The National Register.
London, England, 1817-09-22 00:00:00

REVIEW OF LITERATURE.

PARIS, IN 105.-A POEM.

(Concluded front our last.)

The author's reflections nn viewing " The Hall of
the Throne," in the Tuileries, are remarkable, as well
fur their justness, as for their poetic beauty. After
describing the various apartments which he visited, in
company with many other persons, he thus proceeds—
" The crowd have scatter'd far,—a distant room
Has chcek'd their laughter; swift and husli'd they come.
What holds the wonderers now ? A canopy.
Topped with a mouldering plume, a golden bee
Half from its curtain's faded et imam, torn,
A cypher deep defaced, n wreath forlorn,—
They gaze but on a chair.—Yet lo! the throne
Of conquest, crime, despair—Napoleon !
This war Earth's heart! when here the sceptre strook,
Through all her realms the keen lineation shook.
The murmur here—swell'] forth au oracle,
And naticus hearil it in its wrath, and fell.
Here staiiip'il the foot,—aril bursting up like flame,
The crown givers, the t axle legions cairn..
There was a darkness on it ; wee to the eve
That dared to pierce the evil sanctuary !
Prowess and pomp were there; the gloomy spear
'Waved in ince+sant circuit ; pi hire and peer
Bowing their liatigly foreheads helad and crown'],
Hung like a fiery cloud the throne around.
It had a mightier guard,—that dun(' within,
Sate Guilt that elided the heart, substantial Sin
And man had bled, and diadems been riven,
Till terror saw it delegate of licayeit.
Judgment must strike, but mortal hearts were wan
Before the form, the man, if that were man!
Is there not one—a being from his height
Of Wore fall'u, a shape of burning might,
A ruined grandeur, angel beauty inured,
On his trenched brow the early crown unstared?
Condcmn'd thru' earth on restless wing to range,
His joy, his agony, revenge, revenge :
And has he not the passing power to dart,
Supernal vigour through the traitor's heart?
Seduce the weak before him, bend the high,
'Till the world owns its preent Deity ?
The Tyrant's peace was fearful. Fatal guile
Entomb'd the slaves who trusted to his smile.
But when he scorned the mask, and shouted war,
And here *intone] the banner of the star;
Who slumbered then ?—what land but fix'd its eye
For omens on the eagle's augury?
The ancient empires shook. The mighty North
Sent her reluctant suppliants hurrying forth;
The South gave np her gold. The Ottoman
Cower'd to a haughtier sultan'sdark divan.
And he, the MASTER, sate beneath that plume,
And kings stood here, nay trembling, in this room;
His vassals,—witherel in his evil blaze ;
And now the meanest hind may acatFand gaze!
The final vengeance came ! but sent by whom ?
Wits it in man to burst this den, this tomb!
Lives there the !moan heart that dared to hope
To stand in scorn beneath this charnel cope ?
'Twits as if heav'n would hare to human eyes
Its empire o'er its own fierce agencies.
As if the tempest-cloud had oped its gorge,
To show the secrets of the thunder's forge.
As if some final shock had drank the wave
That rolls in gloom o'er ocean's central cave;
Stripping to man its bosom, boundless vale
Of wreck and buried wealth, anti corpses pale:
The world of storms, the great life-swallower nude;
All one wild waste—death silence, solitude!
Stranger and enemy are round that chair ;
But are no sterner shapes of friendship there?
No haughty frowns, bold taunting+, bitter sighs,
No pangs our nature knows not, till it dies?
Gaze ye not here, who, freezing in your gore,
Made the ]rear halt on Berezyna's shore ;
And heard the Tartar's shout, and rushing wave,
Mark, through the dusk, the limits of your grave,
And felt the polar night your gashes sear,
And died in torture, but to fix him here?
And ye! the plumed and trampling chivalry,
Who rode on Leipsic's plain of death to die;
And met the German sword, and fiery shower,
To save him fur another, fiercer hour!
It came ;—ye last, consummate sacrifice!
Wing ye not here in deeper agonies?
Ye, round whose hearts still hangs the clotted blood;
Whose flesh is still the Flemish raven's food;
Rolls not upon the wind your countless train,
With cloudier visages of shame and pain?
Yet in the field ye fell. Nc'er battle soil
Such booty bore, where corpses were the spoil.
Anti he, for whom ye bled, on whom your eye
Turn'd in its dimness, dared do all but die I
Ye massacred! toehold the prize ye won ;
The throne, and him who sat upon that throne.
The heavens were sick of crime,—the endless strife
Where black ambition flung its stake of life.
The trial came.— rush'd, with shout and ban,
The rebel hosts, their Idol in the van ;
Strength of their heart, and wonder of their eye;
Illusive glory, for his hour was nigh !
Their rites of blood arose. In vain the name
Of their dark Baal echoed, Evening came.—
Then the trite thunders roll'd. Their livid gate
Saw thehorizon one advancing blaze;
'They saw it smite their Idol on his the one ;
And he was smote,—porap, art, infusion gone!
Then died his worshippers. The jealous steel
Raged through their quivering ranks with faithful zeal.
The sacrifice was dune ! and nu its wing
The earth sent up the shout of thanksgiving.'

