Objections to the present Practice in regard to unanimous Verdicts in our Criminal Courts. By a Juror.

THE writer of this pamphlet, Mr. Stephen Curtis, has very conclusively argued a point, to which not so much attention has been directed as it deserves. His object is to show that the unanimity of a jury is only necessary to the conviction, not to the acquittal of the accused; that 'the jury must agree to find him guilty, but need not agree to find him not guilty.' According to the spirit of the institution of trial by jury, a man ought not to be held guilty unless twelve of his peers, sworn to decide according to the evidence, agree so to pronounce him. But is not this spirit violated when, the twelve not agreeing that he is guilty, they are confined in order to compel them to do so, or else to agree that he is innocent? Ought more to be required for his liberation than that the evidence of his guilt has failed to convince all the jurors? If but one juror be unconvinced, is there not an end of the case in theory; and should there not be practically, without that species of coercion of charge, in him or in the rest, which commonly ensues? So at least it should be, to make the one square with the other; whether the institution itself may not need revision is another question.

A Manual of English Grammar. By the Rev. J. M. M'Culloch.
Second Edition.

THIS grammar seems to us better to deserve the appellations of philosophical and practical' than any with which we are acquainted. The etymological portion of it will be found alike useful and amusing.

A Catechism of Political Economy. By Thomas Murray, LL.D.

Or this, as of most other works in the series to which it belongs, (Oliver and Boyd's Catechisms of Elementary Knowledge') we cannot but wonder that the catechetical form should have been adopted. It is a sheer incumbrance. Waving this general objection, the one before us deserves much praise. It is a brief treatise, well arranged; a very cheap and convenient epitome of the science on which it treats.

History and Present Condition of the Barbary States.
By the Rev. Michael Russell, LL.D.

THIS work bears marks of the known industry and ability of its author, who, while he has availed himself of the researches of Heeren, in addition to the resources of his own learning, for the ancient history, has derived

valuable materials from French writers (since the conquest of Algiers) for giving a more correct and complete account than we before possessed of the natural history of this portion of Africa. It forms the seventeenth volume of that cheap, pleasant, and useful series, the Edinburgh Cabinet Library,' and completes the plan of the publishers for 'IIlustrating the History, the Antiquities, and the Present Condition of Africa,'

Hector Fieramosca; or, the Challenge of Barletta. From the Italian of the Marquis d'Aglio.

AN HISTORICAL tale, full of strong interest, graphic delineation, contrasted character, and affecting or exciting incident; and blending the peculiarities of the historical fictions of Scott with those of the old romance.

A Short Statement on behalf of his Majesty's Subjects professing the Jewish Religion.

A VERY plain and conclusive statement of grievances which ought to be, and we may now perhaps hope will be, speedily redressed. These grievances chiefly arise from the oaths required, not only as a qualification for office, but for the exercise of professions.

'That the Disabilities of which the British Jews complain, entail on them positive injury, is an undoubted fact. These disabilities lower them in the scale of society, and degrade them in the eyes of their fellow-subjects, by restraining the free exercise of their talents in industrious and honourable pursuits. Unable conscientiously to take the required oaths, as at present shaped, they are in consequence excluded from municipal and corporate offices, from civil and military employments, as well as from offices of honour and trust under the Crown; and are besides prevented from making any advance in the learned professions. In short, by the bad policy of the existing laws, they are deprived of those rights most valued by Englishmen. Disabled from acquiring the honours so highly prized by the enlightened and enterprising of his Majesty's subjects, it is no small aggravation of their case, that while oppressed by restrictions, which leave to them only the pursuit of wealth, to elevate them to any consideration or influence in society, they are reproached for not availing themselves of those paths to distinction, which, although open to all other classes, are to them invidiously prohibited. The British Jews have thus to contend with overbearing disadvantages, being not only exposed to unmerited opprobrium, but injured by pains and penalties demanded neither by policy nor expediency.'

The value of this pamphlet is increased by an appendix, containing the oaths and affirmations required from persons of various religious denominations.

365

Dies sub Coelo.

No. I.

BY THE AUTHOR OF 'THE EXPOSITION OF THE FALSE MEDIUM.' &c.

SCENE I. A large circular mound covered with grass. Time, morning twilight. FATHER ZODIAC* is reclining asleep at the foot of a Tree.

FATHER ZODIAC (raising himself on one arm, half awake, yet with closed eyes). Oh, age of gold! why wert thou so miscalled? thou wert the age of virtue. Yet, oh the pity of thy natural misnomer! for the metal which has bought and sold mankind's morality and happiness, till the nations groan in a wide and deep distress, is now, with corresponding self-illusory blindness, set up as a type of the bliss that is gone! Why should the congealed blood, stagnant and yellow, in the veins of mother Earth, be set up as of more value than the children in whom her vitality freshly circulates, walking bright with active life upon her adorned surface, breathing and feeling upward, even as the Thought ascendeth star-ward, and is received? Whence is this change? whence is this descent and gradual earthiness of heart, narrowed now in strength and scope, and cramped in all its pulses? Can we not wait for the grave to do its work? If the grave be earth and oblivion, and we become as the grave that holds us, why anticipate the doom? But oh! if it be but as the step towards a higher gradation of immortal destiny, insult we not, thus wantonly dark of soul, and ungrateful to Sublime Beneficence,-insult we not the prospect of futurity through all its ascending and bright mysterious vistas, by thus wasting hopes and perverting energies, while

