollection -earlier to be encountered than that with which he has been threatened; that there are tortures, which make sure of him on this side the grave, however (until it comes to the point) he may fancy he discredits those beyond it.

But these, you will say, are the reveries, and the acerbities of approaching age; or, if you do not say so, it is not because I am only four-and-thirty, but because you are two years my senior. Still, even if you could convict me of being-shall I say thirty-six? Heaven knows! my own condition I give up. Of all men living, he is the most to be pitied, who is competent to pity other people. To know is, of necessity, to have suffered moral impalement-to have been mentally broken upon the wheel! It is to have suffered ingratitude from men, and (still worse) deceit from women; to have seen courage and honour starve in rags, where vice and cowardice stood successful; to have waited, and so to have learned patience; to have been baffled, and so to have acquired perseverance; to have been taught caution by being cheated, and coolness by the use of injury. To be wise, is to know only that nothing can be known with certainty! It is to know that honesty to day is no pledge for honesty to-morrow; conduct in one state, no security for conduct in another. It is to have seen strict principle coupled with the coldest selfishness, and the seeds

of destruction quickening in warmheartedness and kind feeling to have learned to doubt where all find certainty, and to deny confidence even where we repose trust; to have discovered that there is little in life worth really caring for, and nothing-not even one's own opinion-that can safely be relied upon.

Will you answer that these discoveries are not always the concomitants of age; that there are men who, even to death, retain their wonted spirits and their wonted follies? The spirits are oftener of the constitution, than of the mind. We laugh, and it is with gaiety and good humour, at twenty-five ; and we still laugh at fifty-but it is with satire and misanthropy. The calculating point, according to circumstances, comes earlier in life, or later. The enthusiastic find it first; the wealthy born (whom all the world is interested in blinding) are commonly last in the discovery. Fools antic even to the grave, unconscious either of the scoff, or the jestings of mankind. The dull soul has never dreamed of happiness; he cannot fall, for he has been always upon the ground. But, for the man of real mind and energy, who feels his strength upon the wane; who has soared like the rash youth of Crete, and who finds that his wings are failing under him; whose mental perceptions are yet acute, though his physical forces desert him; who is alive to the sense of his own futility-of his weakness, and fallen condition! For such a man, what resource?-Alas! resource there is none.

For, first among those bright illusions which have beguiled him up to this dark hour-first, and hardest !— he loses his sensibility to-his capacity for being cheated by the charms of woman! Take man as you find him before his fellow man, and he is dark, mysterious, inexplicable. Envy and fear disturb him; and a touch perhaps of that instinctive dislike which prevents males, even among animals, from ever meeting with much friendliness of feeling. But with woman he is happy; for, with her, nature teaches him that he is safe. By turns, her despotic sovereign, and her implicit slave. I know not in which condition his fortune is the highest. If it is his pride to command, it is his pleasure to obey.

Her triumphs, her happiness, her injuries-all are his. Her jealousy will

but flatter him-her waywardness amuse. Faults may compel him to upbraid her-misconduct may drive him to abandon; but she has this security -let it guide her choice in all intercourse with a man of heart and feeling, that his dearest wish is incomplete, while the least of hers remains ungratified.

But there is one fault, which no tears, no penitence, can atone for; one act which murders at once, man's love-his confidence and his pride; one crime which may be pardoned, but, while life holds, cannot be forgotten; --beyond which there is no hope, and from which-sooner from the grave, there is return! The mask which man wears abroad, to hide his follies, and his interests the armour in which he clothes himself against man-against MAN, whether friend or foe-all this is stripped off before the woman that he loves; and nature springs rejoicing in her proper, though unwonted freedom. But, thus naked, let him once be wounded, and he never stands secure again! He does not take fright hastily. The last thing-it is so ordered by a merciful Providence!-the last thing that a man doubts, is a woman's fidelity. Tell him that she is proud-and prodigal and negligent -and vindictive-that her folly has blasted his prospects-her extravagance dissipated his fortune-all this he will listen to, for it does not quite shut out all hope; but tell him that she is unfaithful, and his very heart and soul reject the charge, for slander! Hint only that there has been thoughtlessness-indiscretion—a momentary indulgence of vanity-that a smile has, even accidentally, called forth a corresponding simper from the world say that his ruin has been imagined-dreamed of resolved against -that the thing has occurred as possible the hundred thousandth portion of an atom-the amount for which algebra has noname-the line's breadth, which is mathematically nothing-of approach to a thought of it-and the very vital principle throws back the charge, for life cannot go forward in connection with it! He will not lightly credit that as true, which he feels he is lost if he does but pause to think of! He will not confess that woundeven to himself-for which all nature affords no remedy:-that stain which blood may change the hue of, but

which even blood cannot wash out! but let the truth-spite of disgust!once be forced upon him; and it lives with him-body and soul-through his existence-he is lost to the woman who betrays him-to the whole sex-and to happiness for ever-assurances of truth, he shall smile at ; its appearances shall have no weight with him; he has learned the hard lesson, that he is not (as he thought he was) infallible;-and though the reality of security may be restored to him, the belief of it can never be !

