A

cessful here, for an insufficiency of botanical knowledge. The great LINNEUS met at first with the same opposition. No period has been exempt from "Envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness."

Doctor Thornton has published two works on a smaller scale, for the accommodation of the student, viz. “A Grammar of Botany, or easy Introduction to the Science," which meets with universal and deserved approbation; also "Practical Botany, or a New Illustration of the Genera of Plants," illustrated by a great number of plates, which by the concurrent testimonies of Professor Martyn, and Dr. Smith, is a work of the highest value, and a desideratum in that science. The prices affixed to each of these works proves, that the Doctor's object is not gain, but only the advancement of the science of Botany.

He has also another work in the press, and nearly complete, "The History of all Plants used in Medicine, Diet, Agriculture, and

the Arts."

To finish. As a lecturer, Doctor Thornton has considerable merit. His lectures are always delivered without notes, and adapted to his audience. He constantly keeps up attention by new observations, and suits himself to his hearers. At Guy's Hospital all his illustrations are from medicinal plants: at the west end of the town, he intermixes poetry, and illustrates by the choicest flowers: and one of his pupils, Sir Paul Joddryl, to produce to Doctor Thornton more advantage from his lectures, has, the next season, offered him the use of his house, in Portland Place, where his next course of lectures will be delivered.

Of his character as a man, in every domestic relation, we can add nothing that does not heighten the charm, and improve the value of all his other excellences.

LAW SUITS.

To use the emphatic language of an elegant writer, “Our inheritances are become a prize for disputation, and disputes and litigations are become our inheritance." "The end of the professors of the law seems to be," says the same author, "to confound the

reason of man, and abridge his natural freedom, by an inextrica ble maze of forms and institutions; the worst cause cannot be so prejudicial to the litigant as his advocate's or attorney's ignorance or neglect of forms." 'A law suit is like an ill-managed dispute, in which the first object is soon out of sight, and the parties end with matter wholly foreign to that, with which they began. In a law suit the question is-Who has a right to a certain house and farm? And this is determined, not, perhaps, upon the evidence of the right, but upon the observance or neglect of forms in use with lawyers, about which there are even among themselves such disagreements, that the most experienced veterans can never be positively sure they are not mistaken.

BUTLER thus truly describes a law suit.

"He, that by perjury is griev'd,

And goes to law to be reliev'd,

Is sillier than a sottish chouse,

Who, when a thief has robb'd his house,

Applies himself to cunning man,

To help him to his goods again;
When all he can expect to gain,

Is but to squander more in vain.”

The suit lasts as long as the contending parties have money to

go on with it.

"For lawyers, lest the BEAR, defendant,

And plaintiff, DOG, should make an end on't,
Do stay and toil with writ of error,

Reverse of judgments, and demurrer,
To let them breathe awhile, and then
Cry whoop and set them on again,
Until with subtle cobweb cheats,
They're caught in knotted law, like nets
In which, when once they are enbrangled,
The more they stir, the more they're tangled,
For while their purses can dispute,

There is no end of th' immortal suit!"

What would BACON or HALE have said what would they have advised, had they lived to see our present statute book, swelled to more than a tenfold size beyond that which alarmed their apprehensions, still extending its dimensions, by such a ratio as

must soon terminate in a bulk immeasurable by the most accom. plished of legal understandings? We may say of the English, what GIBBON said of the Roman laws,-"They fill so many volumes, that no fortune can purchase, nor capacity comprehend them."

A digest of our laws, although certainly a very arduous task, is by no means impracticable. We have an example on record, equally difficult, performed in the sixth century. The Justinian Code, digested from an infinity of books, and yet executed in the space of three years.

"It is the fate of legislation,' says FILANGERI," to be always hurrying forward without reflection, whence has arisen the countless multitude of laws, which oppress the tribunals of Europe, and render the study of jurisprudence similar to that of the character of the Chinese, which, after twenty years attention, they are scarcely qualified to read." It may be practically impossible so to compress the laws, and simplify their proceedings, as to prevent their being under the guidance and direction of a particular profession, but they would certainly be much benefited by a digest and revision, which might be silently carried on, with the authority of the legislature; and without any consequent inconvenience, under the inspection of wise and able delegates, obsolete and unnecessary laws might be expunged, chicanery restrained, and tautology and surplusage corrected.

