She learns how he had ever loved her, since he,

"A boy still, had been told the tale

Of how a fairy-bride from Italy,

With smells of oleanders in her hair,

Was coming through the vines to touch his hand;"

and how the very strength of his devotion, and the greatness of his worship, had made him feel, too, that she must be made part of his "dedication to the human need," and "prove he kept back nothing, not his soul." And again the tide of joy rolls up, and gives a fuller voice than any other poet has ever done to the intensity of love's rapture in a woman's heart:

"But oh, the night! oh, bitter-sweet! oh, sweet!
O dark, O moon and stars, O ecstasy
Of darkness! O great mystery of love,-
In which absorbed, loss, anguish, treason's self
Enlarges rapture,—as a pebble dropt

In some full wine-cup, over-brims the wine!
While we two sate together, leaned that night
So close, my very garments crept and thrilled
With strange electric life; and both my cheeks
Grew red, then pale, with touches from my hair
In which his breath was; while the golden moon
Was hung before our faces as the badge

Of some sublime inherited despair,
Since ever to be seen by only one,-

A voice said, low and rapid as a sigh,

Yet breaking, I felt conscious, from a smile,—

'Thank God, who made me blind, to make me see!
Shine on, Aurora, dearest light of souls,

Which rul'st for evermore both day and night!
I am happy.'

I flung closer to his breast,
As sword that, after battle, flings to sheath;
And, in that hurtle of united souls,
The mystic motions which in common moods
Are shut beyond our sense, broke in on us,
And, as we sate, we felt the old earth spin,
And all the starry turbulence of worlds
Swing round us in their audient circles, till
If that some golden moon were overhead

Or if beneath our feet, we did not know."

He accepts the limits that have been assigned him through his calamity, and bids the artist assume her true functions, nor cease from her labour on the earth; and together they turn their faces to the East, to await God's great coming day of final restoration.

A noble poem, and every where throughout it the poet shows greater than her work. Indeed, given a poem of certain excellence, and the degree in which it shows defectiveness in the interpretive faculty (in which we have described Mrs. Browning

as wanting) is but a measure of the higher order of personal qualities necessarily present in the poet; who by that very defectiveness is thrown back more than another on the resources of his own mind and nature. Mrs. Browning is conscientiously devoted to her art; it is no by-work to her, but the deliberately undertaken business of her life. There is no reason why she should not gain a much higher degree of artistic unity and simplicity than she now possesses. The fountains of her genius show an unfailing freshness and force; and high as Aurora Leigh stands, its author may live to look back on it as only a stepping-stone to the highest things of which she is capable.

ART. II.-SECONDARY PUNISHMENTS.

First, Second, and Third Reports from the Select Committee on Transportation; together with the Proceedings of the Committee, Minutes of Evidence, and Appendix. Ordered, by the House of Commons, to be printed, 27th May 1856, 20th June 1856, and 11th July 1856.

Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords, appointed to inquire into the Provisions and Operation of the Act 16 and 17 Vict. cap. 99, intituled "An Act to substitute in certain cases other Punishment in lieu of Transportation;" and to report thereon to the House; together with the Minutes of Evidence, Appendix, and Index. Ordered, by the House of Commons, to be printed, 25th July 1856.

Report from the Select Committee on Transportation; together with the Minutes of Evidence, Appendix, and Index. Ordered, by the House of Commons, to be printed, 3d August 1838. England and Wales: Tables showing the Number of Criminal Offenders committed for trial, or bailed for appearance at the Assizes and Sessions in each County, in the year 1855, and the Results of the Proceedings. Presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of her Majesty.

The Colonial Policy of Lord John Russell's Administration. By Earl Grey. 2 vols. London: Bentley, 1853.

The London Prisons: to which is added, a Description of the chief Provincial Prisons. By Hepworth Dixon. London: Jackson and Walford, 1850.

John Howard, and the Prison World of Europe. From Original and Authentic Documents. By Hepworth Dixon. Second Edition. London: Jackson and Walford, 1850.

Chapters on Prisons and Prisoners, and the Prevention of Crime. By Joseph Kingsmill, M.A., Chaplain of Pentonville Prison, London. Third Edition. London: Longman and Co., 1854.

On the Present Aspect of Serious Crime in England, and the Means used for its Punishment and Repression by Government. By the Rev. Joseph Kingsmill, M.A. London: Longman and Co. Revelations of Prison Life; with an Inquiry into Prison Discipline and Secondary Punishments. By George Laval Chesterton, Twenty-five years Governor of the House of Correction at Coldbath Fields. 2 vols. Second Edition, revised. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1856.

A Tract on Tickets of Leave. By C. B. Adderley, M.P. London: J. W. Parker and Son, 1857.

What is to be done with our Criminals? A Letter to the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor, by Charles Pearson, Esq., City Solicitor. Together with Mr. Pearson's Speech on the same Subject in the House of Commons, May 15th, 1849. London: Arthur Hall and Virtue, 1857.

