menacing realities, than to chase, under whatever
sounding names, the phantoms of dead
and buried policy!

Twelve years have passed since the first
report of the constabulary commissioners
revealed the existence, in the rural districts,
of such effective crime and such ineffective
means of prevention or detection, as reasonable
men might have supposed would have
startled any legislature under the sun. Crowds
of audacious robbers roving free on the one
hand, and, on the other, a few wooden-headed
little farmers or shopkeepers, made
constables in spite of themselves, and refusing
to turn out of bed for the apprehension
of criminals, because their wives wouldn't
let them come, but sending their constables'
staves instead, under the impression that
there was some mysterious potency in those
talismans, formed the mildest contrast in the
picture. How long have we heard, how often
do we hear, and on what strong evidence, of
huts where the families of English laborers
are so huddled together, that from childhood
they become inured to what would shock
the South Sea savages? Is anything on earth
more certain than the fact that there is among
such people frightful ignorance? And who,
a hundred years hence, will not stand amazed,
tracking such traces of Cain in the Fields as
we have here enumerated, to read, in the
same records which preserve them for posterity,
of Country-party dinners, Country-party
meetings, Country-party speeches, Country-
party facts and figures without end, middle, or
beginning—- and not one Country-party effort
directed at the plainest causes of these bloody
footprints on the grass!

Within the last month, several rural crimes
have ended in the spectacle of death upon the
scaffold, presented to rural crowds. We
believe that no worse spectacle could, by
any ingenuity, be exhibited to such beholders.
Many Home Secretaries will come and
go, no doubt, resisting solemn private executions,
never seeing any public execution,
knowing all the while that in one of our own
possessions, and under our own flag, it has
been necessary to make executions private
(because of their corrupting influence) and
with the best effect. The time will come,
for all this, when the horrible shows will
cease.

But, in the interval, it is much to be hoped
that the intelligent and accomplished gentlemen
who conduct the daily newspapers of
this era, and who make them one of the great
estates of the realm, will observe and correct a
patronising inclination to introduce the hangman
personally to their readers, which has
latterly taken an increasing hold on the
recorders of executions. An odious introduction
of this functionary by  name—- an offensively
familiar mention of " Calcraft," on all
possible occasions—- a special notice of how
'' Calcraft " came from London, being specially
retained—- how " Calcraft " pinioned, placed,
adjusted, drew the bolt, and the like—- is not,
we would with deference submit, a needful
or a wholesome thing. It is not good for the
hangman to flourish in the papers like the
toastmaster at a public dinner. He is best as
a horrible shadow, obscure and shunned. He
should not be brought into the light as a
public character, with whom any one may be
Hail-fellow well met. The executioner never
has been so much individualized in print, to
the best of our knowledge, as he has been
lately, since his name was SAMSON and he
worked a Guillotine.

SOME ACCOUNT OF CHLOROFORM.

THE globe whereon we live, called habitable,
has now pretensions to that epithet which it
could not boast of, in former times. Science,
continually developing its capabilities, is daily
rendering it a more eligible residence for a
gentleman—- a more commodious dwelling-
place, indeed, to all. Say that the path of
life is thorny still; yet, what with gutta
percha—- for soles and other things—- steam,
electricity, and other helps and appliances,
it has become a decidedly more passable
thoroughfare than it was. Philosophers, by
simply giving their minds to the study of
Nature, have obtained results more valuable
than the considerations for which, according
to the myths of the middle ages, their
predecessors were glad to dispose of their souls.
The amount of human comfort has been
greatly augmented; the sum of human
wretchedness has been diminished by a very
large figure. Among the reductions of this
kind that have been accomplished in modern
times, the most signal, unquestionably, is the
abolition of physical pain, in so far as it
has been effected by the discovery of the anaesthetical
property of chloroform; that is, of the
remarkable power possessed by that substance,
when inhaled, of annulling, for a time of
greater or less duration, the sensibility of
animal bodies.

Of the numerous ills that flesh is heir to,
one, by no means the least grievous, is the
contingency of having to part with an
unsound limb, or otherwise to undergo the
process of being dissected alive, commonly
called a surgical operation. It has long been
an axiom in chirurgical science, that the
operator should endeavour, to the extent of
his ability, to perform his vivisection " tuto,
cito, et jucunde" —- safely, speedily, and
pleasantly. Modern advancement in anatomy and
physiology, and refinement in dexterity, had
enabled surgeons to comply, in a great
measure, with the two former requisitions; the
latter still remained certainly unfulfilled. The
horrors of ancient surgery had been
mitigated; but all that skill and knowledge could
do or suggest failed, signally, to make things
pleasant, in any considerable degree, to the
individual under the scalpel. So far agreeable,
however, as the prospect of a comfortable