his teeth, clenched his fist, and expired."(Vol. II. p. 92.) We quote this, and such passages as these, to show the great power of description which Mr. Hope possesses. The vindictive man standing with his arms folded, and watching the blood flowing from the wound of his enemy, is very new and very striking. the novel, we refer our readers to the description of the burial-places near Constantinople, vol. iii. pp. 11–13.; the account of Djezzar Pacha's retirement to his harem during the revolt, - equal to anything 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. vulsively clasping my knees: 'be not so "Ah, no!' now cried Euphrosyne, conbarbarous! 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 however mean, shall I recoil from when be your slave, your drudge. No service, not have to blush. In your eyes I shall not you command. At least before you I shall be what I must seem in those of others; I shall not from you incur the contempt, which I must expect from my former com After the death of his wife, he collects his property, quits Egypt, and visits Mekkah, and acquires the title and prerogatives of an Hadjee. After this he returns to the Turkish capital, renews his acquaintance with Spiridion, the friend of his youth, who in vain labours to reclaim him, and whom he at last drives away, disgusted with the vices and passions of Anastasius. We then find our Oriental profligate fighting as a Turkish captain in Egypt, against his old friends the Mamelukes; and afterwards employed in Wallachia, under his old friend Mavroyeni, against the Russians and Austrians. In this part of the work we strongly recommend to our readers to look at the Mussulmans in a pastrycook's shop during the Rhamadam, vol. iii. p. 164.; the village of beggars, vol. ii. p. 266.; the death of the Hungarian officer, vol. ii. p. 327.; and the last days of Mav-panions: and my diligence to execute the royeni, vol. ii. p. 356.; lowest offices you may require, will earn not forgetting the walk over a field of battle, vol. ii. for me, not only as a bare alms at your p. 252. The character of Mavroyeni I can elsewhere only receive as an unhands, that support which, however scanty, is extremely well kept up through the merited indulgence. Since I did a few whole of the book; and his decline days please your eye, I may still please it a and death are drawn in a very spirited few days longer:-perhaps a few days and masterly manner. The Spiridion longer therefore I may still wish to live; part of the novel we are not so much and when that last blessing, your love, is struck with; we entirely approve of gone by,-when my cheek, faded with Spiridion, and ought to take more in- grief, has lost the last attraction that could terest in him; but we cannot disguise me so, that, burthening you no longer, I arrest your favour, then speak, then tell the melancholy truth that he is occa- may retire-and die!"-(Vol. III. pp. 64, sionally a little long and tiresome. The 65.) 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, covers him, then loses him by sick-derness 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 EuphroY ness; -re – and wearied of life, retires to end his days in a cottage in Carinthia. For striking passages in this part of VOL. I. Her silent despair, and patient misery, when she finds that she has not lost his affections also, has the beauty only ruined herself with the world, but of the deepest tragedy. "Nothing but the most unremitting ten syne, she saw too soon that that cordial of | Tom Jones. There are no sensual and the heart must not be expected. One look glowing descriptions in Anastasius, — she cast upon my countenance, as I sat nothing which corrupts the morals by down in silence, sufficed to inform her of inflaming the imagination of youth; my total change of sentiments;-and the 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, responsive look by which it was met, tore conviction of her shame: and I saw in her 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 SPRING GUNS. (E. REVIEW, 1821.) 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 legis lators of the trigger replied, that two laws had lately passed which would answer their purpose of preserving game: the one, an act for transporting 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 dens, 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 anything that a reasonable man ought to know would happen from 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 ex-be stated. We purposely exclude garperience 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 such a proceeding. some gamekeeper has not murdered a poacher or some poacher a game-notice that all other persons must abkeeper. 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. "Is it lawful to put to death by a Suppose any gentleman were to give stain from his manors; that he himself and his servants paraded the woods and fields with loaded pistols and blunderbusses, and would shoot anybody who fired at a partridge; and suppose he were to keep his word, and shoot through the head some rash trespasser who defied this 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 But 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: pro even challenged: but instantly shot | life and death to esquires, would be by dead by the proprietor of the wood, far the most humane. For, as we have for no other crime than the intention of observed in a previous Essay on the killing game unlawfully. We do not Game Laws, a live armigeral spring suppose that any man, possessed of the gun would distinguish an accidental elements of law and common sense, trespasser from a real poacher-a would deny this to be a case of woman or a boy from a man—perhaps murder, let the previous notice to the might spare a friend or an acquaintdeceased have been as perfect as it ance-or a father of a family with could be. It is true, a trespasser in a ten children or a small freeholder park may be killed; but then it is who voted for Administration. when he will not render himself to the this new rural artillery must destroy, keepers, upon a hue and cry to stand without mercy and selection, every one to the king's peace. But deer are pro- who approaches it. perty, game is not; and this power of slaying deer-stealers is by the 21st Edward I., de Malefactoribus in Parcis, and by the 3d and 4th William & Mary, c. 10. So rioters may be killed, houseburners, ravishers, felons refusing to be arrested, felons escaping, felons breaking jail, men resisting a civil process - may 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 v. 