The Press. — London, England, 1858-09-11 00:00:00

THE PRESS, SEPTEMBER 11, 1858. 882 following manner from a man towards whom she felt a growing attraction:— Late in the evening, when nearly every one was gone ( there was a small evening (Pny), I saw Mr. Rochford sit down with my sketches, and begin looking over them alone. There was one of a window in the Hotel Cluny, which he examined for some time; at last, I walked up to the table and said, " What attraction is there in that sketch, Mr. Roohford ? You have been looking at it fur five minutes, and it is very ill done." "It might be better," he anmered quietly. "It is not, architecturally, very correct ; but yet correct enough for my purpose. Do you know if there is any print of this ? " ." I dare say there is ; but what i 4 your purpose ? " " I am building a school-house at home, and want a window of this sort. I was struck with this one the other day when I was at the Hotel Cluny ; hut, unfortunately, I am no draughtsman. I can be critical, you see, like Mrs. Oglevie Fisher, but I can do nothing myself." " I will copy the sketch for you, if you like it." Readers of " The Newcomes" may remember a passage in which Clive, with democratic cynicism, persists in exposing the family legend of the " barber-surgeon" for the edification of Lord Farintosh, and is rebuked by Ethel for his bad taste. In the following scene the heroine appears to us to be guilty of a similar fault, which however the writer, unlike Thackeray, endorses with deliberate approval. A picture being admired at a party, Rita finds it to be one which she had formerly sold to a dealer : I glanced up, and found Rochford's eyes fixed on ire, after hie peculiar fashion. Then, for the first time, I re membered where it was I had seen them before. " I can tell you nothing about the artist myself, my dear Madam," said the old gentlemen. "I believe m 5 nephew knows his name, hut there was a foolish mystery made about it when I asked Ismael. He said something about a distressed wife and len children, so I conclude the poor fellow would be glad enough to give lessons." The eyes never released their hold on me. " He knows the truth," I said to myself, " and is wondering whether I should have moral courage, before all these fine people, to confess that I was the poor artist. There is no chligatinn, certainly, and yet I should like to show that I am perfectly indifferent to their opinion." . . . . " I am the best able to answer any questions about this picture, Mr. Griffiths," I said at last, in a distinct voice, "as it was painted and sold by me. lam sorry Monsieur Ismael thought it necessary to tell any stories about it, though he was not at liberty to mention my name." Lady Ureybrook turned sharply round, coloured, and seemed about to speak, hut did not. There was xn awful pause. Most of the women stared at each other as if they thought I had gone mail. . . . . Hubert llochford's eyes betrayed no surprise : but, if I read their expression aright, something of pleasuro and approval. . . . . " Young woman," said a harsh voice, and Lady Janet Oglevie held out her hand, " ! respect you. You do right in turning Giare talent to account, and you do better in not being ashamed to own it." We confess that we take the view which Miss Ethel Ncwcome would probably have done under the circumstances, and fail entirely to sec the merit of exposing yourself to the contempt of fashionably-prejudiced people of vulgar minds when no particular end is to be gained by it. There is quite enough real occasion in lile for these grand displays of moral courage, without wearing the heart on the sleeve as a mere matter of bravado. The faults, however, that we have noticed are those of crudeness and inexperience, and a very little circumspection will be necessary on a future occasion to enable the authoress of "Rita"to avoid them altogether. We should not have thought of adverting to them at all, had it not been evident that she has a genius worth careful culti vation. They need not prevent any one from reading the book, which is nowhere dull, and which everywhere displays great freshness, and, as will be evident from our extracts, much vigour of style and power of observation. We have seldom met with a first attempt which showed on the whole so much promise as these two lively, clever, and interesting volumes. Juvenile Crime : its Causes, Character, and Cure. By Samuel Phillips Day. London : Hope. This is another addition to the numerous works illustrative of Criminal Reform. We judge it to be the production of a young compiler. In the form which Mr. Day's composition takes many I • rsons would recognize only a diluted blue s I k, garnished with scraps from authors of all kinds ; but the work is better than a hasty perusal of it would suggest. Mr. Day has a kindly and benevolent spirit; he is not a canting writer, nor is he too credulous about criminal reform. His great fault is that he has so testa- Weil his statements with fragments from various authors, that it is difficult to see what is his own in this volume. It is a kind of cento, in which phi lanthropic commonplaces and politico-economical principles are worked together in literary mosaic ; and there is far too much of ostentatious pedantry in the quotations. There are, also, instances of bad taste, like writing of the Bible as " that glorious old book," as a bibliomaniac might say of an early edition of one of the classics ; and in the middle of grave dissertation we meet with inane quotations such as this :—" Eliza Cook pertinently says,— Better buill schoolrooms for the boy. Than celia and gibbets for the wan" (p. 354). Francis's " Horace" is also repeatedly drawn upon for quotations, and on the whole there is too much of the compiler, as opposed to the thinker, in this volume. But still, as an illustrative work on a social subject attracting much contemporaneous attention, the volume has value, as it contains striking facts, curious tables, and interesting selections from a mass of testimony. Mr. Day discusses his subjects under the heads of Pauperism, Evil Example and Predisposing Circumstances, Ignorance, Intemperance, icious Amusements, Workhouses and Prisons, Increase and Extent of Crime, Nature and Cost of Crime, and Chief Preventive and Repressive Checks to Crime. It will be thus seen that he traverses at large ground, and he selects his matter from a whole library of works treating of his main theme. There are some persons who think that this sort of literature is much overdone, but we are not amongst the number. Circumstances have given the question of reform of criminals great importance. The colonies have thrown back the convict classes to the home country, and we suffered from the ticket-of-leave system by the numbers of ruffians cast upon us. We are thus driven to the common rule, " Prevention is better than cure " ; and the whole question now is, " What is the best mode of prevention ?" And there can be no doubt