Hungarian officer, vol. ii. p. 327; and the last days of Mavroyeni, vol. ii. p. 356; not forgetting the walk over a field of battle, vol. ii. p. 252. The character of Mavroyeni is extremely well kept up through the whole of the book; and his decline and death are drawn in a very spirited and masterly manner. The Spiridion part of the novel we are not so much struck with; we entirely approve of Spiridion, and ought to take more interest in him; but we cannot disguise the melancholy truth that he is occasionally a little long and tiresome. The next characters assumed by Anastasius are, a Smyrna debauchee, a robber of the desert, and a Wahabee. After serving some time with these sectaries, he returns to Smyrna, finds his child missing, whom he had left there, traces the little boy to Egypt, recovers him, then loses him by sickness;-and wearied of life, retires to end his days in a cottage in Carinthia. For striking passages in this part of the novel, we refer our readers to the description of the burial-places near Constantinople, vol. ii. pp. 11-13; the account of Djezzar Pacha's retirement to his harem during the revolt;--equal to any thing in Tacitus ; and above all, to the landing of Anastasius with his sick child, and the death of the infant. It is impossible not to see that this last picture is faithfully drawn from a sad and cruel reality. The account of the Wahabees is very interesting, vol. iii. p. 128; and nothing is more so than the story of Euphrosyne. Anastasius had gained the affections of Euphrosyne, and ruined her reputation; he then wishes to cast her off, and to remove her from his house.

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"Ah no!' now cried Euphrosyne, convulsively clasping my knees: 'be not so barbarous! Shut not your own door against her, against whom you have barred every once friendly door. Do not deny her whom you have dishonoured the only asylum she has left. If I cannot be your wife, let me be your slave, your drudge. No service, however mean, shall I recoil from when you command. At least before you I shall not have to blush. In your eyes I shall not be what I must seem in those of others; I shall not from you incur the contempt which I must expect from my former companions and my diligence to execute the lowest offices you may require, will earn for me, not only as a bare alms at your hands, that support which, however scanty, I can elsewhere only receive as an unmerited indulgence. Since I did a few days please your eye, I may still please it a few days longer-perhaps a few days longer therefore I may still wish to live; and when that last blessing, your love, is gone by,-when my cheek, faded with grief, has lost the last attraction that could arrest your favour, then speak, then tell me so, that, burthening you no longer, İ may retire-and die!'"-(III. 64, 65.)

Her silent despair, and patient misery, when she finds that she has not only ruined herself with the world, but lost his affections also, has the beauty of the deepest tragedy.

"Nothing but the most unremitting tenderness on my part could in some degree have revived her drooping spirits.-But when, after

my excursion, and the act of justice on Sophia in which it ended, I reappeared before the still trembling Euphrosyne, she saw too soon that that cordial of the heart must not be expected. One look she cast upon my countenance, as I sat down in silence, sufficed to inform her of my total change of sentiments ;—and the responsive look by which it was met, tore for ever from her breast the last seeds of hope and confidence. Like the wounded snail she shrunk within herself, and thenceforth, cloked in unceasing sadness, never more expanded to the sunshine of joy. With her buoyancy of spirits she seemed even to lose all her quickness of intellect, nay all her readiness of speech; so that, not only fearing to embark with her in serious conversation, but even finding no response in her mind to lighter topics, I at last began to nauseate her seeming torpor and dulness, and to roam abroad even more frequently than before a partner of my fate remained at home, to count the tedious hours of my absence; while she-poor miserable creature-dreading the sneers of an unfeeling world, passed her time under my roof in dismal and heart-breaking solitude.-Had the most patient endurance of the most intemperate sallies been able to soothe my disappointment and to soften my hardness, Euphrosyne's angelic sweetness must at last have conquered: but in my jaundiced eye her resignation only tended to strengthen the conviction of her shame and I saw in her forbearance nothing but the consequence of her debasement, and the consciousness of her guilt. Did her heart,' thought I, 'bear witness to a purity on which my audacity dared first to cast a blemish, she could not remain thus tame, thus spiritless, under such an aggravation of my wrongs; and either she would be the first to quit my merciless roof, or at least she would not so fearfully avoid giving me even the most unfounded pretence for denying her its shelter. She must merit her sufferings to bear them so meekly!'— Hence, even when moved to real pity by gentleness so enduring, I seldom relented in my apparent sternness."-(III. 72-74.)

