of De Raiz is a pretended magician. Both combine jocularity with the most savage cruelty-if the one calls for the " Koran and sugar," the other with a like spirit says, that "the Devil is such a low fellow, he has no taste for the conversation of gentlemen." Thus they commit magic, murder, heresy, and jests. But just before the close of their career, there is a pause in the wickedness of both-Vathek turns aside from his profligate course under the influence of the song of the good genius, and a sudden illumination of conscience makes De Raiz resolve to abandon his vices, and make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land; but with the one and the other it was but the momentary recoil of the soul from the verge of the last precipice before it plunged into headlong perdition."

Fonthill Abbey, Oct. 13.-"I have, since I wrote, had a message conveyed to me from Mr. BECKFORD through his agent, and it was to assure me upon his honour'-that the character in which I traced the resemblance to Vathek (Gilles de Raiz), and gave my opinion that it was the original of that fanciful story-he was not acquainted with at the time he wrote it. He acknowledges that the points of coincidence are very strong, and as he said, made out with an ingenuity that would lead most to believe it; but he was anxious that I should understand the book was not in his possession at the time. I don't know, however, if you read the article I allude to in the Chronicleit has caused some conversation here. Mr. HEBER, the member for Oxford, mentioned in the sale room the other day, that it was much debated at Pitt House, the seat of Mr. BENET, and that the company were all converts to the opinion I had advanced." [See p. 346.]

Fonthill Abbey, Oct. 16.—“ Some paintings which formed the flower of the collection, were disposed of to-day. The Abbey has a most brilliant appearance, as the weather is fine and the ladies have again assumed the sceptre of taste in deciding on the merits of the furniture and ornaments; at this moment the appearance of the two yellow damask drawing rooms makes indeed a brilliant coup d'œil-so much is the costly appearance of the rooms enlivened by the presence of beauty and fashion. The state of Spain-which I see by the paper to-day-how deplorable! The eye of the Almighty is still upon the world, and that is enough to know."

Fonthill Abbey, Oct. 23.-"At length the sale approaches its

final close-long as I have been here, there are a great many of the beauties of the place which I have not yet seen; only yesterday I was lost in a part of the grounds where I had not been before. I would gladly have accepted the service of a fairy to replace me in the right road, but alas! those benevolent attendants upon knights-errant, did not consider me worthy of their special interference, and I was obliged to resort to mere human efforts to escape from the mazes of enchantment. What a place for dear little E to hop about, and pick up berries like one of the sportive train of Titania. She and Mwould soon forget the Temple Gardens."

On the Duke of WELLINGTON'S Observations touching the Mitigation of Criminal Sentences.-June 9, 1838.

THE observations which the Duke of WELLINGTON is reported to have made [in the House of Lords,] upon the manner in which the prerogative of mercy is exercised at present, under the advice of the Noble Lord at the head of the Home-office, are deserving of public attention, not less on account of the importance of the subject, than the high authority upon which the accusation rests. The Noble Duke spoke of what he calls a recent practice, touching the exercise of the prerogative of mercy generally, in capital cases as well as noncapital-in cases where human life is at stake, as well as where the sentence is one of transportation, or a greater or less term of imprisonment.

**

When the Duke prefers it as a matter of accusation against the Home Secretary, that the prerogative of mercy is frequently called into action upon private applications, we confess we cannot see how it could be otherwise, considering the state of the law in reference to crime, and the nature of the tribunal-if tribunal it can be called-which has been erected within the jurisdiction of the Home-office, as a sort of court of appeal, to rectify the erroneous decisions of courts of ordinary justice. We speak, of course, of erroneous decisions in fact, for erroneous decisions in law are otherwise provided for, viz., in the Court of

the Fifteen Judges. But, even there, nohearing takes place, unless the Judge who tried the case, reserves the point.

As to an erroneous decision in fact, by which life itself is exposed to ignominious forfeiture, there is, properly speaking, no court of appeal. For such a court the secret and irresponsible tribunal at the Home-office is, indeed, a poor and sorry substitute. If there were a real court of appeal-like the French Court of Cassation for instance the person convicted would have a right to be heard there, without asking the permission of the Judge who tried him. It might be that the jury had taken a passionate and a prejudiced view of the case, or that the Judge was hasty or intemperate. The fallibility of human judgment, even where bad intentions are not imputable to any of the parties administering justice, has caused the rights of property in this country to be fenced round with a degree of legal protection not afforded to human life. We see a matter of property often sent to be tried by a new jury, a second, third, or even a fourth time. Besides new trials within the jurisdiction of the same court, there are appeals to higher courts. A question of property may go from the Court of Queen's Bench, for example, into the Court of Exchequer Chamber, and afterwards into the House of Lords: but a human being, whose life only is affected by the decision of a jury, however erroneous that may be, has no right to any appeal. He may be the innocent victim of local excitement, prejudice, or perjury—no matter; it is only human life that is at stake.

