neither is it strictly correct to assert, that as dogs which have worried sheep are not beaten or hung as an example to dogs, so neither can madmen be punished as an example to madmen. Nothing can be more opposed to all experience in the treatment of mental diseases, than the supposition that they are impervious to the force of example, or the fear of consequences, except indeed in the most advanced stages of furious mania.

latter, the compassion of the jury, enlisted with equal or greater intensity on behalf of the prisoner, accepts and adopts the plea of insanity on very slender grounds. In either case a jury is called upon to examine facts of the most perplexing kind, and to weigh evidence frequently of the loosest character which can be tendered in a court of justice; the singular diversity of the result at which a jury so placed will arrive, in the one case or in the other, is a suffi. cient proof of the absence of fixed rules or principles to guide its decision.

The great evil and danger which would appear to result from the present state of the law, as it was applied at the late trial, By the old law of France, great care was consist in the extension to cases where the taken that the plea of insanity should be absence of moral control is by no means tried as a distinct question from the main fully established, of all the precautions and question of the guilt of the prisoner, and immunities which the humanity of our always before other Judges. By the penal criminal jurisprudence has invented or al- code of modern France it is laid down as a lowed. That absence of control was not general principle, that where there is insanestablished, as we have already seen, but ity (démence) there is no crime or delinassumed as the certain and inevitable con- quency; consequently, whenever insanity sequence of that amount of mental delu- can be successfully pleaded, the imputed sion under which a man like M'Naughten criminality of the prisoner falls at once to apparently labored. the ground. To a certain extent this may To borrow the motto of our northern co-be said to be the case in England; at least temporary, "Judex damnatur, cum nocens the more celebrated cases of insane crimiabsolvitur." In this case, the eminent nality are of such a nature that the whole judge who decided the cause and stopped defence and acquittal of the culprit turned the trial before it had reached its natural upon the unsoundness of his mind. The termination, stands fortunately above all criminal act itself was patent and overt; animadversion. Nor can we refrain from and the more openly it was committed, the paying our humble tribute of respect to greater reason is there to believe that such that exalted and unbending dignity of our an act was insanely committed. Perhaps principal ministers of justice which raises there would be some advantage in separatthem in such questions above the reach of ing the two questions which are thus simthe censures and influences of the day. ultaneously brought before the jury, instead But the obvious fact that "nocens absolvi- of allowing the main interest of the trial tur," the felon is acquitted,-provokes to turn at once upon the circumstances and some sort of inquiry into the state of the evidence indicative of insanity. This law which has led to such a result. might be effected by allowing insanity to be pleaded at a later period of the proceedings, as in arrest of judgment; and the inquiry arising upon this plea might then be conducted without so direct and especial a reference to the crime set forth in the indictment, and it might be brought before a special jury better qualified to enter into an investigation of so peculiar a character.

Nothing is more embarrassing than to suggest even an experimental remedy in a case of difficulty arising out of the most mysterious and complicated symptoms which can distract the mind of man, and one which is so closely connected with the deepest springs of human infirmity. The subject is tangled and abstruse, but in the course of the administration of justice in this country, it is brought before a tribu- With regard to the test of insanity, or to nal which has less of legal acuteness and speak more accurately, the test of moral severity than of human sympathy. Hence responsibility, it does not appear to us that arises the discrepancy we have already the mere proof of the presence or absence pointed out between the verdict of a jury of the faculty of distinguishing right from on a question of insanity, in a civil and in wrong, is the safest that can be adopted. a criminal case. In the former, it seems The number of persons of insane mind charitable to the subject of the inquiry to who are utterly unconscious of what is defend his liberty of action, and to give right and what is wrong, is comparatively him credit for sanity, until absolute demon- small, yet they are not fit objects of punstration of his malady is produced. In the lishment, at least not of capital punishment,

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THE ISLAND OF THE EARTHQUAKË.—TROJAN, THE SERVIAN KING.

TROJAN, THE SERVIAN KING.

TRANSLATED BY JOHN OXENFORD.

I.