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With this we end our extracts from Anastasius. We consider it as a work in which great and extraordinary talent is evinced. It abounds in eloquent and sublime passages,-in sense,-in knowledge of history, -and in knowledge of human character;-but not in wit. It is too long and if this novel perish, and is forgotten, it will be solely on that account. If it be the picture of vice, so is Clarissa Harlowe, and so is Tom Jones. There are no sensual and glowing descriptions in Anastasius,-nothing which corrupts the morals by inflaming the imagination of youth; and we are quite certain that every reader ends this novel with a greater disgust at vice, and a more thorough conviction of the necessity of subjugating passion, than he feels from reading either of the celebrated works we have just mentioned. The sum of our eulogium is, that Mr. Hope, without being very successful in his story, or remarkably skilful in the delineation of character, has written a novel which all clever people of a certain age should read, because it is full of marvellously fine things.

SPRING GUNS.

The Shooter's Guide. By J. B. JOHNSON. 12mo. Edwards and Knibb. 1819.

WHEN Lord Dacre (then Mr. Brand) brought into the House of

Commons his bill for the amendment of the Game Laws, a system of greater mercy and humanity was in vain recommended to that popular branch of the Legislature. The interests of humanity, and the interests of the lord of the manor, were not, however, opposed to each other; nor any attempt made to deny the superior importance of the last. No such bold or alarming topics were agitated; but it was contended that, if laws were less ferocious, there would be more partridges-if the lower orders of mankind were not torn from their families and banished to Botany Bay, hares and pheasants would be increased in number, or, at least, not diminished. It is not, however, till after long experience, that mankind ever think of recurring to humane expedients for effecting their objects. The rulers who ride the people never think of coaxing and patting till they have worn out the lashes of their whips, and broken the rowels of their spurs. The legislators of the trigger replied, that two laws had lately passed which would answer their purpose of preserving game: the one, an act for transporting men found with arms in their hands for the purposes of killing game in the night; the other, an act for rendering the buyers of the game equally guilty with the seller, and for involving both in the same penalty. Three seasons have elapsed since the last of these laws was passed: and we appeal to the experience of all the great towns in England, whether the difficulty of procuring game is in the slightest degree increased ?-whether hares, partridges, and pheasants are not purchased with as much facility as before the passing this act? -whether the price of such unlawful commodities is even in the slightest degree increased? Let the Assize and Sessions' Calendars bear witness, whether the law for transporting poachers has not had the most direct tendency to encourage brutal assaults and ferocious murders. There is hardly now a jail-delivery in which some gamekeeper has not murdered a poacher-or some poacher a gamekeeper. If the question concerned the payment of five pounds, a poacher would hardly risk his life rather than be taken; but when he is to go to Botany Bay for seven years, he summons together his brother poachers -they get brave from rum, numbers, and despair-and a bloody battle

ensues.

Another method by which it is attempted to defeat the depredations of the poacher is, by setting spring guns to murder any person who comes within their reach; and it is to this last new feature in the supposed Game Laws, to which, on the present occasion, we intend principally to confine our notice.

We utterly disclaim all hostility to the Game Laws in general. Game ought to belong to those who feed it. All the landowners in England are fairly entitled to all the game in England. These laws are constructed upon a basis of substantial justice; but there is a great deal of absurdity and tyranny mingled with them, and a perpetual and vehement desire on the part of the country gentlemen to push the provisions of these laws up to the highest point of tyrannical severity.

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Is it lawful to put to death by a spring gun, or any other machine, an unqualified person trespassing upon your woods or fields in pursuit of game, and who has received due notice of your intention, and of the risk to which he is exposed?" This, we think, is stating the question as fairly as can be stated. We purposely exclude gardens, orchards, and all contiguity to the dwelling-house. We exclude, also, all felonious intention on the part of the deceased. The object of his expedition shall be proved to be game; and the notice he received of his danger shall be allowed to be as complete as possible. It must also be part of the case, that the spring gun was placed there for the express purpose of defending the game, by killing or wounding the poacher, or spreading terror, or doing any thing that a reasonable man ought to know would happen from such a proceeding.