*Father Zodiac is a man who, by reason of extreme age, has retired from the active business of life, but by reason also of the clearness of his intellectual faculties, and sincerity of feeling in the cause of moral and political reformation in England and all over the world, invites regularly every month a certain party of friends and others to visit him in his retreat, and discuss the occurrences of the time. He is, however, to be considered-as, indeed, is not uncommonly the case with such old illuminated missals-rather as an abstraction of intellectual qualities than an ordinary corporeal individuality. Something of the same kind, differing in character and degree, may also be said of Syrius, whom the reader is at liberty to consider as the great-grandson of Father Zodiac. The rest of the characters are impersonations of classes easily distinguished. Nothing in the least dramatic is intended in these papers. They are merely conversations.

No. 102.

June

2 E

passing through our present state? Happiness, like goodness, dwelleth only with pure simplicity. Nothing else lasts. Our state is now entangled in the toils of infinite artificialities, opposed to nature, and called refinement,-of infinite sophistries, opposed to truth, yet called reason: thus are we cheated out of life. Our heart's heritage is taken from us. We did not enough value it : we suffered it to be compromised to bubbles. We know its value now, for the bubbles have burst. But we must earn back our heritage. We degenerated, and therefore suffered. Time maketh sport of man, in scorn and punishment. For man, being linked invisibly with immortality, hath a power within him beyond the Father of mortal years, albeit not exercised with integral purity of the soul's elemental strength. Whereof it happens, not by chance, but inevitable justice, that old Calamity grapples, and harrows, and hounds him towards the tomb, graving thereon man's general epitaph: He misused the gifts of his Creatorlived in wretchedness, without understanding-and died in its climax! (His head sinks down, and he gradually melts again into profound sleep.)

Enter HARRY OF NEWMARKET, MRS. ALBION, and SYRIUS. HARRY OF NEWMARKET (shouting). What, asleep! I thought it was impossible to come too soon!

MRS. ALBION (whispering earnestly). Hist! do not disturb the rest of one whom the stars have but just left. How silent and reverently does the Tree hang in woomby shadows over him!

SYRIUS (approaching softly). Awake! the sun will be up before thee, noble old type of the realm. You'll soon have some peers of nature, as well as commoners, standing round your Tree. Tree. (To Mrs. Albion.) How clear and bright one feels in the morning twilight! Shall I wake him?

MRS. ALBION. No; pray do not meddle with his time; we

can wait.

HARRY OF NEWMARKET (singing softly). Let the southern breezes blow.' Where's Albion?

MRS. ALBION. I left him behind, talking with Angus. He'll be here presently. Hush!

FATHER ZODIAC (dreaming, and gradually waking). Why should the starry quire maintain their harmony, the seasons theirs, and every flower its perfection, while man remains but half-developed, save in vice, and wretched amidst all his faculties of good? Is it that the immortal mind, struggling thus prematurely towards the next gradation of its destined bourne, is thrown back from that high endeavour upon its mortal covering, and in the sad contention of spirit with clay, lays waste its happiness in the misdirection of its powers?

SYRIUS (whispering). Do you not think he holds the same rank in wisdom as in time ?-a great-grandfather?

MRS. ALBION. Hush! pray do not disturb the soliloquy of his sublime trance. His lips move again.

-

FATHER ZODIAC (waking gradually as he proceeds). Oh, wide expanse of twilight! see I not through the solemnity of thy purple shadow, streaks of a fresh-born day? See I not some breaks emitting the first gleams of renewed radiance upon earth? Hear I not far-off echoes faintly breathing their symphonies through the opening clouds? Come they from other worlds? or are they the heralds of time's grand revolution, the all-embracing Platonic year,―bringing back ancient days, when primitive man walked in naked purity along earth's happy fields, not more lustrous of the sun than was his soul with his Maker's essence? Advance! advance! these aged hands, wrinkled and grained with the past, even as the hoary forest oak, whose rough-barked arms expand oracular to the portentous east, thus I uplift to hail and adore the returning sun, or regenerative star of patriarchal days! Advance! I am not so old as I have deemed myself!-with thy advent, oh great progressive Good! I take up my youth once more. Thus, thus, I shake off the load of heavy years! Nay, nay, these old bones ache with the ingress of young spirit, and cannot keep pace with the long life of reason! But I shall live to see-I shall live to see the dawn. But who are these standing round me? Welcome, my sons. I have had visions savouring strongly of reality. Yet, what wonder, since they were compounded of my constant thought, and all our best and strongest hopes? Welcome! have you waited long? why was I not aroused?

MRS. ALBION. Why should we arouse you when even your dreams savour of an awakening world? Why should not we wait when you have waited so long?

FATHER ZODIAC (rising). I have waited long indeed, my child, with patient sufferance; but not too long; for see, the sun's broad shoulder shines bare above the horizontal line!-a constant exhortation to benighted humanity—a sublime substantial homily which man at last has rightly interpreted!