policeman's belt; from the ribbon that ties the bride's hair, to the drapery of the coffin. And we would appeal to the most ardent admirer of the Charter, whether he would be prepared to abolish these natural safeguards of law and order. Those who are stoical enough to resist the imposing effect of symbol on the crown, the courts of law, and the body of the nation, count not as one to ten millions, and may be disregarded as inadequate to disturb our argument. What then the literal crown is to the highest personage of the realm, and what the black cap is to the presiding judge in the criminal court, the public scaffold is to the nation and the murderer himself. This formidable but merciful symbol demonstrates the majesty of the law, deters from the perpetration of murder, and, at the last moment, wrings from the pallid lips of Franz Muller the confession, ‘Ich habe es gethan,—I have done it.' CONCLUSION. INSTEAD of a formal consideration of the proximate and exciting causes of the now frequent perpetration of this crime, and a discussion of its surest preventives, we conclude with a few general remarks on both these phases of the question. We are safe in affirming, what mere politicians ignore, that this crime is the development of man's innate depravity, for the suppression of which no mere educational means are adequate. 'Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies; these are the things which defile a man.' While this depravity is the source of all vice and crime, yet there are certain states of the public mind, constituting the spirit of the age, which evoke and mature special elements of this depravity. In one age we have the demon of intemperance, in another Mammon, and in another a reckless disregard of human life. To meet and restrain these regnant vices and crimes, philanthropic and theorizing reformers propose their respective remedies. The primary question is, What are the proximate causes of these special vices and crimes? And while every element of depravity contributes its share to the development of specific vicious habits, yet each such habit has its own specific fomenter and confirmer. Overlooking, or disregarding our moral nature as the special source of the moral malady, theorizing reformers address their panacea to the intellect. Hence mere educational measures, embracing literature, science, and art. But the authenticated statistics of British crime, and the well-weighed dicta of those officially conversant with the character of criminals, accord with the intelligible utterances of inspiration: The world by wisdom knew not God.' Sir Archibald Alison, in giving his long and mature experience on this question, says: 'Education, if unaccompanied with sedulous moral training, only aggravates the evil; it puts weapons into the hands of the wicked; it renders men able and accomplished devils.' Those who, on the other hand, acknowledge the moral part of our nature to be chiefly at fault, address themselves to moral means, by enlisting the imagination at the expense of the intellect. These means, especially as the most popular of the age, are worked by novelists, whom England's Christian poet has designated 'the flesh-flies of the land.' In copartnership with novels, have we those sensational tales which have dislodged from the families of the land real history and solid moral literature. And as the charm of such tales lies in some love adventure, so we have ill-assorted and commercial marriages, which bring up realities instead of fancies, lead to incontinence, appear in the divorce court, and finish off with suicide or murder. But where is the pulpit; where is the divinely authorized exposition and moral enforcement of that 'grace of God which teacheth to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world?' Who does not respond to the sentiment so tersely expressed by our own Cowper?— 'The pulpit Must stand acknowledged, while the world shall stand, The pulpit, as the symbol of the organized Church of Christ, has become A SHIBBOLETH of ecclesiastical faction, is an equivocal oracle, and has resigned its authority by meanly copying the sensational animus of the age, and by voluntarily converting itself into a theatrical |