We wish that certain writers who use the names of Ly curgus and Solon with the same familiarity that huntsmen use those of Cæsar and Pompey, would recollect that Lycurgus and Solon did not love darkness rather than light,' and that such names in their pages are as ridiculous as the names of ancient heroes in the mouth of a whipper-in.

The following passage is quoted at length, because it contains an epitome of the philosophy of the whole work.

Oh, that the guilty might be sent, like patients afflicted with dangerous disease, to hospitable mansions, that might be humanely constructed for their reception, and their reform !

How many men of enterprise and high faculty would then be preserved! What might the ming of Jack Shepherd have achieved, had its powers been directed to their proper end! He was abandoned; he gloried in vice: alas! it was only because such was the stimulus that had been given him. Turn such miraculous powers to a different purpose, to the mighty ends of virtue, and what would they then have produced? How inestimable might have been the labors of Eugene Aram, that man of extraordinary attainments and stupendous faculties! Nay, how doubtful was his guit! how doubtful even the crime for which he suffered! How easily are minds like these destroyed! But by whom shall they be restored?

While I am writing these memoirs, I cannot forget that I have been subjected to hang by the neck, till I was dead! dead!-dead! Dreadful and impolitic sentence! I dare boldly assert it, the whole tenor of my life shows that it was a lite worth preserving. On your I call, O kings and legislative powers, not with an accusing voice, but with a heart swelling with hope! On you I call, in the name of the present and of future generations, to study how life may be preserved and vice corrected. Shrink not from the mighty task: it is worthy of the native and the highest dignity of man! Say not it is. impossible to accomplish: ten thousand are the proofs that shew the 'contrary! Deal not in human blood! trifle not in indolence, and sut of wretches that are scarcely to be feared, only to rid yourselves of trouble and dine in quiet! It is not my voice, it is the voice of humanity, it is the voice, I say, of swarming generations, that adjures you,

It was to this end, good reader, that these memoirs were written: it was to give the little aid, which an individual can give, towards producing a purpose that is no less glorious than benevolent. Accuse me hot therefore of interrupting my memoirs, because you are impatient: their worth would be trifling indeed, the amusement of an hour, that might have been better spent, did they not aim at a higher end than merely to amuse.'

O! thou ever to be lamented Jack the painter! in what evil days wert thon born! Thou man of daring experiment, what might not thy genius have effected? Instead of setting

fire to a dock-yard, after a course of philosophic regimen in the ward of a mental hospital, thy energies might have illuminated the world!-0 never-to-be-forgotten Mother Brownrigg, thou too rigid assertor of discipline,why was that impolitic sentence of hanging passed upon thee, who, if the little eruptions of thy temper had been checked, mightest have been the proud proclaimer of the rights of women! Oh! Catherine Hayes, Jonathan Wild, and all ye who were killed instead of cured, ho were hung by the neck, and after whose death the judges and the jury dined in quiet, what experiments in science, what treatises on morality have been lost to the world by that precipitate decision on the diseases of your minds!

What is the meaning, what is the moral, what is the drift of the Memoirs of Bryan Perdue? They are expressed too plainly for us to mistake them. The purport of the three volumes is to warn judges against hanging men, that they may rid themselves of trouble, and dine in quiet, to caution them against dealing in human blood, and against cutting off a life hastily, which may eventually be useful.

In a country, like England, where the pure administration of the laws is our proud and warranted boast, and the astonishment and admiration of all foreigners, and where the mild interpretation of them is of such latitude, that other nations have accused us of making laws for the protection of rogues,' a book written for the purpose of diffusing a con trary opinion, under the mask of correcting an evil which does not exist, is not only useless, but ungrateful and insolent. In our courts of judicature, justice holds the scales, but she has delivered her sword to mercy: every atom that may weigh in the prisoner's favour is collected with an anxious and trembling hand; and if the balance be but equal the prisoner is free. Our public trials are lessons of instruction and goodness; and it may fairly be said that a collection of the speeches of our judges would form a volume of morality. Every Briton, every stranger is so conscious of the excellence of this part of our constitution, that we were as much surprised to find a work written with the intent which Mr. H. avows, as we should have been, if he had composed his three volumes for the express purpose of exposing the folly of a belief in witchcraft. Mr. H. raises the report of a ghost, and then claims merit for endeavouring to lay it: instead of which, he deserves censure for giving a false alarm.

The unhappy necessity of cutting off a life which might eventually be useful, has been lamented by many humane

and wise legislators; but severity of punishment tends to moral and political good, and in a country, where every bosom revolts at the very idea of torture, we cannot devise a severes punishment than death. Is death never to be inflicted? If Mr. 11. or any other author will invent a system of punishments, under the terror of which property shall be secure, and the general happiness protected, without admitting death into the catalogue; if he will attempt to describe a plan of reform in our penal laws, by which the most atrocious offender shall, after due punishment, be restored to society,

diligent and useful member, we would bail the attempt as a generous effort, which deserved the praise of mankind: but we find nothing of this kind in the Memoirs of Bryan Perdue. Legislators are warned not to be profuse of blood, jurymen are censured for hanging men too hastily before dinner, and some loose hints are given on the propriety of erecting an asylum for the diseased in mind, with bitter Jamentation tha such a building was not erected before the minds of Jack Shepherd and Eugene Aram were destroyed; for by whom shall they be restored ?'

Eugene Aram, it may be cursorily observed, is rather an unfortunate instance, as he attempted to destroy his own mind' by opening the arteries of his arm, and left a paper, written in justification of suicide, on the table in his cell. The crime, (we beg pardon) the discase of mind for which he suffered, was murder-deliberate murder in cold blood.' O philosophy! philosophy! when thou gettest into bad company, how dost thou disgrace thyself.