[JUNE,

when their impulses are so extravagant, and their power of self-control so enfeebled that they are the victims of merciless and absurd [Servian legends are not, I believe, commondelusions which they obey though they be. ly known. The following, which is a very culieve them not. On the other hand, where rious one, is taken from the introduction to a colevery circumstance in his life tends to war-lection of Polish traditions, by M. Woycicki. rant the inference that a man does habitually The poetical prose in which it is written, and exercise the control of free volition over all the dash of puerility, seem to me very effective. -J. O.J his ordinary actions, we should be most unwilling to exempt him from punishment on the ground of a mere mental delusion, be it hither! The sun has long vanished. The "QUICKLY give me my horse! quickly bring cause the fear of punishment is quite as like-moon and stars are already shining, and the dew ly to restrain such a man from a crime as the already glistens on the meadows. The south delusion, under which he labors, is calculat-wind blows no more, and if it does, 'tis no more ed to impel him to commit it. In a word, the only test which a court of criminal justice can safely allow itself to adopt, and the only inquiry upon which it ought to enter, is, whether the criminal had sufficient intelligence to know that the act he has com-long, and I can only live at night-time." mitted, is punishable by law, and sufficient control over his actions not to be the mere victim of blind impulse or frenzy.

THE ISLAND OF THE EARTHQUAKE.

AN island lay upon the placid sea,

Calm, in its glowing beauty, as the dream
Of a fair child, who sees in ecstasy

Some heavenly vision on its slumbers beam;
Where all that's beautiful in hue and form,
Bright flowers, and birds whose plumage seems of

gems,

And golden fruits, and regions ever warm
With life and joy; and plants, whose giant stems
Are crown'd with blossoms like the amethyst;
And silver streams making sweet melody,
As with the air they keep their gentle tryst;
And all things fair seem blent harmoniously.
Thus calm and beautiful that Island lay,

And many the soft silent morn did bless,
Who, at the fading of the star of day,

Were hopeless, wretched, homeless, fatherless!
One moment, and a low convulsive moan

Came from the heaving bosom of the earth;
It trembled-palm-groves, cities, towers, are gone
Yon mass of ruins tell where they had birth!
A weeping mother came to seek her child,

heating, but cooling. So quickly to horse! Every moment's delay is time lost. With beating heart has the black-eyed virgin already long awaited me. With the speed of the hurricane or of the eagle do I fly on my swift-footed steed, because the night is so short and the day is so

Thus spake Trojan, king of the valiant Servians, who could not endure the rays of the sun. Never had he seen the light of beaming day. For if a single ray had shone on the head of Trojan, he would have passed away as a cloud, and his corpse would have been dew.

The obedient squire brings the horse from the stable. Trojan flings himself on it, and will away. His faithful servant follows him.

"So fresh and cool! 'Tis the right time for me!" cries Trojan, joyfully. "The stars, indeed, are shining, and so is the moon; yet their dew, like white coral, covers the green meadow, pale beams are without warmth. The pearly and in every drop can I see the form of the stars and the face of the moon. What a stillness prevails! Nothing disturbs my mind, scarcely when the hoarse voice of the owl sounds from the dark wood."

"Oh! my sovereign," replied the squire, "I prefer the sun and the hot day, even though its beams do glow and give warmth, to the gloomy shades of night. Then am I quite blind, and the most lovely colors become black—the violet, the rose, and the scented elder-blossom. And at night every thing slumbers-the birds, the beasts, and man. Only to the wanderer does a solitary light beam from the village by the roadside; only the faithful guardian of the house awakens the echo with his barking, when he sees a wolf or something strange. As the billows of the sea, as the waving corn-field when prayer-incline itself on all sides. No bird interrupts the stirred by the wind, so does the echo move and

Now cradled in its grave; reproachfully
A beauteous boy besought, in accents wild,
The hollow earth to set his parents free-
Alas! his only answer was the sigh
Of the night-wind, the frown of the dark sky.
Yet there were some who knelt in grateful
The loved beyond all other earthly prize,
Heaven, in its pitying love, did gently spare;
Still in that Island songs of praise arise,
Echoed by angel-voices in the skies!

M. E. M. G.

Roman Antiquities.-Beneath an ancient cairn, on the hill of Knockie in Glentanner, has been found a very interesting treasure of bronze vessels, celts, spear-heads, bracelets, armlets, rings, and other relics of remote antiquity.

silence of night, for the minstrel of the springthe lark, flies merrily over the green meadow, when awakened by the beams of morning, and greets the shining day with the sun. At night she sleeps, like every other creature, to refresh her strength. But we, O king, pursue our way in the shades of night."