PUBLIC attention is at length fairly roused to the necessity of revising our code and administration of Secondary Punishments. We should rejoice at this new-born interest in a most important question, if we did not fear that it was evanescent, the effect of a passing panic, and likely to decline as that gradually dies away. In the majority of recent discussions on this subject, large considerations of policy are altogether ignored; or are alluded to only to be contemptuously dismissed as the harmless amusement of a few speculative recluses and doctrinaire reformers. To stave-off the evil during our day and generation, and to leave to the morrow the things of the morrow, is proclaimed as the true wisdom of practical men. The greatest of social problems is viewed through the distorting medium of merely personal apprehensions. All attempts calmly to ascertain the facts of the case are denounced as efforts to bewilder the common sense of the country. "We know," it is said, "that life and property are daily less secure; and we are not to be imposed on by statistics. This is no time for fine theories. Offenders must be dealt with in a summary manner. Banishment is our only resource." If conscience can "make cowards of us all," cowardice seems to have the power of retaliating by paralysing conscience. With the subsidence of the present panic, which even now shows symptoms of decline, these counsels born of it will cease. We shall be glad if they make way for any thing more worthy than the old indifference.

In the mean time, we are far from thinking that this alarm

has been altogether groundless. But we believe that it has been much exaggerated. A cacoĕthes scribendi seized on our respectable citizens. A man whose house had been attempted, or whose person subjected to the gentle embrace of the garotter, became forthwith a distinguished character, and "felt it a duty" to write to the Times. In this way many cases which ordinarily would have been passed over in silence, were elaborately paraded before the public. Outrages which, in a less excited state of popular feeling, would have been consigned to the obscurity of the police-reports, were dwelt on in terrified leading-articles. Desperate men announced the warlike preparations which they had made in their domestic establishments,-so that every Englishman's house seemed, in a new sense, to have become his castle; and proclaimed their intention of committing murder, pro aris et focis, on the first opportunity. Others, of a more scientific turn, described wonderful machines of their own device, which appeared to rival the art of Vulcan, and to surpass the sagacity and moral discrimination of a Bow-street officer. They were warranted by their enthusiastic authors to catch and hold fast every burglar, or other feloniously disposed person; while they would in no case interfere with visitors of friendly intentions.

But while the popular apprehensions were, in our opinion, largely factitious, they were, it is probable, not wholly so. To what extent they were well-founded, a reference to the Criminal Tables may help us to determine. We do not rely too implicitly on these documents. The number of persons committed is not an infallible index to the number of crimes committed. The popular impressions and the official returns must be allowed each to qualify the conclusions we should draw from either alone; though, of course, the definite statements of the one carry with them more authority than the vague alarms of the other, which are like the spirit that passed before the face of Eliphaz, and caused his hair to stand on end, the more terrible that no man can" discern the form" thereof.

In 1854 the number of committals was 29,359; while in 1855 it was 25,972, showing a decrease of 11.5 per cent in the latter year. But cases of malicious stabbing and wounding had increased 88 per cent, and manslaughter 14 per cent. While the aggregate of violent offences against property had diminished,

The returns for 1855 require a twofold correction to make comparison of them with former years equitable, owing to the operation of the Criminal Justice Act (which received the royal assent in August 1855), and the extension of the Winter Assize Act to twenty other counties besides York and Lancaster. We must add 522 to the number of commitments in 1855, making a total of 26,494, -still a large reduction on the preceding twelve months. (See Criminal Tables for 1855, p. iii.)

there was an increase of robberies and burglaries, both to the amount of 7.7 per cent. Sir George Grey tells us that serious offences in 1856 (for which the returns are not yet published) show a decrease of 25 per cent on the previous year. Burglary and other violent offences," he adds, "are comprised in this general aggregate; and it is also worthy of note, that the crime of robbery, including as it does garotting, which is only one of the various modes resorted to for effecting robbery, has slightly decreased in 1856 as compared with 1855."* But this statement is too loose to bear much stress. To say that serious offences have diminished, and burglaries are serious offences, is not to say that burglaries have diminished. The decrease of robberies in general, is compatible with an increase of robbery by garotting; and moreover, this decrease in 1856 is only upon a considerable increase in 1855. Nothing is said of violent offences against the person, which are almost universally believed to have been perpetrated in great excess during the last twelve months. Such a belief can hardly have been altogether a mistake. There must have been some substance to throw so great a shadow. This opinion is not out of harmony with the conclusion, that during the last half-century crimes of violence have on the whole steadily diminished; since it will be allowed that special causes may temporarily counteract a general tendency, as in the ebbing tide, while the great mass of waters retires, a wave may here and there advance beyond the line from which all the while the sea is receding. That such incidental causes have been in operation lately, a very little reflection will make probable. The reduction of our regular forces, which, during the war, had to be recruited from a class inferior to that from which they are ordinarily supplied; the recall of those regiments of the militia which had volunteered for stations abroad; and the disbanding, together with them, of such as had remained on home-service, and of the foreign legions,―must be taken into account. There is no unfairness in attributing to the worst of the men, thus let loose upon society, in many cases without employment, an appreciable share of the outrages which, in the absence of any thing like proof, have been set down to the ticket-of-leave men.

In the mean time, be the popular feeling extravagant or not, the Government, urged on by it, or wisely taking advantage of it, has produced its plans. Before proceeding to consider them in detail, it may not be without use to review the main features of previous systems of secondary punishment and convict discipline. In order wisely to "look before," it is necessary carefully to "look after." The probabilities of the future can only be esti mated from the certainties of the past.

Speech in the House of Commons, Feb. 9th, 1857. Times Report.