owing to the obstacles thrown in the way of preparing it by the magistrates, formed a sufficient ground for reasonable delay, without throwing it on the shoulders of the press; the excesses of which, while we do not mean to defend them-for what on earth is perfect? (take the law and its absurdities for example)-we boldly assert to bear no more proportion to the sum total of its benefits than time does to eternity. That the censures of lawyers upon the press have of late years increased, when, among all just reasoners, among all profound observers of society, and those who are accustomed to study the tendency of the public mind, there is declared to be less ground for it than there ever was, may at first appear singular. This is not, however, so difficult to account for. The profession of the law must naturally remain stationary under one system, and always be after the age in ideas generated by increasing knowledge. A lawyer of fifty years ago, and one of the present day, would have the same duties to perform, and see professional things with nearly the same optics, though the of the two might have a few more statutes and cases to younger peruse. He must lay down the law as his predecessor did, he must he must see the same ends in his address a jury in the same manner, practice, and view the laws in the same light. He must pore over his books with similar intentions, his fictions and forms must (necessarily perhaps) be the same; even his dog-Latin, wig, and gown, are a noli me tangere to modern times-all is behind the present era. Lawyers are conscious of something of this stationary character themselves. The fact is, that the law has its limits; and the man who studies it must remain within them, as much as the mechanic who is advised ne sutor ultra crepidam. A free press is for all times, and for every people. Laws are but for one people, and then must be modified once every two or three centuries. Lawyers must not, therefore, expect to find the perpetually advancing mind of man stand still, that they may run the race together. They were not always thus severe on the press: Judge Ashurst, in an address to the jury at Warwick, on the trial of one Binns for libel, in 1797,* went so far as to allow that "it would not only be commendable, but the bounden duty of every man, to take arms and resist the attempts of the executive power, if it strove to wrest from the people the liberty of the press and the trial by jury:"-an acknowledgment, however true in itself, that no lawyer on the bench would make in the present day. It is the middle class of the English people over which the press exercises the greatest control; the class that, except in fashion, the follower of the courtier, gives a tone to public feeling, and the united opinion of which is irresistible. The majority of the higher classes think very little-at all events, they reason but little; and with the lower Not but that there are splendid exceptions in the it is much the same. House of Lords, for example; but the majority of the very highest class is the servant of precedent and prejudice, and of the lower of passion and ignorance. The astonishing increase of literary publications, "the monstrous It was in the course of this trial that the late Mr. Perceval, on the part of the Crown, alluded to what he called a "false philosophy," or doctrine of men sacrificing their lives in the cause of posterity." It can easily be believed that Mr. Perceval was sincere in this remark: that which he had not a mind and habits formed to feel, he could not comprehend. of late, shows how much the spirit of inquiry is enlarged; and this increase of demand for the productions of the press is accompanied by an amazingly productive revenue, flourishing manufactures, and a more harmonious state of feeling at home. The press lays open every corner of the earth, its productions and wants, for the direction of mercantile speculation, analyses every discovery in science, and endeavours to turn all to a useful account, nothing being lost; it enforces a habit of reflection that leads to improvement, and thus opens new sources of national wealth; it cherishes freedom, the very breath of honourable life; it exposes folly and crime without distinction of persons; it spreads the glory of England over the whole earth; it defends our privileges, and overawes our national foes, by displaying the front of public opinion, that wall of triple brass against external enemies; it controls the members of government, some of whom appear sensible of its value, if we may judge from the few instances of prosecution it has experienced recently from that quarter. I do not refer, in speaking of forbearance, to instances of prosecutions originating in societies owing their origin to the lust of lucre in one or two individuals, who contrive to make a profit of them, and that are a stain upon the country. It is not then becoming in lawyers to censure the press, even for what they may imagine a solitary evil, but which is perhaps in reality no evil at all, without looking far beyond the immediate cause of complaint, and, if they can take in such an extended view, recollecting that were they able to clip the wings of the mighty tenant of air, and confine him in their own narrow inclosure for a time, his pinions would again grow out and bear him aloft, into his former regions of splendour and liberty. Thus it is much to be desired that the professors of the law could take just views of things out of their own professional pale, and they would see that to cramp the press is to destroy it. A few spots and blemishes which appeared on a brilliant surface, would never then be held as a reason for dimming the rich reflection which surrounded