therefore, that he should be classed and tried, and it would be still more unjust that he should be punished, as a murderer; and so, thanks to this false classification and trial, he escapes altogether. So he ever will, and so he ought, until he is so classed and so tried that conviction and penalties may justly follow his offence. This point is so evident that it is idle to waste words on it.

That duelling should be checked, few we think will deny. Who is there that has fought a duel who does not regret it-repent it? Let any one ask whether it is right that he who maliciously or even wantonly provokes and triumphs in a fatal duel should escape as he now does, unpunished and almost unreproved. All our better and more sober feelings answer no; it is only legal impunity which restrains their expression and prevalence. We are no disciples of Hobbes; but it is idle to deny how much of public morals, and of just notions of right and wrong, depend on the administration of public law. How many offences are there which should touch strongly the conscience, but which public opinion still tolerates or approves, only because the law cannot or will not reach them?—and there are others which happily, since the law has reached them, have fallen into disrepute. It certainly would be infinitely better that public morals rested on higher sanctions than mere law-and to a considerable extent they do; but the penalties of the one Table are instant and obvious, those of the other remote and unseen; and therefore, too frequently, when the first fail or refuse to act, the second lose their force, and a spurious judgment, a compromise of public opinion, is formed-the conventional takes the place of the just. To remedy this is the object of all legislation, whose constant tendency should be, to bring the three great ruling influences, the civil, the social, and the divine, into harmony. This has gradually been advancing as to many things; and we think the time has come, when, with respect to duelling, the hitherto dead letter prohibition of the law might be exchanged for some practical and approved penalty, which would at once amend and strengthen public opinion. And certainly the time has come when a real and serious responsibility ought to be attached to the conduct of seconds; because, as most duels might be prevented by the prudence, temperance, and firmness of the seconds, they ought to suffer wherever they either obviously misuse, or heedlessly omit to use the means which their situation affords to effect an arrangement; or when they continue, by their presence, to sanction a meeting originating in unjustifiable and unwarrantable expressions or behaviour.

Beyond all doubt, fighting a duel is a breach of the peace. Let it then be so classed and so punished-each duel according to its

'special enormity; and let this enormity, together with the respective guilt of the several parties concerned, be tried by a jury, and decided by their verdict, as in the case of other offences. It will then be discovered how the quarrel arose out of which the 'duel grew; who gave the offence; what offers of apology, redress, or retractation were made; how they were met, why refused; and all those other circumstances which distinguish the case of a bully, or a professed and instructed duellist, from that of a forced defender of his honour. The result of these enquiries in presence of a judge and a jury would lead to that discrimination of guilt, and apportionment of punishment, without which no law can work well; and moreover true honour and true courage, thus sifted, would stand out in honest relief from the surreptitious qualities which too often fight under their mask. Friends and relatives also, when the punishment was no longer excessive, would come forward to assist to expose and convict those who had forced on the duel, or who had not done their utmost to prevent it.

It may be said that these are matters and questions of far too fine and delicate a texture to come before a jury, and to be duly appreciated by such a tribunal;-that the honour and sensibility of a gentleman would shrink from so matter-of-fact and threadbare a scrutiny. There may, at first sight, appear some ground for this objection, but time would or should remove it; for substantially it rests only on prejudice, and exclusive pretensions. In Libel this is not the case; and in the most delicate of all enquiries-in that wherein the outraged feelings are most tender, and wherein it is most desirable to spare them, and where publicity confers questionable benefits-in the honour of the marriage bed, stern law and public advantage have overruled and the honour, the conduct, and domestic relations of the proudest, have been laid bare, investigated, and assessed in open court, at so many pounds, shillings, and pence; and morality has gained by it. For the vindication of the husband's honour is now almost entirely transferred from the sword to the law; truth and equity transpire; and the vices and neglect of the profligate are exposed and corrected by nominal damages and virtual defeat. So, too, in duels, the violent and provoking would be exposed and punished, the placable and injured protected; and generally the advantage of bringing common sense and common justice to bear upon quarrels, would come to be felt and acknowledged; At all events, the equal administration of the law would be vindicated: we should hear no more on this subject of one law for the rich and another for the

gentle

longer have enacted the solemn farce of poor: we should no man' tried for murder, with the certainty of his legal escape and

of his moral guilt. All other classes of the community submit their quarrels, when they issue in assault, to the arbitration of the law; and when gentlemen choose to quarrel, and to commit breaches of the peace by fighting duels and endangering lives, they too must learn to submit to have their conduct and proceedings enquired into, and punished according to their misdeeds, and according to law. The time has gone by for Courts of Honour; they belonged to the days of exclusive privileges and exclusive classes. All who offend, must now bow their heads to one common law. Every class has naturally a self-centring aggressive principle, which aspires to override that of others, and which chafes under the restraint of general law. But it is the very object of law to bind together these discordant principles, by restraining their exclusive tendencies, and compelling each to submit its own overweening pretensions to the central intelligence which consults for the common good. It is this general submission to the one abstract authority which constitutes the essence and the perfection of the social state.