It is a hard lesson this to learn, Fletcher, and one which it disturbs a man even to think of. Is it written, I wonder, that I am to go through the horrible ordeal of acquiring it; or am I to glide drowsily on, and easily, into nonentity and forty! Shall I arrive at the mildest, or the most painful, condition of a man whose youth is past? Endure an agony of recollection; or go off in apathy of feeling?-knowing that the mass of men are knaves, and myself little better than the rest; looking to probabilities rather than to statements, in every transaction; ceasing to have any virtue very active, but knowing vice too well to be misled by it; desiring wealth as children covet counters; thinking of my own funeral as a matter of possibility; and gradually-this is the "mere oblivion"-forgetting that such a thing as gratification ever existed?

Ah! Fletcher, this is no new, no questionable shape of feeling! What led the knight of old to the hermitage, the sovereign to the cloister-what but a sense that virtual death required a virtual tomb? The warrior lived but upon the tears of his enemies, the smiles of his mistress: His music was the neighing of his battle-steed, or the song of the minstrel on the feast-night in his hall! Alas! if the trumpet sounds now, it does but call abler champions to the combat; the minstrel's song is of his deeds, but it is of deeds which he can do no more! Oh! those words which no man, perhaps in any state, was pleased to hear-the fiat thatbars possibility-the "Never again!

never!" Release me from torture with those words, and their chilling import arrests my gratitude for the moment. Take a man from misery"for ever"-and he doubts for an instant-" was it misery?"

Be sure I will never be content to

when the shirt-collar is a consideration!

do that ill, which I once could do to admiration! Five years will soon be passed, and then!

And there are clouds in the evening sky that is closing round upon me -not constant, but-dark masses of shadow-falling gloomily now and then. I write long letters, you see, which is an ill sign. And I sneer at your trifling, and at that of others, when it would be better if I could trifle myself. The future, the future! and yet it is impossible not to think of it. This beautiful girl!—I could be happy with her now! But, if I lived, where should I be what would become of me ten years hence?

I will write no more, nor think any more, upon this subject, or upon any other subject. I get out of favour with myself by brooding over the absurdities of the world. I can pass, I think, (with my certificate of service,) for thirty? And so be younger than half your acquaintance, who are slaves to tight boots and plaited pantaloons.Mercy on me, what must the man be,

I will have some soda water, and some more coffee. You have the advantage of me in ice, and now I feel it.

Farewell! Write when you can do nothing else, when you are vapoured, and then I shall be sure to hear the truth. Acknowledgments for the proposition with respect to the New Club; but the most straight-laced member belonging to it will never win a shilling from me. What! am I not like the Roman who received ambassadors as he was boiling cauliflowers in his kitchen? Can you hope to tempt a man who lives in Usk, and doesn't care twopence for all the opera-dancers in England!

Farewell! for Eliza and her aunt are going to take their evening walk, My head aches a little-I may as well go out too. You may write; for I dare say I shall stay here a return of post. But believe me, at all times, and in all places, ever your friend,

C. E.

We were just sitting down to put a few observations together upon this question, which, after being abandoned by the honourable member for Westminster, has been taken up by the honourable member for Aberdeen, when we received a newspaper containing the speech of Sir Hussey Vivian, on the third reading of the Mutiny Bill, which pretty nearly relieves us from all trouble on the subject. The question, as far as it was necessary to consider it at all, did quite as well probably in the hands of Mr Hume, as it could have done in the hands of Sir Francis Burdett; Sir Francis never troubled himself at all about the principle of the thing; and as to the practice, (from his service with the army,) Mr Hume would probably be the better informed of the two. With respect to the "Facts," that is to say, the "floggings to death," &c., (upon which all the opponents of corporal punishments rely,)-even supposing them made out, with the fitness or unfitness of that punishment they have nothing to do whatever; but the exposition of Sir H. Vivian, though given very simply, and in few words, contained exactly the detail which VOL. XV.

was wanted, to set reasonable minds at rest upon the matter.

The real points in the question (for argument,) lie, as it seems to us, in a very narrow compass. Mr Monck, (the member for Reading,) on the first night of the discussion, says something about a scale of reward, (to supply the place of punishment,) established for the soldier; and hints at a scheme for giving away annually, a certain number of commissions (as of right) among the privates of regiments; which, according to his view, would be an assimilation to the course pursued in the armies of France. But, setting aside that the punishments in the Continental armies are, in truth, more severe, though not so effective, as our own; that the French troops have been raised out of a different class of men, and disciplined upon a different principle; and, moreover, that the mere dissimilarity of esprit between the two nations must necessarily call for a material difference of regime and regulation, a moment's thought shews us that the adoption of Mr Monck's arrangement would entirely change the political constitution of our army; and that there needs no thought to

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