Wilkie, our inimitable Painter, of native manner,
and character, is now on a tour in Scotland. Ho has
lately visited the Highlands for the purpose of being
pres..nt at a Highland Wedding, which is to form the
subject of a picture bespoke by the Prince Regent.
—He Will there find ample bur for his peculiar ta-
lent.

SEPT. 22.

IVEIk POLICE REPORT.

SECOND REPORT FROM THE COMMITTEE ON THE
POLICE OF THE METROPOLIS.

Mr. Pounder, Clerk of Briiiewell and of BetMem liosppi•
tals, and who has for three yeais served the office of Under
Sheriff of London anti Middlesex, was requested to state to
the Committee the result of his observations on the state of the
I'olice or the Metropolis. The following urn extracts from
his rcpt}:—
" If the Committee will permit me, I would make some
observations on an evil which I am decidedly of opinion, lies
at the root (doll other evils in this city, and elsewhere;
mean the evil of drinking, but especially of drinking spirits ;
I have been so lung in the habit of heating criminals refer
all their nikery to this source, that I now cease to ask the:3
the cause of their ruin.

¶t uppears easy to understand the principle on which this
fae. is founded _ _ _

" 1. As to 01cft.—All other habits of vice Firing either
created or incr. ased by the habit of drinking (and commonly
both)and all vice being expensive, it a • Mall has not lamina'
the means of gratifying this and other imlidgenct s, ands
stdl determined to have them, he mast resort to the o-üb-
,tauce of his neighbour fur a supply ; hence the violation of
property ; and numerous criminals have accordingly assured
me that drinking was the origin of that vicious coarse, which
afterwards kept up, until the offended law at boa requited
its victim.

