Year: 1860

l THE LATE PRIZE EltHI.

 While our contemporaries of the Press d most universally are just now employed il echoing and re-echoing the disgusting part culars of the brutal affair which took plac I in Hampshire, near Peterborough, England on the l7th ultimo, we would scarcely b' doing justice to our readers were we to le the matter pass without 8 few comments With the details of this horrible transaction we will not blot our paper, especially a those who have 0 taste fer such description may easily find them elsewhere. But w have to say that in our opinion more de moralizing event than this same prize fight has not occurred in many years. It has poured stream of pollution into the whole sea of lii erature, and wherever the English language is read and spoken, old and young, good and bad, have been compelled to drink of its acrid waters, until the imaginations and passions of millions have more or less suffer ed from the poison. And when the corrupt ing stuff has been borne by the newspapers into our families and thrown before our chil. dren, we have had no redress.

 What is the most alarming is the seeming leniency with which this affair has been treated by otherwise respectable journals on both sides of the waters, and the quasi ap predatory terms in which many of them have spoken of the anticipated. and now consummated encounter. What does not tend to diminish this cause of alarm, is the fact that, if Bells Lite in London is to be believed, the congregation" assembled to witness spectacle from which the sun ill heaven might have yelled his face, was dc. cidedly "the most aristocratic ever assem- bled at the ring-side," and included the bearers of names highly distinguished in the pages of Burke and De Brett officers of the army and navy, members of Parliament, justices of the peace, and even brethren of the cloth r' God help us when even breh ren of the cloth become so unscrupulously re- creant to the duties of their holy office as by their presence to countenance and abet such infernalities {!

 There is, however, one aspect of this af- fair in which it is not so much to be regret ted. The bold and unblushing patronage which this violation of the laws of God and man has received from persons who claim to be respectable" and the advocacy, by cer-

 

 ring as an institution deserving to be encour- aged, gre but another feature in those "signs of the times" which show tendency of both the good and evil that is in the world, to become more pronounced, and more free from admixtures of that which is opposite and as this tendency becomes ultimated, we shall be able better to know what we have to deal with. It would seem almost pity that the ethics of pandemonium were not carried out little more in form, as well as in spir- it, at the late prize fight, so that the most obtuse outsider could not have failed to see the affair in its most undisguised horrors and while the principals, patrons and abet- tors of that transaction had under pious consideration the interest of the prize ring" the best methods of avoiding the po- ice, aud of increasing the funds of the "Pat- gsiistic BenevOlent Association" @ why would it not have been good idea for them to secure the services of one of those "6reth- ren of the cloth' who attended the "mill" as chaplain for each of the combattants Their prayers, respectively to his Satanic Majesty might have taken something like this form o magnipotent Master, thou knowest that this thy faithful servant hath, with thy countenance and encouragement, openly ahjured the laws of God and man, that he may engage in an act most pleasing to thee we implore thee, therefore, to har- den the fists and strengthen the muscles, and direct the blows of thy servant, that he may mar the visage, and crush the bones, and knock out the brains of his antagonist, and gain glorious victory in thy name. Amen"

 We are half inclined to respect Satan himself, when, scorning all disguises of as- sumed responsibility and decency, he stands before us in his native blackness and ugli- ness, and boldly says, II am the devil !; take me for what I am ;" and it is for this reason that we think the late prize fighters and their lay and clerical abetters would have entitled themselves to quite as much consideration from the lovers of frankness and candor, by adopting some such course as above ggested.-Life Illustrated.