that beginning with the young is the best economy in this matter. Our own convictions on this interesting ques tion are that the subject will before long work itself clear. The public mind is bent upon it, and it is right to keep it prominently before the country. We are not system-mongers our selves, and we think that, as in other cases, the system-mongers have rather damaged the reform of criminal discussion ; but such might, perhaps, be expected. Let us attend to common sense and to recorded experience, and we shall have no reason to despair of a satisfactory solution of this problem being arrived at. We should recol lect that there are two master-fallacies on reform of criminals. One error consists in expecting too much, and the other in hoping far too little from remedial _ measures. We should not expect either too much or too little from medicine or surgery, or from the 'social results of any reform of the laws, or from any change whatever. Mr. Stand still cries,—" Leave things as they are ; you can no more reform a convict than you can change the ear of a pig into a silk purse. What's bad is bad : convicts are convicts, and there's an end of it." On the other hand, Mr. llopetoomuch says,—" My dear sir, try my plan. Igo upon the principle of the perfectibility of human nature. Progress is infinite and eternal. Ma chinery can change wool into cloth, and by a due mixture of education and wholesome punish ment I will undertake to keep down crime to a very low minimum." Now, we do not range with Mr. Standstill or Mr. Hopetoomuch. We agree with our sensible, friendly Steady, who reminds us that though it is hopeless to try and wash blackamoors white, yet we should not therefore disbelieve in the invaluable qualities of soap and water. As the subject stands at present, the Hopetoo muches are rather in the majority, and they often talk with singular superficiality, and weary one with their shallow and sanguine views. On the other hand, the Standstills are morose, narrow, and bigoted; and in some Parliamentary circles there is danger lest the credulity of the Standstill class may become infectious. IVe say that the circumstances of the case are such that Parlia ment and the authorities must grapple with " Crime-Prevention." We cannot any longer ship the convicts to the colonies; we cannot im prison them tbr life; and therefore we must try and see what prevention and judicious primitive measures can effect. The question cannot be solved in a year ; it will require both experiment and constant discussion ; and it is fortunately one on which the men of theory and of practice , the religious enthusiast and the stern polic authorities, can work together. Pauperism is, undoubtedly, one of the most fruitful sources of crimes ; but it must be recol. lected that many of the most hardened criminals are in easy circumstances, or at least far removed from abject want. The squalid misery of large classes in our great towns can be discerned at a glance, and, as Lord Stanley has well observed, " the parallel between the infection of disease and " the infection of crime holds strictly." Our crowded cities pollute the atmosphere and poison popular morals. Cobbett used to call London " the great wen," and as a wen, or an ulcer, consumes much of the heart's blood in the physical body, so in the social system there is a great expenditure of manhood in our towns. No other country has such a number of large cities and towns as England, and the vicissitudes of wages must necessarily cause great temptations. The young see their parents lie, steal, and take to bad practices, and they follow the example of those about them. It is at this point that pre. vention should be applied. By taking up the children early in life, and placing them at schools, where they receive a training, they will be fitted for exercising trades, and advancing themselves in life. Mr. Day in this work quotes the thoroughly true remark of the late John Foster, " There is in ignorance " not only the privation of all direction and " impulsion to good, but a great positive force of " determination to evil," and the statistics of crime periodically published fully bear out the position of Foster in his able essay on Popular Ignorance. In saying this, we are quite aware that some of the worst criminals have been persons of cul tivated intellects. On the Continent, it is possible to find reprobates of strong intellect, much culture, and yet casehardened in iniquity of every kind. But we must not argue that, because cultivated minds are often vicious and depraved, there fore ignorant ones are extremely innocent. A large proportion of the criminal population are described in the returns as "brutally ignorant." The statistical tables compiled by trustworthy and competent persons on this subject establish the fact conclusively that ignorance and crime are closely allied. Surely we cannot be surprised at such being the case. Upon the thoroughly ignorant it is intensely difficult to operate by way of remedial instruction. They cannot read the Bible, or holy books; their minds are callous and sluggish ; and clergymen of various denomi nations have told us that it was almost latxmr thrown away to try and reform such criminals. There is some chance in dealing with cases of criminals who had been educated, because early impressions can be reawakened, and expostula tions may be used with effect. They can read the Bible, and they can keep the mind occupied by applying it to harmless literature, when it is given to them by the authorities in the gaols: but what can be done with those who can neither read nor write ? France, Saxony, Belgium give in their statistics, as far as they are compiled, the same testimony as England that the amount of crime is powerfully influenced by ignorance. We are aware that there are two sides to this part of the subject. Mr. Day quotes the °Onions of Mr. Kingsmill and "S. G. 0." of the Times.. Mr. Kingsmill affirm? that "the worst class o 1 " criminals have been above the average condi " tion of' mental powers and educational advan: " tages." He says so positively ; but we take 9 that he means by " the worst class of criminals" notorious characters like the Mannings, Green acre, Tawell, and others of that kind. Now, ye never could expect that the personal ten dencies to evil of peculiar temperaments could be crushed. The evil heart of man is not to be completely subdued, and the curse of original sin and the corruption of the human heart cannot be changed by any of the best systems of education. There will be the wicked and vicious in every class and in every age. But what a true practical Eng lishman should aim at is the endeavouring to re press crime in large claws of the comin. un9y. .No preventive measures, educational or prunitis e , can reach the cases of persons like Itedpa.th or Robson, and the educational attainments of per sons like Paul and Strahan are outside the 41tosether, As for the opinion d I