knowledge. Poets, therefore, have perpetual occasion to remind themselves that "....all things are less dreadful than they seem,' and thereby to apply the consolations of the imaginative_reason as a corrective to the excesses of imaginative passion. • Present fears,' says Shakspeare, ‘....are less than horrible imaginings.' And Milton may have been thinking less of the Devil than of what he had himself experienced, when he gave expression, in the person of Satan, to a similar sentiment : If there be worse, the expectation more Of worse torments me than the feeling can; To our minds the most interesting portion of this series is that which relates to the offices of the Church. We select the two Sonnets upon Confirmation:— " The young ones gathered in from hill and dale, 'Tis passed away: far other thoughts prevail; Upon their conscious selves; their own lips speak Upon a maiden trembling as she knelt ; Where dwells a sister-child? And was power given *Macbeth, Act i. Sc. iii. Paradise Regained, book iii. 1. 209. Even to this rite? For thus she knelt, and, ere The summer leaf had faded, passed to heaven.'-pp. 422, 423. We had purposed to quote the three Sonnets on Monastic Life at pp. 343, 4, and 5, and those on the Dissolution of the Monasteries at p. 379, and on the execution of Laud and Charles I. at p. 403; but our limits are closing in upon us, and not the least important part of our task is yet to be performed. There is a short series written two years ago, which we have been favoured with a permission to present to the public for the first time. It was suggested by the recent discussions in parliament and elsewhere on the subject of Punishment by Death. It will be proper to remind our readers of the state to which this question has been brought by the proceedings of the last few years. In the session of 1836 an able and elaborate report by the Commissioners on Criminal Law, of which the second part was on this subject, was laid before Parliament.* In the ensuing session this was followed by papers presented to Parliament by her Majesty's command, and consisting of a correspondence between the Commissioners, Lord John Russell, and Lord Denman. Upon the foundation afforded by these documents, the bills (7th Gul. IV. and 1st Vict. cap. 84 to 89 and 91) of the 17th July, 1837, were brought in and passed. These Acts removed the punishment of death from about 200 offences, and left it applicable to high treason-murder and attempts at murder-rape-arson with danger to life—and to piracies, burglaries, and robberies, when aggravated by cruelty and violence. The great majority of the offences which were exempted from capital punishment by these Acts had not been visited with it in practice for many years, and there could be no doubt that the dead letter of the law which remained could do nothing but harm. There were some others which had been visited with capital punishment occasionally, though rarely, and with regard to these the great and prevailing argument was, that the feeling of the public was against capital punishment in such cases, and that the law by awarding it did in effect promote the total impunity of the offences by deterring prosecutions, and by inducing witnesses, juries, and sometimes judges, to violate their duty and conspire in producing a false verdict of acquittal,-insomuch that in these cases practised offenders would prefer to be tried on a capital charge as a sure means of getting off. These arguments were founded upon a large body of statistical and other evidence taken by the Commissioners, and we are of opinion that the bills of 1837 were proper to be enacted as an experiment. The experience of their operation in 1839 and 1840 has been supposed to be in their favour, though we cannot make out by what treatment of the criminal statistics of those years that result is obtained. The valuable tables constructed by Mr. Redgrave of the Home Office, and annually presented to Parliament, show a considerable increase of the offences from which death has been removed,—an increase of no less than 38 per cent. Mr. Redgrave, indeed, states that offences generally have increased 25 per cent., and seems to infer that 25 of the 38 per cent. is therefore chargeable to general causes. So far as direct causation is concerned the inference is just. But it may be a question whether the general sense of restraint be not affected by important relaxations of the law as regards particular crimes, and whether some portion of the 25 per cent., as well as the greater part of the 38 per cent., be not chargeable on the Acts of 1837. The whole question of the operation of these Acts is a matter for watchful attention during the next two or three years, though, we will admit, not a matter for immediate conclusions. The expe rience and evidence which preceded the enactment of the bills of 1837 were so strong against the law as it then stood, that it would require a longer experience and still stronger evidence than any which can be now adduced, to bring us to the conviction that the operation of these Acts is not beneficial, even