Following, therefore, the recommendation of Bacon, we are desirous of seeing an end put to that affront,' which duelling and the proceedings connected with it put upon our law;' and, following also his opinion, we believe it can be done only by a great mitigation of severity. The enactment of the 1st of Victoria has broken down, and justice cannot well afford such another mockery as Lord Cardigan's trial. Let us therefore not wait, as we usually do in England, for some revolting catastrophe before we apply a remedy. It is neither difficult nor uncalledfor: we have only to substitute, as has been done in Prussia and Austria, various degrees of imprisonment for the higher penalties of the law; and the law will then, in all probability, vindicate its authority. But it is needless to say more; we have already said enough to prove the evils of duelling, and the mischievous inefficiency of the law with respect to it; and we have therefore made out a case for amending that law. This can be done only by reconciling public opinion with its operation. It is useless to give way, on the one hand, to a highflown horror of all duelling; and it would be cowardly, on the other, to yield implicitly to the notions of the mere men of the sword and pistol-we must take things as we find them, and legislate for men and manners as they are, and not as they might be. And therefore, since death by duelling is not, judging from the opinions (gathered from the conduct, of judges and the verdicts of juries, viewed as murder, it is worse than useless to continue to declare it to be so by law. And again, since duelling has descended to us from time almost immemorial, and with

practical impunity, if not applause, it would be vain to attempt suddenly to uproot that which has grown so long in our customs. All, therefore, that can fairly be done as society as yet exists, is to meet it with useful palliatives instead of impracticable prohibitions; to put it, in fact, under the eye and correction of the law; not so much to wage war with duelling itself, as with those who provoke and compel it; to seek out and punish the guilty, the most guilty; those who, by their unjustifiable words or deeds -who, by refusing all explanation or apology—or who, by dissuading others to offer or accept adjustment, evince that felonious malice which all the world would gladly see punished. There would be no difficulty in obtaining verdicts against such offenders, when it was known that no punishment more severe than a regulated imprisonment would follow conviction: no mawkish pity would then follow them to their prisons-no whitewashing congratulations mark their release. The law would inflict its penalty and leave its stain, and the duel and the duellist would be thus far rebuked. Further, we think the law might be improved by following its analogy in those cases where it awards damages as compensation for injuries. It is but just that he who has unlawfully disabled another, or taken his lifedepriving him, if wounded, of many enjoyments, or, if killed, robbing a family of its support, a wife of her husband, the father of his child, and the state of his services-should be compelled to make compensation, according to his means and according to his guilt. And lastly, in support of prevention, fines, in addition to the present binding over to keep the peace, might justly be levied on those who were detected in overt attempts to break it.

the

These are all the penalties we would inflict. They may be thought slight, and, by their very slightness, to encourage offence they are meant to repress; but we doubt whether any more severe could be enforced, and if we are right in this doubt, then, practically, they become the most severe. The great object is to bring the law into operation; and when once this has been done, when its wheels begin to move, its severity may, if necessary, be increased. At all events, the law as applied to duelling is worse than a dead letter: it is partial, blind, uncertain, revolting, inoperative; and should therefore be abrogated or amended.

ART. V.-Tour in Austrian Lombardy, Northern Tyrol, and Bavaria. By JOHN BARROW. 8vo. London: 1841.

IT may truly be said that the field of discovery, by sea and land, has nearly been exhausted by the exertions of our adventurous countrymen, who, on the former element, have scarcely left unexplored any creek, or island, or even rock in the ocean; and, on the latter, our numerous tourists have hardly allowed a single nook of the Continent of Europe to escape their curiosity; yet naturalists of every description, and moralists of every shade, the poet and the painter, the classical scholar and the antiquary, the mere tourist in search of health or pleasure, may each still find room and scope enough to collect something for his little sketch; were it only to serve as a help to reminiscence, or an attempt to afford recreation to friends. Nor can few of them be accused of being niggardly in giving to the public whatever information they may have acquired, according to their several tastes and capacities. Much novelty, it is true, cannot now be expected, but objects may be seen and described in a new point of view, and correct impressions may sometimes be conveyed in the place of erroneous ones.

The little tour made by Mr Barrow is, what the title-page announces it to be, chiefly descriptive, and will be found a suitable companion to his excursions in the north of Europe;—it reminds us of his descriptions of the romantic scenery of Norway, so well according with that of the Tyrolese Alps, and of which we had occasion to speak favourably-as we now feel disposed to do with regard to the present volume; as well for the clearness and unpretending simplicity of the language, as from a conviction of its truth. Accuracy, indeed, can scarcely be doubted, where a note is taken at the moment that objects and incidents occur, and written out fair at the close of each day, which appears to be the practice of our author: the remarks and observations, therefore, made on the present tour, must be of considerable advantage to any one proceeding on the same route.

By steam and railroad, through Belgium and up the Rhine to Frankfort, and thence through the Rhenish provinces to Zurich, he arrived at this last place at the same hour almost with his friend Mr Frederick Graham, according to agreement made long before in London to meet there on a given day-the one from England, the other from a ramble in the Alps-a punctuality owing chiefly, as Mr Barrow says, to a nice calculation of time and distance by reliance on steam-power. Our travellers lost no time at this place, their intention being to cross