up, and it healed. He could eat as 'earty as
any one, thank God. Life was all a chance—it
must go as it growed.

Mac had his amusements. He practised his
terriers in the noble science of rat-killing. But
his 'obby monopolised nearly all his waking
hours. There was not a by-road in the island
along which his searching eye had not ranged;
there was not a farmer, for many miles round,
who did not know him, and keep a good word
for him; there was hardly a tub of pot-wash
within reach that was not accessible to him.
He passed by hundreds of beggars on his rounds,
who were free as he was to find food at their
feet; to dig holes in the rock, and beg spars of
sunken ships; to amass old tin and broken
bottles; to collect pot-wash and rear pigs.
Only Mac had a 'obby, and it was one that led
to industry, and to a thousand economical shifts.
And, we are certain of it, that Mr. Mac, with
all his humility, is not as poor as Job; nay, that
there are many men, wearing better coats than
he sports, in the fruitful Isle of Thanet, who
cannot count a sixpence for any shilling Mac
may number any day in the year.

FIVE NEW POINTS OF CRIMINAL LAW.

THE existing Criminal Law has been found in
trials for Murder, to be so exceedingly hasty,
unfair, and oppressive—in a word, to be so very
objectionable to the amiable persons accused of
that thoughtless act—that it is, we understand,
the intention of the Government to bring in a
Bill for its amendment. We have been favoured
with an outline of its probable provisions.

It will be grounded on the profound principle
that the real offender is the Murdered Person;
but for whose obstinate persistency in being
murdered, the interesting fellow-creature to be
tried could not have got into trouble.

Its leading enactments may be expected to
resolve themselves under the following heads:

1. There shall be no Judge. Strong
representations have been made by highly popular
culprits that the presence of this obtrusive
character is prejudicial to their best interests.
The Court will be composed of a political gentleman,
sitting in a secluded room commanding a
view of St. James's Park, who has already more
to do than any human creature can, by any
stretch of the human imagination, be supposed
capable of doing.

2. The Jury to consist of Five Thousand Five
Hundred and Fifty-five Volunteers.

3. The Jury to be strictly prohibited from
seeing either the accused or the witnesses. They
are not to be sworn. They are on no account
to hear the evidence. They are to receive it, or
such representations of it, as may happen to fall
in their way; and they will constantly write
letters about it to all the Papers.

4. Supposing the trial to be a trial for Murder
by poisoning, and supposing the hypothetical
case, or the evidence, for the prosecution to
charge the administration of two poisons, say
Arsenic and Antimony; and supposing the taint
of Arsenic in the body to be possible but not
probable, and the presence of Antimony in the
body, to be an absolute certainty; it will then
become the duty of the Jury to confine their
attention solely to the Arsenic, and entirely to
dismiss the Antimony from their minds.

5. The symptoms preceding the death of the
real offender (or Murdered Person) being
described in evidence by medical practitioners who
saw them, other medical practitioners who
never saw them shall be required to state whether
they are inconsistent with certain known
diseases—but, they shall never be asked whether they
are not exactly consistent with the administration
of Poison. To illustrate this enactment in the
proposed Bill by a case:—A raging mad dog is
seen to run into the house where Z lives alone,
foaming at the mouth. Z and the mad dog are
for some time left together in that house under
proved circumstances, irresistibly leading to the
conclusion that Z has been bitten by the dog.
Z is afterwards found lying on his bed in a state
of hydrophobia, and with the marks of the dog's
teeth. Now, the symptoms of that disease being
identical with those of another disease called
Tetanus, which might supervene on Z's running
a rusty nail into a certain part of his foot,
medical practitioners who never saw Z, shall bear
testimony to that abstract fact, and it shall then
be incumbent on the Registrar-General to certify
that Z died of a rusty nail.

It is hoped that these alterations in the
present mode of procedure will not only be quite
satisfactory to the accused person (which is the
first great consideration), but will also tend, in
a tolerable degree, to the welfare and safety of
Society. For it is not sought in this moderate
and prudent measure to be wholly denied that it
is an inconvenience to Society to be poisoned
overmuch.

PORTSMOUTH.

IF our topography were not the most
capriciously written of any branch of our
literature—it being quite an accident whether a place
possesses its local history or no—what a book we
should have about Portsmouth! Far away into
the depths of the middle ages, one traces it, as
one traces the sea that fills the harbour itself,
for miles, till it loses itself in country creeks
that look like rivers. Brawny Norsemen, with
their blue eyes, long hair, and battle-axes, came
there to plunder while as yet the Isle of Wight
was jute and England was a half-cleared forest
dotted with monasteries and wooden castles.
Our sea-going ancestors soon found the merit of
the roadstead outside and of the basin within—
more nautical in their instincts than the Romans,
who had made their settlement at Porchester.
It was a handy place for those who wished to
go to holy Winchester, and after the Conquest
(which it might have helped to avert if the
Saxons had made a right use of their elements
of sea strength) its importance increased. Curt-