though removing the punishment of death from some great crimes. But there were some gentlemen in the House of Commons who thought that the punishment should be removed from greater crimes still, and they appealed to the bills of 1837, the motives which had dictated them, and the supposed benefits which had flowed from them, in favour of going further, as if the whole question in such matters were not-where to stop? This was indeed no question with Mr. Fitzroy Kelly, who, in common with Mr. Ewart and some others, openly avowed that he had conscientious objections to the infliction of death at all. The truth, as it appears to us, is, that the more the success up to a certain point in a career of this kind, the greater is the danger of a popular assembly being hurried into errors and extremes. But, as we have said, we find no proof of any particular success hitherto. There is a remarkable return moved for by Mr. Ewart (No. 48, dated 28th Sept., 1841), which shows that a considerable reduction in the number of executions for murder may take place, and be attended with a decrease in the number of commitments for murder. We have sought in vain for any link in reason to connect these two concomitant phenomena as cause and effect; but, even if they were to be so connected, they would be an argument, not for altering the law, but for relaxing its execution. However, However, Mr. Kelly, though aiming at the abolition of punishment by death, brought in a bill upon the instalment principle, taking it away from all offences except treason and murder; which bill obtained no inconsiderable support in the House, and at one time even a majority, but was ultimately defeated by Sir Robert Peel. The only measure which took effect was a bill (brought in by the government with a view to avert the enactment of Mr. Kelly's) by which, besides the correction of some oversights in the Acts of 1837, the crime of rape was taken out of the list of those which had continued to be punishable with death. Thus the broad question which is left for the country to look at, in respect to the punishment by death, is in effect its abolition. It is to this question that Mr. Wordsworth's Sonnets refer; and the general drift of the sentiments which they express is that there is a deeper charity and a more enlarged view of religious obligations than that which would dictate such a measure in this country in the present state of society. Our belief is that the great body of opinion in the country on this subject is sound, and that the argument of inefficacy from unpopularity, which was justly employed to effect the mitigation of the penal code in 1837, would be altogether unfounded as an argument for the removal of capital punishments from the crimes of violence and blood, to which alone it is awarded by the law as it now stands. But even if this plea of unpopularity were to be regarded as still extant, it is beside the purpose of one who, like Mr. Wordsworth, addresses himself to the public mind, and aims at the amendment of that very state of public sentiment which is the ground of the argument, and who regards legislative concessions to such a state of sentiment as affording an apparent sanction and an actual accession of strength to those errors, whether generally or (as we believe) only partially prevalent, which he desires to correct. This part of the controversy it was not within the scope of Mr. Wordsworth's purposes to deal with, and there are of course other parts which are insusceptible of poetical treatment. But the main subject, being a subject for deep feelings, large views, and high argumentation, is essentially a subject for poetry, and especially so in the hands of one who has been accustomed, during a life which has now reached to threescore years and ten, to consider the sentiments and judgments which he utters in poetry with as deep a solicitude as to their justness as if they were delivered from the bench or the pulpit. The first of the series is suggested by a view of Lancaster Castle, seen from an eminence called Weeping Hill,' being the spot from which criminals on their way to the Castle first have it in sight: 'This spot-at once unfolding sight so fair Might soothe in human breasts the sense of ill, Shed on their chains; and hence that doleful name.' This sonnet prepares the reader to sympathise with the sufferings of the culprits: the next cautions him as to the limits within which his sympathies are to be restrained : "Tenderly do we feel by Nature's law For worst offenders: tho' the heart will heave Judgments and aims and acts whose higher source Blameless-with them who shuddered o'er his grave And all who from the Law firm safety crave.' In the third and fourth sonnets the reader is prepared to regard as low and effeminate the views which would estimate life and death as the most important of all sublunary considerations. 'The Roman Consul doomed his sons to die Who had betrayed their country. The stern Word A theme for praise and admiration high. Upon the surface of humanity He rested not, its depths his mind explored; |