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 lay 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 cases-1 there 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 ing acts of aggression may not reasonably "I cannot say that repeated and increascall for increased means of defence and tection. 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.” "Increased means of defence and protection," but increased (his Lordship should remember) from the payment of five pounds to instant deathand instant death inflicted, not by the arm of law, but by the arm of the proprietor;-could the Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench intend to say, that the impossibility of putting an end to poaching by other means would justify the infliction of death upon the offender? Is he so ignorant of the philosophy of punishing, as to imagine he has nothing to do but to give ten stripes instead of two, a hundred instead of ten, and a thousand, if a hundred will not do? to substitute the prison for pecuniary fines, and the | and a few come, then he must mean to gallows instead of the jail? It is im- shoot those few. He who believes his possible so enlightened a Judge can gun will never be called upon to do its forget, that the sympathies of mankind duty, need set no gun, and trust to must be consulted; that it would be rumour of their being set, or being wrong to break a person upon the loaded, for his protection. Against wheel for stealing a penny loaf, and the gun and the powder we have no that gradations in punishments must complaint; they are perfectly fair and be carefully accommodated to grada- admissible: our quarrel is with the tions in crime; that if poaching is bullets, He who sets a loaded gun punished more than mankind in ge- means it should go off if it is touched. neral think it ought to be punished, But what signifies the mere empty wish the fault will either escape with im- that there may be no mischief, when I punity, or the delinquent be driven to perform an action which my common desperation; that if poaching and mur-sense tells me may produce the worst der are punished equally, every poacher mischief? If I hear a great noise in will be an assassin. Besides, too, if the street, and fire a bullet to keep the principle is right in the unlimited people quiet, I may not perhaps have and unqualified manner in which the Chief Justice puts it-if defence goes on increasing with aggression, the Legislature at least must determine upon their equal pace. If an act of Parliament made it a capital offence to poach upon a manor, as it is to commit a burglary in a dwelling-house, it might then be as lawful to shoot a person for trespassing upon your manor, as it is to kill a thief for breaking into your house. But the real question is -and so in sound reasoning his Lordship should have put it-"If the law at this moment determine the aggression to be in such a state, that it merits only a pecuniary fine after summons and proof, has any sporadic squire the right to say, that it shall be punished with death, before any summons and without any proof?" intended to kill; I may have wished to have produced quiet, by mere terror, and I may have expressed a strong hope that my object has been effected without the destruction of human life. Still I have done that which every man of sound intellect knows is likely to kill; and if any one fall from my act, I am guilty of murder. "Further" (says Lord Coke), "if there be an evil intent, though that intent extendeth not to death, it is murder. Thus, if a man, knowing that many people are in the street, throw a stone over the wall, intending only to frighten them, or to give them a little hurt, and thereupon one is killed - this is murder for he had an ill intent; though that intent extended not to death, and though he knew not the party slain." (3 Inst. 57.) If a man It appears to us, too, very singular, be not mad, he must be presumed to to say, that many persons who cause foresee common consequences; if he engines of this description to be placed puts a bullet into a spring gun he in their ground, do not do so with an must be supposed to foresee that it intention of injuring any person, but will kill any poacher who touches the really believe that the publication of wire and to that consequence he notices will prevent any person from must stand. We do not suppose all sustaining an injury, and that no per-preservers of game to be so bloodily son, having the notice giving him, will be weak and foolish enough to expose himself to the perilous consequences of his trespass. But if this be the real belief of the engineer-if he think the mere notice will keep people awaythen he must think it a mere inutility least worthy of God's creatures must that the guns should be placed at all: | fall - the rustic without a soul, not if he think that many will be deterred, the Christian partridge — not the im inclined that they would prefer the death of a poacher to his staying away. Their object is to preserve game; they have no objection to preserve the lives of their fellow-creatures also, if both can exist at the same time; if not, the |