The North-Eastern Weekly Gazette. — 1893-12-09 (Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, England)

IMAGINAYION. who AVM sentenced to death  the other day for the murder of his sweetheart admitted his crime and the justice of his sentence. He only asked to be allowed to smoke immediately before his execution. The reason given was that smoking would steady his nerves, and enablehim to die, as he himself expressed it, "an English hero." He also explained that he expected to meet the girl in the next world, and that if he did not die game she would—poke tun at him. There are types of human nature that are positively appalling, and this is one. Probably the poor creature is insane. Yet, except this siugular request— and the more singular reasons for it—he does not appear to have presented symptoms of inaanity. And as master of a vessel he must have possessed rather more than average intelligence and education. Of course insanity may come to the most acute intellect; but the mental peculiarities displayed by this man seem rather to belong to the habitual texture of his mind than to be the outcome of any temporary visitation. And sieh habitual characteristics, if they are insanity, are difficult toreconcile with the general prnctical intelligence in other matters which he must have possessed. If not insane, he certainly reveals a brutish insensibility which almost makes one shudder at the thought of his being a human creature at all. But indeed the range of human possibilities, whether in the high direction of intellect and goodness or in the direction of senselessness and depravity, are very great. Walking after the, flesh or walking after the Spirit, human nature can develop to almost infinity in either way. What has struck some philosophic critics Ls, the lack of imagination the man manifests in thinking that life in the next world is exactly the same as life in this. In one respect, however, his speech shows that he most have expected one enormous difference. Bit in his ideas of the essential sameness of existence he very likely does not much differ front a large number of his fellows. A good old woman when dying, and when requested by a neighbour to take a lueasage to " Tommy," said she could not be expected to go clattering all over Heaven looking for their Tommy. Such material conceptions have no moral defect They are inevitable while "this muddy vesture of decay doth grossly close Us in." The shocking thing in this case is the utter absence of all moral feeling. The dreadful crime he had committed appears to hint of no more moral significance than the lighting of his pipe—a mere nothing. The solemn and healthy teaching that the future life is retributive had not touched hint. It would be somewhat interesting to know whether in any way he had come uuder the influence of Spiritualism, for Spiritualism docs tend to produce the attitude ! of miud towards the future which this man shows—a prolongation of the present. But most probably the man himself could not rise to the conception of moral responsibility and punishment. This would appear from his idea of an English hero. To say nothing of the fact of his not seeing that his courage was to be artificial, it seemed to him that having murdered a poor, helpless woman did not mevent his becoming a hero; but that mdl which was necessary to raise him to this ! lofty level was a pipe of tobacco to steady his nerves. Such exhibitions are in reality the opening of chasms which enable us to see to what low and horrible depths human nature eau sink.  IT would he going too far VW:LAND AND to desoribe England and