mitted; and robbery was ever accompanied by murder. The punishment of death was very seldom inflicted for the offence,, no severer sentence being passed on the culprit than transportation to Angola, or the Indies. To this cause must be attributed the frequency of the crime. To such a pitch of boldness had they risen that murders were often committed even at noon-day. The inhabitants, instead of endeavouring to arrest the criminal in his flight, by a kind of infatuation seem willing and eager by every means in their power to facilitate his escape. They exclaim when they see him pur ́sued Coutadinho! alas, poor fellow, and do whatever they are able to assist him in his flight. The usual price of a bravo is not more than a moidore, and should he be discovered in the execution of his villainy, he has only to take refuge in a convent. In the sanctuary he is safe. (To be continued.) SILVA, No. 71. **Tacitum silvas inter reptare salubres, MONTESQUIEU IN chap. 13eme De l'Esprit des Lois, with his usual brevity and acuteness expresses in a short metaphor his idea of the nature of a despotick government. Quand les Sauvages de la Louisiane veulent avoir du fruit, ils coupent l'arbre au piè et ceuillent le fruit. Voilà le Gouvernement despotique. A sentiment worthy of the free spirit of Demosthenes, and an image worthy of the genius of Homer. These few words are the whole chapter. BEZA. THE celebrated Theodore Beza during his life, married three wives. This fact has been commemorated in the following lines. Uxores ego tres vario sum tempore nactus, Cum juvenis, tum vir factus, et inde senex, Propter opus prima est validis mihi juncta sub annis, The force is lost by translation. FRANCIS I. Of all the monarchs who have filled the French throne, there was never a more fickle one than Francis. Among the many curious stories related by Jortin, there is one which ilfustrates this trait in his character very fully. Castellanus in his funeral sermon on this monarch, who was his good patron, declared his hope that he had gone directly to Paradise. This gave great offence to the Sorbonne, which sent deputies to complain of it at court. But they were coldly received: and Mendoza, the king's steward, told them that he knew his old master's temper better than they; that he never could endure to remain long in any place; and that if he went into Purgatory he only stopped there just to take a gill of wine, or so. THE THUMBS. AMONG the Romans it was a sign of approbation to turn the thumbs downward, Fautor utroque tuum laudabit pollice ludum. HOR. But of displeasure and disgust to raise them and turn them out. converso pollice vulgi Quemlibet occidunt populariter. Juv. LUTHER WAS born at Isleben, in the county of Mansfield, on the tenth day of November, 1483. His name in his native language was Lutter, which afforded some one of his numerous adversaries a subject for the following lines, more remarkable for their scurrility than their wit. Germanis Lutter scurra est, est Latro Bohemis. SMALL TOWNS ARE said by Sorbiere to be liable to the following plagues; a lawyer with great knowledge, great sophistry, and no judgment; an eminent physician with little skill or conduct; a preacher without conscience; a quarrelsome knight at arms; a politician without principles; and a man of letters who eternally dogmatizes. JOHN LILBURN WAS one of the presbyterians and rebels in the time of Charles the First. He was so notorious for his quarrelsome disposition, that Judge Jenkins said to him, "That if the world was emptied of all but himself, Lilburn would quarrel with John and John with Lilburn." This trait in his character, and probably this observation, gave occasion for the following lines at his death: Is John departed, and is Lilburn gone? Lay John here, and Lilburn thereabout, For if they both should meet they would fall out. MARTIAL. THE following is an unacknowledged translation from Martial. I forget the author: "I do not like thee, Dr. Fell, This method of making the first and third line rhyme to the second, is not unpleasant. It gives an air of compactness. Martial writes "Non amo te Sabidi-non possum dicere quare Hoc possum tantum dicere-non amo te." The epigram has little merit. The capricious dislike of no man is worth recording. The translation is better than the original; for in the latter, "hoc possum tantum dicere," which constitutes one fourth of the epigram, is mere verbosity. SACERDOTES POST MORTEM. It was not uncommon in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, for the higher class of society, however dissolutely they might have lived, to be buried in the habit of monks. Baldus, in the year 1400, Christophorus Longolius, in 1522, and Agricola, in 1485, were buried in the habit of a