varied by an occasional embezzlement of the precious metals about an abbey or monastery, were insignificant compared with the graver. crimes of which history holds them guilty. The flagrant robbery of the Treasury at Westminster is not the worst crime of which the monks stand charged. "Bloodshed," says Mr. Pike, "was as familiar to the clergy as to any other class-not only to those who were vaguely described as clerks, but to chaplains and parsons of churches." A few examples of clerical homicide, which our author extracts from the Public Records of one year, tell, as he says, "a tale of which it is impossible to miss the meaning."

We have already said that criminal instinct never progresses in originality. There is probably no crime now extant, which was unknown thousands of years ago; there probably existed no crimes in ancient times of which we have not some modern representatives. And we have already shown that they increase and decline in comparative popularity. Little more could be said of interest without filling our pages with revolting narrations of crime without subjective value, or swelling our article to a treatise as ponderous as the one before us.

But the laws which governments, or, to speak more accurately, ascendant parties have at various times enacted in order to repress crime, or to enforce their own wishes and power, give us ample occasion for instruction and reflection. We know nothing so deplorable in all history as the penal enactments of our ancestors. The frightful cruelty, the utter malappropriateness and disproportion to offence, the flagrant injustice, and wild inconsistency which characterise the attempts of early races at punitive legislation, closely approach the grotesque. The most merciless and fantastically curious tortures were provided for petty thefts, and even for natural tempers and indulgences. To speak a hot word of contempt or reproach against a powerful lord or official, such as would in our day be held beneath notice, might cost a man his tongue, an eye, an ear, his nose, or even his life. The cucking-stool for a bad-tempered wife is one illustration of the spirit of the legislation. The punishment of adultery by burning is another.

"The gallows for hanging men, and the pit for drowning, or halfdrowning women, were among the most cherished appurtenances of the manor, or of its prototype as it existed in the year 1066. The lord set great value upon his privilege of holding his own court, and not less upon his privilege of hanging his own thieves; "nor is it difficult to see what crimes might be committed with impunity by a lord holding such a terrible power in an age when accusations were not at all necessary, when false accusations were cheap, and when lords were not remarkable for righteousness. "The noble could murder, and be quit for a fine to the Church, and another to be divided between the kinsfolk of the slain and the king," a composition at once exceedingly convenient and exquisitely unjust. The offence which was venial

in the noble was heinous in the bondsman. "The slave not only incurred the penalty of death or of mutilation for the most trifling offence, but was not even entitled to the privilege of observing the 'mass days 'in that manner which was supposed to bring man nearer unto God." "Men branded on the forehead, without hands, without feet, without tongues, lived as an example of the danger which attended the commission of petty crimes, and as a warning to all who had the misfortune of holding no higher position than that of a churl. New ingenuity was brought to bear upon the art of mutilation, which was practised in every form. The eyes were plucked out; the nose, the ears, and the upper lip were cut off; the scalp was torn away; and sometimes even, there is reason to believe, the whole body was flayed alive. Among the punishments

for theft are the very punishments forbidden as barbarous in the Roman code. If the thief was a free woman she was to be thrown down a precipice or drowned. If the thief was a man and a slave he was to be stoned to death by eighty slaves, and if one of the eighty missed the mark three times that one was to be whipped three times. If the thief was a female slave, and had stolen from any but her own lord, eighty female slaves were to attend, bearing each a log of wood to pile the fire and burn the offender to death." Mr. Pike's remarks upon this horrible system are so just and forcible that we cannot

forbear adopting them. "It is only wonderful that any tenderness or any mercy survived, and that the callousness of those terrible days was not transmitted to all the descendants of the men and women who were compelled to take part in such horrors. Fire, as an instrument of punishment, was not unknown to the Romans, nor, perhaps, even to those whom they vanquished in Britain. But to make women the special objects of this torture, and, worse still, to teach them hardness of heart in the office of executioner, were refinements of atrocity reserved for barbarians." The penal extravagancies, the spirit of which, it may be generally said, can be detected through centuries of subsequent legislation and punishment down to the last recorded burning of a woman, as recent as 1784, teach us abundantly that in most times no crimes have been so great, and visited with such terrible vengeance, as the crimes of being base-born, of being poor, of being weak, or of belonging to the subjugated sex. There are disabilities and penalties still pertaining to the latter enormity which amply illustrate a doctrine which our author repeatedly enforces, that the influence of the spirit of those organised atrocities far down the bygone centuries qualifies the moral tone of our own enlightened times.

Hints for Sick-Nurses.

BY MRS. LEITH-ADAMS.

PAPER 2.-ON EARLY TRAINING.

DISEASE and death are visitants that enter every home sooner or later, and it is to try and teach those who wish to learn how best to face such stern realities, that these papers are written.

True, it may be said that in these days of nursing sisterhoods, and trained nurses, medical and surgical, a professional attendant may always be obtained, but where is the woman, wife, mother, sister, or friend, worthy to bear any one of those dear titles, who would willingly yield to a stranger her share in the duties of the sick-room, where one dear to her lay in suffering? Would a womanly woman consent to be banished from the bed-side, because the sight and sounds of pain tried severely the sensitiveness of her own feelings? Would she not rather so discipline those feelings, that their expression would be no longer a source of annoyance to the real sufferer? And might it not be the wiser plan to try and gain such knowledge, and such power of endurance before the day of trial comes home as may stand us in good stead when that time comes in all its bitter reality? Yet there are hundreds of women to be met with who glory in their own inability to be of the slightest use in time of emergency!

"I was carried from the room in hysterics," a woman of this calibre will say to you, with calm pride in her achievement; and forthwith she expects you to fall into an ecstacy of admiration at the sensitiveness of her nervous system.

In like fashion, you may hear women speak of hospital work as a

thing repugnant to their sense of modesty and womanliness, thus clothing their own want of single minded simplicity of thought and motive in the mask of a spurious modesty.

Wherever suffering, mental or bodily, can be soothed by the tender strength of a woman's hand and voice, there is a woman's place, and there may she shew the truest modesty, the highest refinement, the most perfect womanliness, by fearlessly facing all that is necessary for the comfort and benefit of the sufferer. Those in whom no thought

of self is allowed to mar the purity of devotion needful for such a task as nursing the sick, will shrink from nothing, however trying it may be. But, in speaking thus, I should be sorry to seem to advocate the over-zealousness of some who will rush into scenes for which they have had no training, and for which they are totally unfitted. Fitness, in all things important, in sick nursing is essential, but there is such a thing as a woman striving to make herself fit, not glorying in being unfit. Perfect self-discipline is only to be acquired by gradually accustoming the mind to realise suffering, as one of the stubborn facts life brings before us all in some form or other; and to face suffering calmly we must conquer self, and lay it aside completely. Granted then that these papers will be read by some who are thus anxious to fit themselves for the higher and sterner duties of life, I shall try to put as many really practical suggestions before the reader as can be touched upon in a limited space.

But before going further into the subject of sick-nursing, I would remind those who feel a reluctance to enter upon such topics, or try to work them out in practice, that, when thrust upon us by God's hand, these duties can only be neglected at the cost of years of unavailing remorse, for the bitter price of cowardice must be paid in tears that cannot retrieve the past.

I would now say a word on early training, and how much depends upon it. I am certain that in innumerable cases the unhappy, hysterical, nervous temperament that shrinks from the sight of all suffering, save the complacent contemplation of its own, is the result of false impressions given in childhood. Ignorant or superstitious servants often