Again, we repeat, that the unbappy necessity of cutting off a life is a subject of deep lament, and that this severity is to be exercised with extreme caution; but we do not perceive how the history of Bryan Perdue tends to make this truth more clear, or to awaken this caution more forcibly. The analysis of his story is as follows.

Mr. Bryan's father was a blackguard and a gambler, of whose conversation and manners we may judge from part of his address to his son.

And thin for our ateing and drinking, why, who the divil that is not a spalpeen, would iver be seen to go to bed sober? Oh, my dear Bryan, that you had but been born when I was a boy, and had gone with me every Michaelmas fair to the faste of O'Connor.'

Notwithstanding the instruction of a good mother, and his tutor, who was a venerable worthy man, Bryan turned after his father, very readily imbibed his principles, and very diligently strove to wind himself into the favor of

Lord Froth at school, that he might cheat him of his money. 1 Cards and dice were their amusement, and Bryan, with sufficient cunning, suffers Lord Eroth to win a trinket, on which Ire was known to set a great value, that he might more easily fleece Lord Froth, when he received his quarterly allowance. 'Here (to use his own words) Lucifer thought proper to play me one of his sly tricks, and contrived that a die, which I had cogged, should drop just as I threw the cast; so that there were three dice instead of two upon the table. I made no scruple of swearing that I saw the die drop from his sleeve; and oaths and imprecations were most wickedly and audaciously opposed to each other... Of course Bryan was banished from the school. By the intercession of his worthy tutor, he gets admission into the family of a Mr. Saville. His tutor dies, and Bryan remains, by the kindness of Mr. Saville, in the house, and receives a promise, that all his reasonable wants should be supplied, with the further assurance that when a new governor was chosen for young Saville, the same person should, be his instructor' in classical learning, Mr. Saville discovers that his sou and Bryan play very deep at the gaming table, and is preparing to turn Bryan out of the house, whose conduct appeared to him so wicked and ungrateful, when the accident of the house being in flames gave Bryan an opportunity of saving his benefactor's daughter, and the title-deeds of his estates, from the fire. Mr. S. in return for this unexpected instance of courageous and friendly assistance, foregoes his intention of turning, Bryan into the street, and procares for him a situation in a merchant's office where he may support himself in a genteel style, and eventually rise to respectability and independence. Though Mr. S. feels it his duty to provide for Bryan, he very naturally and justly separates him from his son. Our adventurer in his, new situation enters into the vices of the town, takes a lobby-girl into keeping, and to supply her extravagance, indorses his friend Mr. Saville's name on a draft for five hundred pounds. He is taken up, tried at the Old Bailey, and escapes by a point of law. After this he goes to the West Indies, where he is made manager of an estate, in which situation he is humane to the negroes, gaining an ascendancy over them by shewing them electrical experiments, and objects through a microscope, with some instances of the power of the air pump; marries a rich Quaker's daughter, has a large fainily, and lives very happy.

Such is the outline of Bryan Perdue's history, and (except the management of negroes by experimental philoso

phy) such, or very similar, was the history of Moll Flanders, who went to Virginia, married a rich planter, and lived happy all the days of her life.'

Having described the doctrines which this work is intended to inculcate, and having given a skeleton of the plan of it, we shall proceed to exhibit specimens of the style in which it is written, and of the manner in which it is execut ed. The most paltry conceptions have been sometimes clothed in such grandeur of description, aad adorned with such flowers of eloquence, that, like the vile carcases of Egyptian mummies, they have been preserved on account of their outward ornaments: but the Memoirs of Bryan Perdue are not of this description. Mr. H. by some unaccountable infatuation, has thought himself qualified to adopt the sportive style of Tristram Shandy, for which his genius is as ill suited as the hard-hoofed animal in the fa ble was to imitate the playful fondness of the lap-dog.

"I cannot let this opportunity escape of informing the world of the system which I mean to write (I ought to say one of the systems) in which I shall make a full display and copious communication of the acute, the learned, and the profound discoveries that I have made, aņu the innumerable analogies, synonimes, etymologies, orthographic transformations, metaphoric changes, words simple and words copulative, that I have observed generating and degenerating by and among the Syriac, Chaldaic, Hebrew, Celtic, Arabic, Persian, Grecian, Gothic, Sclavonic, Teutonic, and all their bastard progeny connecting them all with nations and tribes, antiquities, chronologies, histories, local customs, oral traditions, legends, eastern mythologies, migrations from

How can I best convey a specimen of the etymological learning with which, now and frequently, I find myself overburdened? Read, and, if that be possible, imagine how ample, how amusing, how beneficial, the instruction will be, which I have long had the intention to communicate!

Hetman, Hat, Haupt, Haubide, Houbet, Hoibet, Höfd, Höved, Heed, Hot, Haud, Houbith, Heafod, Hoffod, Hufwud, Hutte, Hut, Hueth, Haut, Haus, Hose, Hütte, Hatt, Hett, Hod, Hat, Head, &c. &c. &c. Gothic, Teutonic, Icelandic, Swedish, Dutch, English, aud. again, &c. &c. &c.

Bless me! I must take breath, or whither will my exalted thoughts lead! Powers of inspiration, be not too abundant in this promp titude of ideas! administer your delightful doses each in a less and more manageable quantity, or, in some one of these dreams of ineffable pleasure, I shall forget that I am writing memoirs of my self.

'I would, however, advise the sagacious reader, should he by any