III.

A fair mansion was shining in the distancea light glistened in every window. There did the beloved of Trojan await his embrace. Tro

REMINISCENCES OF MEN AND THINGS, | who knew him best often predicted that the occupations of his future life would be simply

BY ONE WHO HAS A GOOD MEMORY.
From Fraser's Magazine.

DE LAMARTINE.

WHEN first I saw the kind-hearted and

gentlemanly De Lamartine, he had returned from his travels in the East, oppressed by grief, and weighed down with domestic caJamity. He had lost his only daughter. Far, far away from the scenes of her infancy and childhood, from her father's own beautiful dwelling, from the trees and the moss, the vineyards and the fields, she loved so well; beneath another sky, and surrounded with many faces unfamiliar to her heart, she breathed her last sigh in the arms of her parents in the Holy Land, and her soul winged its happy flight to the heaven of her

"Aimer, prier, et chanter !"

De Lamartine had returned to Paris, but his excited the love and the sympathy of mul travels had preceded him. His grief had titudes of beings in all quarters of the if not in every cottage, at least in many a His tale of wo had been told, globe. dwelling of the poor, as well as of the rich; and the fact that he was a royalist, and opposed to the new order of things in France, was wholly lost sight of, and he was reChristian poet. His fine active mind had garded as the travelled Thane and the been subdued by the loss he had sustained to a degree of humility and submission which was truly sublime; and those who are not well acquainted with the power of a cultivated and moral nature to throw off its grief and to gird itself with strength and decision, would have imagined that De Lamartine could never again sing of beauty, of nature, and of love, but would betale" was beautifully sung by her father, in come in principle a recluse. His wife, an one of his delicious "harmonies;" and her English lady of good family, of benevolent young heart expanded under the genial in- formed and highly cultivated mind, had and gentle disposition, and of well-influence of the kindly and noble sentiments shared with him in the East all his sorrows, which he possessed. With a passion for as well as all his enjoyments, and had reall that was beautiful, good, just, and wise, turned to Paris bereft of the idol of their that father had impregnated her charac-heart's affection. To them the world had no ter and she was the reflected image of charms. Tears and sighs, remembrances clad himself. But Julia died! She had traversed with him the regions of the East. in mourning, and grief which knew of no She had beheld his fine heart bound with mitigation, were their constant companions; joy at the pious traditions of the scenes of our salvation. She had visited the shores

Saviour and her God. At the Chateau de St. Point, near Macon, in the centre of France, she had received her earliest and dearest impressions; and its solitary and romantic scenery was not forgotten by her, even when her light foot pressed the sward of holier and lovelier lands. "La terre na

of Malta, the coasts of Greece, the ruins
of Athens, the plains and the mountains of
Syria, and that Palestine so dear to the heart
of every Christian. But Gethsemane was
doubly hallowed to his soul, for death
snatched from him the being in whose ex-
istence and happiness the dearest hopes of
himself and his wife were centered; so that
himself and his wife were centered; so that
he sang in pathetic and mournful strains
the following deep and precious thoughts,
descriptive of the state of his mind :-
"Maintenant tout est mort dans ma maison aride,

Deux yeux toujours pleurant sont toujours de.

vant moi ;

Je vais sans savoir ou, j'attends sans savoir quoi, Mes bras s'ouvrent à rien, et se ferment á vide, Tous mes jours and mes nuits sonte de même couleur,

La prière en mon sein avec l'espoir este morte, Mais c'est Dieu qui t'écrase, ô mon âme soit forte, Baise sa main sous la douleur !"

