The Sun. — 1850-10-05 (London, England)

THE FRIMLEY MURDER.  For the crime of murder, as it ordinarily shows itself in this country, we are seldom called upon to exhibit other feelings than those of horror at the deed, and disgust at the vices of which it seemed the monstrous but natural offspring. The low intrigues of the Mannings and their victim, and the besotted lives of 'others, were so unlikely, except by the interposition of a miracle, to end well, that we find nothing to bestow our sympathy upon—we can only lament that human nature should become so brutalized as to revel in human slaughter, or design it through days and weeks of malignant deliberation. But it does happen now and then that our horror at one aspect of the tragedy finds relief—though in some sort augmentation, too— in contemplating the other. We have not to turn from the murderer to a victim who awakens alnioat equal feelings of horror at the unprepared death of a drunkard or a paramour. There is something consolatory for the miad to rest upon. The victim has fallen before nature's hour, indeed, but not wholly unanointed. He has lived well through the trials of many years, or was working his way onward to a venerated age. There are children to lament him ; affectionate friends and neighbours ; dependents upheld by his bounty; a train of suffering poor to add their tribute of grief, which, even if to some extent selfish, bears the strongest testimony to the worth of the departed. There is brightness in ' all this, not unmixed with awe, but perhaps the brighter on that account. The death of a good man is a subject for edifying thought at all times ; but when he dies by violence his virtues become hallowed by the contrast with his end. The Frimley murder is exactly such a case. We have to lament the untimely death of a man discharging the responsible duties of a minister of the Church of England, and surrounded by all the respect and affection which Character and station might command. He had just loosed' his heart to delight over the progress of his children, who came to spend a few days by their father's fireside ; to report their studies ; to draw inspiration from his example and the precepts of his love and anxiety. One can imagine the homely " Good night " which separated parents and children for a brief space only, as they thought, to meet and renew t happy intercourse of their relationship. Bur even under that roof then) was nothing so venerable as to awe the thief, or paralyze him ere be committed the deed which made him also a murderer. The sacred functions of its tenant were forgotten in the plunder of his comparative wealth. In the dead hour of night his bedchamber was visited. He started from sleep, roused by a glare of light ; and, unsuspicious of evil, set the intrusion down to some playful experiment of his sons, till the robber's pistol was at his breast. Then came a struggle, fearful and fatal. And if, while recording the tragedy that followed, we may dare to speak of human courage, we would say 'one word for that devoted woman who, with the beautiful instincts of her sex, threw heart and life into the etiOrt to save her husband. Unarmed and unassisted—except, perhaps, by the terror which seized the villains, who counted upon meeting as great cowards as themselves—they drove the assassins trom the house ; but not before a fatal wound had been inflicted. We write under the anxiety and horror which by this time has universally impressed the country. But an article in a morning contemporary places this murder in a light which, for practical purposes, is invaluable. For some months a gang of burglars has infested the country in the neighbourhood ofFrienley. We hear now of the acuteness which characterizes the local police ; but we hear of it, unfortunately, when too late. A little earlier exertion of this faculty might have spared us the sorrow of adding this new tragedy to the list of those horrors which terrify us, when we consider how near an approach, eveu in this world, it is possible for men of uncontrolled passions to make to the malignity of demons.—From the Lady's Newspaper.