observed a light. It is a sepulchral vault, where the remains of the naval hero of England have been deposited. Workmen were preparing a place by the side of Nelson, for his friend and companion in arms, Admiral Collingwood. The thought of being buried in Westminster Abbey seems to have occupied some of the last moments of the hero; instead of that, he is made here the founder of a new dynasty of the dead. A great name was necessary to consecrate St. Paul's-none could be better for the purpose.

The excessive vanity of Lord Nelson, and some other errors, tarnished a little the glory of his last years. He loved to shew himself all over ribbons, and orders, and wounds, and revelled in popular acclamations. It was the salary of his labours, and he was not ashamed to stretch out his hand to receive it. What avail, after all, crosses, and ribbons, and glorious wounds, if not to be shewn? That pleasure is felt by all men. It springs equally from the weakness of our nature, and from its greatness; and it may be more estimable to own the feeling than to disguise it. Lord Nelson was thus decorated, resplendent with the outward badges of greatness, when he received his mortal wound on the deck of the Victory at the battle of Trafalgar. It made him conspicuous, and probably caused his death. He had been warned and knew the danger, but would have it so. He had sacrificed his limbs and his health to win the prize, and now, at the peril of his life, he would show it to the enemy, a magnanimous sort of vanity!

The following day we went again to St. Paul's to hear a grand oratorio for the benefit of the children of the clergy;-(the sons of the clergy

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sounds a little strange to a French ear.) Handel's music appears to me a fine and learned harmony, without chant, without melody,-a succession of fine sounds, which express, or rather inspire nothing, and with which I was soon tired. This great composer was here the founder of a sort of national school of music; and it is sacrilege not to acknowledge his merit. I will not decide hastily, but it is not the first time I have had the misfortune to be tired of Handel's music. "Le plaisir de l'harmonie," says J. J. Rousseau, "n'est qu'un plaisir de pure sensation, et la jouissance des sens est toujours courte,-la satiétê et l'ennui la suivent de près; mais le plaisir de la melodie et du chant est un plaisir d'intérêt et de sentiment, qui parle au cœur, et que l'artiste peut toujours soutenir et renouveller à force de génie.

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Returning from St. Paul's, we stopped at a little church, St. Stephen's, Walbrook, the interior of which is considered as the most perfect model of pure and chaste classical architecture; and it certainly deserves all its reputation. It is also the work of Sir C. Wren. The outside of this beautiful building is covered, quite crusted over, with shabby houses stuck against its walls.

Parliament has been employed this session on a very interesting subject. Sir Samuel Romilly, who is a very eminent lawyer, as well as a distinguished member of Parliament, but who is accused of thinking, with Lord Bacon, that time is the greatest of innovators, and that its suggestions should not be resisted, proposed to commute in certain cases capital punishment (death) for banishment and imprisonment. He wants also to define crimes more particularly than the laws do at present, and to circumscribe the arbitrary power

of infliction given to the judge, and which extends at present from a few months imprisonment to the pain of death, for the same denomination of crime. The ancient criminal code of England is, he said, the most sanguinary in existence; it condemns to death a person stealing to the value of five shillings out of a shop, or forty shillings out of a boat, or at a public landing-place. Fortescue reports, that under Henry VI. there were more people executed for robberies in England in one year, than in France in seven. During the reign of Elizabeth, executions amounted to 400 a-year, which, for 45 years of her reign, gives the frightful total of 18,000 executions. But that was nothing to her father, Henry VIII: the executions were then 2000 a-year, being, for 38 years, 76,000 men put to death;what a carnage! An eminent magistrate of the county of Somerset,* who wrote in 1596, that is to say, towards the end of the reign of Elizabeth, and when the authority of her government had acquired all its strength, and the people a certain habit of order and submission to the laws, states, that there had been 40 criminals executed in that county in the course of one year for felony, 35 burnt in the hand, 37 whipped, and 183 acquitted, and that the acquitted were most of them not much better than the others; that, moreover, there was not one-fifth of the guilty who were brought to trial, the number being so great, that the magistrates were afraid of them. Hume, who loved authority, ascribed this imperfect police to the inadequacy of the revenue of the crown, which did not afford the means of interesting a sufficient number of people in the maintenance of power.

* Hume's history of England.

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However that may be, it appears, by the debates on this question, that, since that time, and without any mitigation of the laws, the number of the executions has diminished successively, and so rapidly, that in 1806, of 3426 persons committed, there were only two criminals executed. In 1807, 3492 commitments, and only one execution. In 1808, 3748 commitments, and not a single execution. It is not credible that out of more than 10,000* persons committed on grounds deemed sufficient by magistrates, three only should be guilty; therefore we must suppose that the extreme severity of the laws prevents their execution. No act can be more solemn than that of passing sentence of death, and yet, from the frequency of the thing, and the few cases in which that sentence is carried into execution, this awful act has ceased to excite any terror, any pity, or even any attention. The criminal himself does not believe in it; and the order for his execution after this encouraged hope, would be a refinement of cruelty, and an absolute injustice. The Master of the Rolls, who is a magistrate only second in rank to the chancellor, remarked, that the extreme severity of the penal law produced a tacit system of evasion, by which the accusers, the jury, the judge, and finally the King's council, join, each in his department, in violating their oath to execute an unnatural law.

There is certainly something very faulty in all this; and when an unanimous sense of justice has in fact abrogated a law, it ought not to remain in the code. The certainty of a moderate punish

* It appears by the debates, that one only out of 29 of condemned criminals has been executed, therefore the 10,000 commitments above-mentioned, have produced 87 condemnations, and these three executions.

ment has more effect than the doubtful possibility of a severe one; and finally, this system substitutes arbitrary decisions to positive laws. To all these good reasons, and against the opinion of the most respectable members of the House of Commons, the ministers have opposed their impenetrable phalanx, and I really do not know why, as they do not seem to have any interest in it. There was a small majority against Sir Samuel Romilly's motion. He will bring on the question on the question again in another shape, and good sense and justice must triumph at last. Mr. Windham spoke, as usual, extremely well against the law as it is, and, at the same time, against its reformation.

There is much to say against the custom of banishing criminals, particularly to such a prodigious distance as Botany Bay. The expense is enormous; it is a great charge upon the public; and the good citizens have a right to complain that rogues should be sent to travel at their expense. It may be, after all, a mistaken mercy to let them live. What a modern writer justly celebrated has said somewhat rigorously of the mere poor, might be said of these felons with much more propriety: "At nature's mighty feast there is no vacant seat for them." I own I did not expect to find here a system of criminal laws so inconsistent, so cruel, and at the same time so relaxed; and yet the end seems answered, for, with an unarmed police which is neither seen nor felt, there are no perceivable disorders, and no violence except those occasioned by political factions. Instead of the positive and unbending character generally ascribed to the English law, I find, that in practice, it is arbitrary, and hardly under any other rule than the common sense of mankind. The noble institu