I

NANCY *****

OR

THE PENITENT DAUGHTER.

(A Fact.)

[Concluded from P. 21.]

HEARD the mourner sob with agony.-Minutes passed on, and no sound of welcome or reception. Overpowered by her sensations, she sat down upon the threshold. Minutes, long, long minutes, still crept silently along. Again the mournful, the pathe

even

tic invocation," father, dear father!" rang upon my ear; and it rang also upon his; but it made no harmony there. All harsh and grating, no responsive string vibrated to his heart. Minutes upon minutes, like the unceasing waves of the tide, rolled on, and nought broke the solemn silence but the plaintive voice, “father, dear father!" He heard, but heeded not:-but the time will come, when that mourning voice of a repentant daughter will ring in his ear; the time will come when he will hear it again; prostrated on the bed of sickness, will, that still small voice of agony and distress pierce his ear, and impede the utterance of that sublime prayer for the forgiveness of our trespasses, as we forgive those that trespass against us." Was there no chord that could be roused in that merciless heart of thine, to recall the memory of her mother? to recall the endearments of her childhood, the promise of her ripening years, her opening beauties, and cultivated blandishments? no trace to bid thee identify the blooming girl of sixteen, with the sorrowing petitioner that sues for admittance at thy door at midnight? "But only for this night, dear father, father,"-in vain. Even the uttermost stranger would have admitted a wretched, weeping female, wandering without a roof to shelter her, at midnight; and a father denies his helpless daughter, his repentant, returning daughter, even one night's repose. No, he will rather cast her forth to all the horrors that might await her. 'Twas dead midnight-'twas past midnight. Long time she sat and moaned on her father's threshold-she leant her aching head against the wall. Twice or thrice she started up, and called again most piteously upon her father. Deaf as the wild adder, he disregarded the sound of repentance and lamentation. And where was her sister? Why not try her entreaties and solicit admittance but for one night, for her forlorn, her unhappy, sister? No, proud of her own yet uncontaminated character, she, doubtless, looked down upon the wretch that presumed to claim relationship with her. Yet, as there are many who are chaste, only because they are untempted, so also are there many who hide their frailties from the world's observance,

-and in the morning

When they are up and drest, and their masks on,
Who can perceive this, save the Eternal Eye
That sees thro' flesh and all?

An hour had flown in unabating wailing, and repeated solicitation on her part, and in silent, obstinate obduracy on his. "Come, come away," I cried, "'tis folly longer to remain."She heard me not, and still," father, dear father!" was her cry. But her father cared not for his child. He knew not that there was any one near to comfort and protect her-he cared not for that. Shelterless and forlorn she might wander whither she list. He knew not but the licentious and lawless prowlers of the night might assault his desponding daughter on the desolate road through which she must pass. He turned her away to every misery and infamy that might await her in that dreary hour. What mockery of argument and of feeling is it, in such an instance as this to say, as it has been said, I will not receive this polluted girl into my house, because she is a shame to my family! Will it redeem the honour of your family, to sink her into still deeper pollution? To drive her from your door to be violated by the midnight ruffians from the neighbouring barracks, or the drunken votaries of dissipation, who have been carousing at the fair? Or, if she escape these horrors, will it redeem the honour of your family, if you compel her into those paths of dismay and prostitu tion, from which she has hitherto kept aloof? He recks not; he is callous; he has no such daughter. Surely, sweet girl, some evil star ruled at thy nativity, that thou should'st experience from mankind (not only in the instance of thy unrelenting father) brutality that would better characterize the untutored savage of the desert, than the supercilious man of supposed civilization.

At length, wearied with solicitation, with sobbing, and with anguish, she came away. I felt irresistibly impelled to clasp her to my breast, and to vow that from thenceforward she never should want a protector and parental friend. I too am a parent; I have daughters; one rapidly approaching to the years when temptation of every kind will assail her. God forbid that she should ever forsake the path of virtue; but, if she should fall, and if I know my own heart, I could not thus relentlessly press a daughter down to yet deeper perdition, by refusing her the only asylum, which nature and repentance must teach her to seek.

We had now to return. Two o'clock came before we got back to the town where the fair had been held. The voice of revelry was dying away. A few houses were yet open, but no accommodation was to be procured at any. She was fainting with fatigue;