them. Let England and America, the only two nations where the press is free, be contrasted with the besotted governments of the Continent; with Spain and the dominion of the creature that governs it, with Austria or Prussia. Let the monarch of England be seen travelling long distances on the roads of his country, without guards, or more numerous attendants than would accompany the private gentleman, well known, yet as perfectly secure as if he were the humblest citizen; and let the lawyers say what Continental king can venture to copy such an example. It is not the sanguinary laws, nor the execution of criminals, nor the zeal of judges, that effects this; it is the characteristic of a free government-the high sense of what is due from man to man-the discriminating knowledge of the age, owing to a free press, that will not fawn on the one hand, while on the other it knows upon what shoulders to lay every thing, and convinces all that the monarch has the right of the citizen as well as his own, and that he should be equally secured in the enjoyment of it. The subjects of nations not having the liberty of the press, are indifferent as to their national integrity: armies must be kept up for overawing them. The citizen feels himself a party concerned in preserving peace at home, and in resisting foreign aggression, wherever there is a free press. This national feeling is rendered doubly valuable, now the Holy Alliance is accustoming the people of the Continent to look at the occupation and government of their respective countries by foreigners with indifference. I need go no farther in detailing the blessings, next to the hope of immortality, of the noblest of the gifts of Heaven to man. In respect to the publication of examinations of criminals before magistrates, or of coroners' inquests, great good is often induced; and witnesses come forward, and facts are disclosed, that would else remain unknown. The reporters for the public press might, on the score of courtesy, on the expression of a wish for a temporary suppression only of the appearance of any particular fact by an authority, comply with such delay. The public could not suffer, and the compliance would not be deemed a sacrifice of any moment. I should de precate the question of right as to this matter coming before a court of lawyers, for many reasons; especially when I believe the majority of the profession to be friends neither to a free press nor free discussion. The question will be a new one, still there are musty precedents enough which an ingenious tortuousness may call in to assist in deciding the point; and it is not difficult to conjecture what the decision would be. Though every court is an open court, and all England is present, and hears the case, and rumour distorts facts and perverts evidence, and spreads falsehoods respecting it, this may continue to be the case; but the truth must not be written, lest all England may read it, and the assassin be prejudiced in his defence by the testimony against him being published-the midnight robber be unable to find an honest jury, and men become more in the dark as to a just state of facts the more they know of them! The statement being true (this must be understood as to sense and meaning at least,) the more the public are informed of the merits of a case, the better for all parties. A jury deciding on evidence drawn from the testimony of present witnesses, and from that alone, will decide on what it hears according to its oath. The prejudice of few men against those from whom they never individually received injury, will not overpower ocular and auricular testimony in presence of a court of justice. It is at best, therefore, exceedingly ill-judged to censure the press for every trivial aberration from what in strictness may be considered its correctest course. But how much more ill-judged is it to carp at those uses of it, which, so far from deserving censure, are entitled to be ranked among its greatest blessings! Neither the bench nor the profession of the law generally, can be benefited by an open contest with it. The combat would be that of a giant and a pigmy, of a Hercules and a common mortal; and the results would be decidedly injurious to law, because the latter is so open to attack in many quarters, so full of absurdities, and stands so much in need of purification by the legislature: it is better, therefore, that it should refrain from forcing an exposition of its weakness before the world, and thereby diminishing that respect in which it is held at present, and with which it should ever be surrounded. Y. I. HOW TO OBTAIN THE CAP OF FORTUNATUS. "He that within his bounds will keep May baffle all disasters, To fortune and fate commands he may give, Which worklings call their masters; He may dance, he may laugh, he may sing, he may quaff, He may walk without fear, he may sleep without care, WIT RESTORED. In the deep serenity of an autumnal evening, I placed myself upon the terrace of the chateau at Versailles to enjoy the setting sun, the rays of which enamelled the glassy surface of the waters before me with a golden bloom, burnished the bronze figures of the marble fountains by which I was surrounded, glistened like fire upon the windows of the great gallery, illuminated by reflections from the wall of mirrors within, and after flickering along the casements of the eastern wing threw a rosy tinge over the Bois de Satory where it is embosomed, the leaves of which were as motionless as if the whole wood already reposed in the first flush of sleep. Having recently visited the stupendous aqueducts of Buc and Marly, works worthy of the ancient Romans, and observed how the whole of the circumjacent country was perforated