" 2. As to the more violent and atrocious crimes.—l have
as vaicatedly heard these referred to the effect of drams, and
it appears equally easy to Millet hOW this happens. It •
seems, indeed hardly necessary to resort to the experietice of
a criminal in a matter which lies open to every man's own
observation. It is well known that the direct effect of drams
is to inflame and excite the passions, and it is frequently
found as a practical fact, that he whose mind is abandoned
to their influence, • fears not God, neither regards man.' The
criminal is rendered in-aesible to the milder feelings of his
nature, and regardless °fall consequences, whether as affect-
ing this world or another; his reason is, far the time, de-
puted from him, and he is rendered ripe ter the mast sari.
guinary and ferocious acts; nearly all the convicts for mur-
der with whom I have conveised, have admitted themselves
to have been under the iethience of si irits at the time of the
act; many of those vs 'mare :tied throughout the country, are
proved on their to have acted antler the Sallie little:.
cute; and I am fully persuaded, that in all the trials for mur-
der which take place, with very few, (it' any) exceptions, it
would appear on investigation, that the criminal had,in the
first instance' delivered up his mind to the hrittalisiug effect
of spirittiousliquors. I hail particular occasion to observe
this in the ease of Mr. Pionar's murderer, who, when not under
the influence of drains, was a civil and obliging man, but
when lie had been drinking, was fierce and violent; he had
left his former master, (who is well known to me) for this
vice; he bad been drinking spirits before the murder, drank
them frequently on his road from Chislehurst, and was intoxi•
cated when 111! was apprehended. It was in evidence with
regard to the murderer of the two families at Ratcliffe-high•
way, that he hail been drinking the strongest kind of gin both
before and after those murelers. Another dreadful case of
profligacy, referable to the same source, occurred in the case
of Sinith, who was tried in my second year of duty, for set-
ting lire to his house in Newgate-street, tittle appeared no
doubt on the trial, that his wife was the agent of the crime, or
at all events that she was well acquaintea with it; butt as she
died almost iumiediately after her husband had been sal-
/ pected, his Counsel suggested, in the cross-examination of the
witnesses, that as she was addicted to liquor. the fire might
possibly have been occasioned by her from accident, when in
a state of intoxication ; this probability was also repeated by
.the prisoner in a written defence; indeed the suggestion of
such a doubt was his only chance for acquittal, for I heard the
whole trial, and certainly a clearer case was never establish-
ed against a prisoner; the Jury, adverting to the plea that
there was a possibility of the wife having occasioned it when
in liquor, acquitted him. This man lately died, and while on
his death bed, confessed lie had induced his wife to set tire to
his house, and had poisoned her as soon as suspicion 111111 fallen
upon him, under au apprehension that she might betray his
secret. I have the means of knowing, from a very res?ecta-
ble lodger in their house, that both these unhappy persons
were long addicted to the thinking of spirits, and the pri•
saner himself was sensibly tinder the influence of liquor dur-
tug the whole time of his trial. Two other striking cases
which fell tinder my own observation were those of two men
who were tried in one Session, and executed together, for
the same crime of murdering the females for whom they pro-
fessed attachment ; each of these men admitted to me Defers,
their deaths, that they bad been drinkers of spirits, and par-
ticularly that they were under their influence at the time of
the act. I c .uld give many other and much more recent in-
stances, to prove the consequences of this habit, but it would
only be to give the Lashio), of almost all the wenn cases of
crime which have fallen under my own observation for so
ninny years past ; many criminals have even assured me, that
it was necessary. before they could commit crimes of partr-
ciliar atrocity, that they should have recourse to drains as a
stimulus, and, that kilowing this to be the fact, they resorted
to them beforehand, for no other object but that they might
be' enabled to harden their natures and to fortify their minds,
after which they found it easy to encounter any risk, rind to
proceed all lengths. I remember one matt in particular say-
ing to me, ' Ste, I could not enter your house in the dead of
the night, and take the chance of your shooting me in it, or
of my being hung, when I got out of it, unless I was to get
well primed first.' I could wit lint feel, that a system which
thus qualifies one part of society for becoming the plunderers
and destroyers of the other, must be radically vicious, and
that the existence °flinch it state oh' things renders it the inter.
est of evely mat to depreciate its continuance. I would ob-
serve here, that in many trials it has api.eired that the pro-
secutoi s themselves had been dritikieg before the commission
of the offence, and had thus tempted others to take advantage
of their state, and laid themselves open the more easily to at-
tack ; and it sometimes happens, that the Jury, in violets vonr-
big to ascet lain the guilt ur innocence of a piisoner, is that
obliged to ascertain the condition of the 005...c1am.. in order
to judge allot degree of credit is let be attached to his teati-
mealy. This habit is also the fruitful sources of bleaches of
trust, and leads to perpetual v total imis of eutiftelfelltc. Most
of the Cases of t mbesilt unlit tvnirli I have known nr my of&
chit situation, wet e reh•ral le to di 'liking; such prisoners have
told me that the fit st tem p til limn to abuse the coulidetice re-
posed in theme ate.ae hum the tieccaeity of supplying them-
selves aide liquor, awl that, when once the first barrier be-
tween honesty and fraud was passed, all afterwards became
cagy, and they went on without repugnancy till dettction

StPT. pt.