Suppose any gentleman were to give notice that all other persons must abstain from his manors; that he himself and his servants paraded the woods and fields with loaded pistols and blunderbusses, and would shoot any body who fired at a partridge; and suppose he were to keep his word, and shoot through the head some rash trespasser who defied his bravado, and was determined to have his sport : -is there any doubt that he would be guilty of murder? We suppose no resistance on the part of the trespasser; but that, the moment he passes the line of demarcation with his dogs and gun, he is shot dead by the proprietor of the land from behind a tree. If this is not murder, what is murder? We will make the case a little better for the homicide squire. It shall be night; the poacher, an unqualified person, steps over the line of demarcation with his nets and snares, and is instantly shot through the head by the pistol of the proprietor. We have no doubt that this would be murder-that it ought to be considered as murder, and punished as murder. We think this so clear, that it would be a waste of time to argue it. There is no kind of resistance on the part of the deceased; no attempt to run away; he is not even challenged but instantly shot dead by the proprietor of the wood, for no other crime than the intention of killing game unlawfully. We do not suppose that any man, possessed of the elements of law and common sense, would deny this to be a case of murder, let the previous notice to the deceased have been as perfect as it could be. It is true, a trespasser in a park may be killed; but then it is when he will not render himself to the keepers, upon a hue and cry to stand to the king's peace. But deer are property, game is not; and this power of slaying deer-stealers is by the 21st Edward I. de Malifactoribus in Parcis, and by 3rd and 4th William & Mary, c. 10. So rioters may be killed, house-burners, ravishers, felons refusing to be arrested,

felons escaping, felons breaking gaol, men resisting a civil processmay all be put to death. All these cases of justifiable homicide are laid down and admitted in our books. But who ever heard, that to pistol a poacher was justifiable homicide? It has long been decided, that it is unlawful to kill a dog who is pursuing game in a manor. "To decide the contrary," says Lord Ellenborough, "would outrage reason and sense." (Vere 7. Lord Cawdor and King, 11 East, 386.) Pointers have always been treated by the legislature with great delicacy and consideration. To "wish to be a dog, and to bay the moon," is not quite so mad a wish as the poet thought it.

If these things are so, what is the difference between the act of firing yourself, and placing an engine which does the same thing? In the one case, your hand pulls the trigger; in the other, it places the wire which communicates with the trigger, and causes the death of the trespasser. There is the same intention of slaying in both casesthere is precisely the same human agency in both cases; only the steps are rather more numerous in the latter case. As to the bad effects of allowing proprietors of game to put trespassers to death at once, or to set guns that will do it, we can have no hesitation in saying, that the first method, of giving the power of life and death to esquires, would be by far the most humane. For, as we have observed in a previous Essay on the Game Laws, a live armigeral spring gun would distinguish an accidental trespasser from a real poacher—a woman or a boy from a man-perhaps might spare a friend or an acquaintance or a father of a family with ten children—or a small freeholder who voted for Administration. But this new rural artillery must destroy, without mercy and selection, every one who approaches it.

In the case of Ilot versus Wilks, Esq., the four judges, Abbot, Bailey, Holroyd, and Best, gave their opinions seriatim on points connected with this question. In this case, as reported in Chetwynd's edition of Burn's Justice, 1820, vol. ii. p. 500, Abbot C. J. observes as follows:

"I cannot say that repeated and increasing acts of aggression may not reasonably call for increased means of defence and protection. I believe that many of the persons who cause engines of this description to be placed in their grounds, do not do so with an intention to injure any person, but really believe that the publication of notices will prevent any person from sustaining an injury and that no person having the notice given him, will be weak and foolish enough to expose himself to the perilous consequences of his trespass. Many persons who place such engines in their grounds, do so for the purpose of preventing, by means of terror, injury to their property, rather than from any motive of doing malicious injury."

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"Increased means of defence and protection, "but increased (his Lordship should remember) from the payment of five pounds to instant death-and instant death inflicted, not by the arm of law, but by the arm of the proprietor;-could the Lord Chief Justice of the