Cordelier. Petrarch, in 1374, and the Duke of Parma, in 1592, were buried as they had desired, in the robes of a monk. Marot, in one of his poems, ridicules Albertus Pius, 'who,' says he, turned monk after he was dead.' Jortin, in noticing this circumstance, observes, "This calls to mind a story, which I have seen somewhere. A certain prince, who had led a very wicked life, was carried to his grave in the humble disguise of a monk. A woman, whose husband he had murdered, seeing the masquerade go by, cried to him, Ah you dog! you think you are finely concealed under that habit; but Jesus Christ will find you out! GAMING. "I FORESEE," said Montesquieu to a friend visiting him at La Brede," I foresee that gaming will one day be the ruin of Europe. During play, the body is in a state of indolence, and the mind in a state of vicious activity." LEO X. On the elevation of Leo X. to the papal throne, triumphal arches, and statues, and mottoes were arranged in the streets, through which he was to pass, in order to take possession of the Lateran see. Agostino Chisi, a rich merchant, adopted on this occasion an inscription, which refers with some degree of freedom to the preceding pontificates of Alexander VI. and Julius II. Olim habuit Cypris sua tempora; tempora Mavors This device was no sooner exhibited, than Antonio da S. Marino, a goldsmith, who lived near him, displayed an elegant statue of Venus, under which he inscribed in allusion to the former lines: Mars fuit; est Pallas; Cypria semper ero. "Once Mars prevail'd; now Pallas reigns; OBSERVATIONS ON THE CRIMINAL LAW OF ENGLAND. THE following Observations contain the substance of a Speech delivered in the House of Commons on the 9th Feb. 1810, on moving for leave. to bring in bills to repeal the Acts of 10 and 11 Will. III. 12 Ann. and 24 Geo. II.; which make the crimes of stealing privately in a shop, goods of the value of five shillings; or in a dwelling-house, or on board a vessel in a navigable river, property of the value of forty shillings; capital felonies. Some arguments are added, which on that occasion were suppressed, that the patience of the House might not be put to too severe a VOL. X. 3 trial. Inaccuracies of style might have been corrected, if the Author's occupations would have allowed of his rendering this pamphlet as little unworthy of being offered to the publick, as he could have wished: but to be useful, it was necessary that this publication should appear before the fate of the bills, which are now depending in parliament, was decided; and his only object in publishing it is, that it may be useful. THERE is probably no other country in the world in which so many and so great a variety of human actions are punishable with loss of life as in England. These sanguinary statutes, however, are not carried into execution. For some time past the sentence of death has not been executed on more than a sixth part of all the persons on whom it has been pronounced; even taking into the calculation crimes the most atrocious and the most dangerous to society; murders, rapes, burning of houses, coining, forgeries, and attempts to commit murder. If we exclude these from our consideration, we shall find that the proportion which the number executed bears to those convicted is, perhaps, as one to twenty and if we proceed still further, and, (laying out of the account burglaries, highway robberies, horse-stealing, sheep-stealing, and returning from transportation), confine our observations to those larcenies, unaccompanied with any circumstance of aggravation, for which a capital punishment is appointed by law, (such as stealing privately in shops, and stealing in dwelling houses and on board ships, property of the value mentioned in the statutes,) we shall find the proportion of those executed reduced very far indeed below that even of one to twenty. This mode of administering justice is supposed by some persons to be a regular, matured, and well-digested systemThey imagine, that the state of things which we see existing, is exactly that which was originally intended; that laws have been enacted which were never meant to be regularly enforced; but were to stand as objects of terror in our statute-book, and to be called into action only occasionally, and under extraordinary circumstances, at the discretion of the judges.Such being supposed to be our criminal system, it is not surprising that there should have been found ingenious men to defend and to applaud it.-Nothing, however, can be more erroneous than this notion. Whether the practice which now prevails be right or wrong, whether beneficial or injurious to the community; it is certain that it is the effect not of design ; but of that change which has slowly taken place in the man |