ensued. I had myself two clerks who betrayed their trust,
after serving me faithfully for a long time ; one of them ac.
quired the habit of drinking, and then corrupted the ether :
they then wanted more money than their maim ws would sup-
ply, and agreed with each other to resort to fraud of all kindi.
I was repeatedly afterwards applied to by the wife of one or
them, who was an honest and industrious milliner, and who
Rave me the most distressing account of her hushaud's con-
duct, he received money which was due to her for her own
exertions in her business, but spent his own gains on his
vices, and he suffered executions to be levied on furniture
and goods, which, not his money, but her's, had purchased.
The other clerk, who was younger and unmarried, and per.
fectly competent to his situation, brought disgrace on very
respectable friends in humble life (who had always till then
maintained their credit) by forfeiting his own character and
losing the means of subsistence. I had another clerk who,
after a long continued habit of di inking spirits, took laudanum
while in my service, but Dr. Cluttcrbuck, whom I sent to hint
was aide to save his life: he then confessed that lie was
only induced to take such astep because lie could not bear to
see the misery which his own habits had brought upon him-
self, his wife, and his children : he was not however reclaim-
ed by this circumstance, but went on in the same course;
and 1 afterwards found his wife, by mere accident (under a
public advertisement for relief ), in a miserable lodging
an the neighbourhood of Brunswick-square, without a bed to
lie on, and with IlVe young children to support. He had then
deserted his family, leaving a letter behind him in which he
deplored, in the strongest terms, his own guilt and folly, and
stated it was his determination to destroy himself. It these
are strong cases of their class, I am persuaded that most men
in my own profession can nt least confirm this fact, that drink-
ing is the bane of multitudes in it, who would otherwise be
valuable in their particular departments, and useful members
of society. 'flie la w• w riters, especially,ai e almost universally
addieied to drinking, as every law-stationer can testify; and
a peison who makes it his business to provide situations for
law-clerks, and who has had great experience among all
classes of them, assured roc that cases of violated trust, aris-
ing front their habit of drinkine; were constantly occurring,
and that it was impossible to bummer:de the instances of for-
feited character and of individual suff-ring which this source
of expense and crime had brought under their own observa-
tion. In other professions and trades, many examples of vio-
lated trust from this cause must be familiar to every one;
mercantile clerks, apprentices and shopmen, in-order to sup-
ply their desire for this pernicious ingredient, have in re-
peated instances become criminals for life. Servants, both
male and female, have first robbed their masters and mistress- ,
es, in order that they might procure liquor ; their characters
then gone, they have fallen from bad to worse. The woman
who was last executed in London, for robbing her master's
house, in conjunction with her own paramour, acknowledged
herself to have been a drinker of spirits ; this leads me to ob-
serve that with regard to the extensive mischief of drinking
among females, there is little doubt that to this source must
be ascribed most of the evils of prostitution. To the effect
of liquor, multitudes of that sex must refer both their first de-
viation from virtue, and their subsequent continuative in vice;
moat of the unhappy woincit who lead a life of continued pro-
fligacy, live more or less under the constant inlinenee of spi-
rituous liquor; perhaps it would be impossible for them with-
out that ail to continue suele a life, or to endure the scenes
which they are called to witness.
" I would further observe, wilt regard to the influence of
drinking upon crime in general, that, from my own experience
at the Old Bailey, I have no doubt it is capable of ablitidaet
proof, that n very con-iderable(suil perhaps by far the larger)
proportion of offences which have brought criminals to that
Mar, !nay lie referred to this source. In many cases, where a
prisoner was not wider the influence of liquor at the moment
of committing the CI i,ne, idyll as forgery for instance, I have
been able to trace with previous habits of drinking, as left no
doubt ou my mind that this was the master vice which, while
it was expensive in itself, involved him also in various other
expent'l.4 whiell were unitedly beyond Isis means of support.
iag an I induced hint to have recouree to the crime of forgery
for their supply.
" I wouid further notice dlie striking difference between
spirits and beer, in the mode of their operation ; beer makes
perso.,s first h..avy, then stupid, and then senseless ; the beer
drinker becomes more drunkeu than the drinker of spirit.,
and shows his 'condition more, het he is in that very propor-
tion, more harmless to such ly ; his very helplessutss and in-
activity give Aug.:. of pledge fir the security of others. In the
case of dram-drinking, however, the effects are not besotting
sr stiipilying; spirits are less narcotic, but wore exciting than
beer; so fat from incapacitating for avtion, they stimulate to
it ; they increase and irritate the passion.. ; they heat the brain
by hid mining the iptality and quickening of the circulation of
the blood ; but they are so far from disqualifying the man
from executing the designs which he may mediate under such
a morbid excitement, that they quiekeir him to every kind of
exertion whit+ is neces is ry to his purpose: a man can in the
course of the day, drink, and multitudes do drink, twenty or
more glasses of spirits, without tieing visibly affected by them
white the drinker of porter or ale would tie seen reeling amen
the street : the elf..cts prodneed iu these eases being so dal,-
rent, there is less disgust excited in spectators for the drinker
of spit its, and consequently he is less likely to be shamed out
of the habit ; the very little time too whirls is reqnisite for
drinking chains, and the, facilities for obtaining them which
every while H1)01111(1, are still farthur favoiwaitic to that sys
tem; I apprehend therefore that a broad thismi ittinn is to he
taken het ween drinkiiig and drunkenness, or between the
use of spirits •liid of beer. Beer, in order to produce polpa
hle insuau anuu, must be drank in iarge quantities, while
(-lough of spires can lie obtarned fur producing the greatest
moral nil-duet, without the effects upon it drinker toeing so ap-
pat mit. lam the mine desirous of adverting to this distiar.
lion, beeanse it has been said there is less drunkenness than
Viere e as. This may be readily admitted ; but the concession
does not prose that there is less drinking, or less crime--
There is perhaps less of gross drunkenness twonght betUre the
pildic eye than when beer was the nap ionii liquor; bust ilicru•
is probably 011 that very account, so much more drinking, and
so much inure clime.