with tunnels and reservoirs for the supply of the palace, I doubted whether that pile with its six thousand rooms had cost so much human labour as the various subterraneous works radiating from it in all directions; and I appreciated the difficulties to be overcome when the vainglorious Louis Quatorze resolved to conquer nature, and to make this spot, situated upon a sandy height, the most celebrated place in all Europe for those elaborate playthings, its waterworks. All around me were the evidences of his apotheosis and deification. In the baths of Apollo I had seen him sculptured as that deity, while the matchless chisel of Girardon had been prostituted to the representation of his six mistresses, as attendant nymphs, performing the most menial offices about his person. On the ceiling of the great gallery I had gazed upon the paintings of Le Brun, in which he appears wielding the thunder of Jupiter, while Venus, Diana, and Juno were on all sides compelled to wear the faces of his shameless courtesans. When I reflected that the greater part of Europe was convulsed with war by his mad attempts at foreign supremacy, at the very moment that the whole resources of the country were lavished for the gratification of his magnificence and his vices at home, I endeavoured to calculate how much actual enjoyment had probably been attained by that individual for whom so many millions of men had sacrificed theirs. When the decrepit monarch was obliged to be wheeled about his stately terraces in an arm-chair, he could hardly fail to draw humiliating comparisons between the palsied reality of his fleshly limbs and the divine symmetry of his marble portraits; nor could he well avoid sharing the feeling of Vespasian, who, being flattered upon his deathbed, exclaimed in bitter spirit, "O yes, I feel that I am becoming a god." But we will take him in the vigour of his health and youth, without availing ourselves of Bacon's observation, that it is a sad thing to have nothing farther to desire and a thousand things to fear; or of his equally apposite position, that monarchs are like the heavenly bodies, which have a great deal of glory and very little repose. Legitimate as he was, and misgoverning by unquestionable right divine, it will still be admitted that he had but five senses, or inlets of bodily pleasure; and Nature herself in the beneficent equality of her dispensations, has prevented us from usurping any undue share of pleasurable sensation, by limiting our capacities to that portion of enjoyment which is pretty much within the reach of all classes. She has not only placed a sentinel at each gate to warn us against over-indulgence, but has provided an express and complicated economy by which she compels us to reject every excess with disgust and loathing. A king cannot devour more than one dinner in a day, a peasant eats no less; and as to the different qualities of the ingredients, custom, which makes the soldier's "flinty and steel couch of war his thrice driven bed of down," produces the same effects in an opposite direction, and renders the banquet of the palace not more stimulant or palatable than the frugal meal of the cottage. Probably it is less so, if there be any truth in the old adage, that health is the most exquisite cook, and hunger the best sauce. It is the same with the other senses as with the appetite. You cannot discount life and spend it before it is due. You cannot live upon the capital of your body, instead of contenting yourself with its legal interest, without inevitable exhaustion and poverty. Your portion being limited, the more you condense your gratifications the more you curtail their duration, and the more inevitably do you condemn yourself to the horrors of debility, satiety, tædium, and ennui. This is the lot of those kings who, having blunted and worn out their sensations by abuse, sit down in a blank and torpid desolation, and would willingly, like the Román emperor, offer an immense reward for the discovery of a new pleasure. Henry the Eighth and Francis of France, in their meeting on the field of gold cloth, had completely exhausted in fourteen days all the means of gratification which the wealth and genius of their respective countries could supply or devise; and when we recollect the enormous riches of King Solomon, and his multifarious luxuries, among which we should, perhaps, be hardly warranted in including his seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines, we need not wonder at his declaring that all was vanity and vexation of spirit. These, it may be urged, are the mere pleasures of sense, which are for all classes equally grovelling and evanescent; but the high in station may still preserve a wider range over the pure world of intellect, and all those enduring delights that emanate from the head and heart. Alas! the spirit and matter whereof we are compounded are fellowtravellers, one of whom cannot be goaded beyond his strength without fatiguing the other. We cannot exhaust the body by intemperance without debauching and emasculating the mind; and even where a rare course of personal temperance has preserved the faculties unimpaired, it is almost impossible to drink largely of power without superinducing that mental intoxication which has precipitated so many rulers into the mischievous pranks of ambition. Where it assumes not this active tendency, it is apt to bemuddle its victim into that morbid and pitiable state of fretful lethargy termed Ennui. As nothing is so deplorable as the want of a want, there is not one of us who would not be a miserable loser by being "as happy as a king." They are the spoilt children of Fortune, and like the juvenile members of the class are too often way |