* *

We protestants do not recognise any infallible power on earth; and though we have a high respect for the Judges of the land, and believe that the purity, as well as independence, of the judicial bench in this country surpasses that of any other, yet we also believe that Judges are liable to error, and sometimes such error has led to irreparable injustice. We could adduce some instances if necessary. Now, if a Judge should happen to take a mistaken view of a case-and if, being of somewhat self-willed and obstinate temper, he should refuse to report such case as one deserving of revision at the Homeoffice, how is a person-whose life is unjustly declared to be forfeited to the law-to obtain a revision of his sentence, unless some persons, either of his family or friends, exert themselves

to bring it before the Secretary of State? In such a case the mercy of the Crown, or what should more properly be called mere justice, is only to be obtained upon "private application." The tribunal itself is a secret one. The proceedings are secret—and the decision is upon evidence which, if it did not altogether transpire at the trial, need never come before the public at all.

For these and other reasons we proposed, several years ago, as a necessary reform in the administrative system of the penal law, that there should be a court of criminal appeal—at least as to capital cases, wherein a mistaken judgment if once carried into effect is irreparable. We thus alluded to the subject in the month of August, 1831:-"The numerous instances that have occurred, in former and modern times, of the fallibility of human judgment in determining cases which involve the question of life or death, and the fatal errors with which the practice of our criminal justice has been stained, induced us, some time ago, to propose, that to diminish the chances, at least, of such irretrievable mistakes, there should be a court of criminal revision, to which all persons convicted of capital crimes, on circuit or in town, should have their cases referred (where the object sought was not mercy but justice,) on simply demanding an appeal. Such a court would, so far, supersede the anomalous, secret and irresponsible tribunal, which the SECRETARY of STATE holds at his pleasure, and in which he decides upon human life or death-without any known or certain rules. A course of revision (leaving points of law still to the Fifteen Judges) under a competent and responsible authority, and with a regulated procedure, appears the more requisite, when we recollect that the SECRETARY for the Home Department is a cabinet minister, involved in political questions, and seldom or never trained to that exercise of the intellect which would qualify him for duties essentially judicial." As long, at least, as capital punishments continue, so long shall we think such a tribunal necessary to afford a better protection to human life against the fallibility of human judgment, than it has at present. In one year, in France, eleven capital sentences were reversed upon appeal to the Court of Cassation—in one year eleven innocent lives were saved from the knife of the guillotine,

because justice, in that country, affords to life, what in England can only be claimed by property—a public court of appeal.

Aug. 16, 1838.-It does not at all surprise us that the exercise of the prerogative of mercy, in some recent cases of capital conviction, should call forth the expression of strong disapprobation in certain quarters. We are only astonished that a barbarous system of punishment which usage had made so familiar that at one time the only notion people had of criminal justice, was connected with the revolting exhibitions of the scaffold should be put in danger of being utterly eradicated from the soil of England without alarming a greater extent of human prejudice, than appears to be enlisted in its defence.

The fact is, the discussion of this question for a series of years past has so shaken the system, that the hope of being able to give it effectual support has perished from the minds of many who strongly resisted the first beneficent encroachments of civilized opinion upon sanguinary barbarism, and so they abandon the cause which they find it unavailing to defend. Others there are who adhere to the exterminating system with a desperate fidelity," and look back with fond regret upon those by-gone days, when the road-side had its gibbet and its human scarecrow-when spectacles of death upon the scaffold were among the ordinary pastimes of a brutalized populaceand the altars of public "justice" reeked incessantly with oblations of blood!

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Necessity for a COURT OF CRIMINAL REVISION, practically shown.-June 12, 1838.

WHEN, some weeks ago, we called the attention of the public and of Government to the case of Malcolm Macleod—who, as our readers may recollect, was convicted at Inverness of a murder committed in the Isle of Lewis, and left for executionwe stated that if the Secretary of State for the Home Department refused to attend to the applications for mercy on behalf of that unfortunate man, and allowed the "law to take its course, the people would be disgusted with the spectacle of a man, who was unquestionably a maniac (and who ought to be shut up in