Nothing could better describe the feelings of De Lamartine when I first saw him than those stanzas of his own; and those

and their friends looked on them as we are wont to do on objects blasted by lightning, and on trees riven by the storm. The sun appeared to shine in vain for them, for she who loved the first golden rays of the morning now slept in her grave. True, but they were only the remains-the body her remains had been brought to France, without the spirit. The moon, that fairest companion of the night, disclosed in vain her charms for them; since she who delighted to wander in sylvan scenery, or on the bare and cold mountain, with her father as her guide and her teacher, could no longer ask his aid, or his counsels, and no longer applaud with her smiles or her tears the sweetest efforts of his muse. The landscape, with its varied scenery and multiplied atractions; society, with its excite ment and its distractions; solitude, with its pensive thoughts and its self-examination; all appeared before them monotonous and sad, for she was no longer the admirer of the landscape, the charm of society, or the companion of the lonely hour. Books had

no delights for them. Pictures, the repre- | epochs most favorable to our moral, intelsentations of the past, the present and the lectual, and religious improvement. It is future, were without beauty in their eyes; undoubtedly true that some thought the statues and marbles were but dull and life- grief of De Lamartine excessive, whilst the less blocks to them, since she who admired vulgar and the worldly-minded stigmatized and appreciated them all, was now silent it as affected. But his friends only feared and cold as the marbles themselves. Pub- that its sincerity and intensity might have lic affairs they would not or could not con- such an effect on his future efforts, as to verse about. They had scarcely a tear to render his poetry morbid or fretful, his chaspare for others-they had so many to shed racter repining and discontented, and thus for themselves; and though dynasties had to withdraw him from those busy scenes of been changed, old institutions of the first daily life where the force of his eloquence, revolution revived, and a new state of the strength of his judgment, and the exthings both moral, political, and religious, cellence of his example, might improve and had come to life, De Lamartine and his ad- bless mankind. mirable wife were evidently unaffected by the changes, and viewed them all as events with which they had nothing to do-and to which they were indeed bound to remain strangers. He had still in his absence been elected a deputy, and he hoped to perform the duties of his office, but with sorrow and with tears.

The publication of the Travels of De Lamartine in the East, was a sort of epoch in French modern literature. It seemed like the restoration of Christianity after years of reproach, calumny, and persecution. For the Revolution of 1830 proclaimed " "war against the priests;" and that, also, meant "war against the altar," at which they ministered. The palace of the archbishop had been pillaged; the literature of centuries was thrown into the waters of the Seine as too bad to be preserved, because it was the literature of the church, multitudes of priests had been attacked, insulted, and beaten. The remnant of the old republican party of the last century now hoped to wreak its vengeance on the men and the clergy of the restoration. And, in one word, the goddess of Reason was again spoken of by the followers of Voltaire and Rousseau. But the book of De Lamartine came as a voice from the tomb; like fresh waters rushing to an arid desert; like the overflowing of the Nile; like flowers on graves; and beauty, fertility, and verdure, where rankness, poison, and death had prevailed. Some read his book from a love for the wonderful, some for its poetry, others for its apparent romance, and multitudes became enamored once more with a religion, with which were connected the glowing recollections of the Holy Land.

How unearthly is the human mind, how pure its breathings, and how bright, or rather, spiritual, are its soarings, when thus brought by calamity, disappointment, and the ravages which death has made on those the soul loves, to view this world as a mere sojourn, life as a rapid journey, a fitful dream, and a day of sunshine and of cloud too speedy in its flight to be remembered; and when God alone seems capable of filling the vast desires of the soul, and the demands of a care-worn, a bereaved, and an empty heart! Then it is that life's chequered day is viewed in its true coloring; that the cavils and the reproaches, the calumnies and the misrepresentations of the world, excite only pity and commiseration -not amounting to scorn or to anger; and the pursuits of life are estimated by their real, not by their imagined worth. Then it is that the high destinies of our future being press themselves upon us in all their vastness and grandeur; and that we feel all the truthfulness of the declaration, "So God created man in his own image, in the I know it will be replied that these were image of God created he him, male and fe- not the stern and strong characteristics of male created he them." This is not the pe- a truly religious state of public mind and riod of false sensibility, of affected senti- feeling, and that there was much of poetry ment, of artificial or of feigned emotion. and imagination bound up with these emoBut such moments as those I have thus re-tions. This I grant very readily; but it ferred to in the life of De Lamartine are, when not indulged to such an extent as to become prejudicial to our mind's vigor, usefulness, and future efforts for the good of society, the great halting places in our lives; the summits from which we take a large and expansive view of the world about and around us, and they are the VOL. II. No. II.

16

was surely something to give a new direc tion to minds which were unoccupied with good, and which were busily set on doing evil. It was surely something to assist in checking the blind and mad fury of many for attacking churches, for destroying the ornaments and paintings of the cathedrals, and for razing to the ground all that re