declares it to be a mistake as a means of eliciting truth: he cites his own observation of the marked success of the opposite mode of questioning, and maintains that, generally speaking, a quiet, gentle, and straightforward examination will be the most adapted to elicit truth; the browbeating and blustering which are likeliest to confuse an honest, simple-minded witness, being just what the dishonest one is the best prepared for. "The more the storm blusters, the more carefully he wraps round him the cloak which a warm sunshine will often induce him to throw off."

Mrs.

We are told of Dr. Beattie, in his relations as a professor with his class, that his sway was absolute, because it was founded in reason and affection; that he never employed a harsh epithet in finding fault with any of his pupils; and that when, instead of a rebuke, which they were conscious they deserved, they met merely with a mild reproof, it was conveyed in such a manner as to throw, not only the delinquent, but sometimes the whole class into tears. Fielding's boy-hero is at once in tears when the kind squire takes him in hand, instead of the harsh tutor; his "guilt now flew in his face more than any severity could make it. He could more easily bear the lashes of Thwackum than the generosity of Allworthy." Fry used to bear eager record of the docility she had found, and the gratitude she had experienced, from female prisoners, though the most abandoned of their sex: kind treatment, even with restraint obviously for their good, was so new to them, that it called forth, as Sir Samuel Romilly says, "even in the most depraved, grateful and generous feelings." life is the picture Mr. Reade has drawn of the actress, of a young wife coming to her as a supplicant, instead of inveighing against her,-coming with faith in her goodness, and sobbing to her for pity: "a big tear rolled down her cheek, and proved her something more than an actress." In another of his books he illustrates the truth that men can resist the remonstrances that wound them, and so irritate them, better than they can those gentle appeals which rouse no anger, but soften the whole heart. "The old people stung

True to the effect on the

him; but Mercy, without design, took a surer way.
She never
said a word; but sometimes, when the discussions were at
their height, she turned her dove-like eyes on him, with a look
so loving, so humbly inquiring, so timidly imploring, that his
heart melted within him." So with Janet Dempster, in George
Eliot's story of clerical life, who "was not to be made meek by
cruelty; she would repent of nothing in the face of injustice,
though she was subdued in a moment by a word or a look that
recalled the old days of fondness." In fine, we may conclude
with the conclusion of old Master Knowell, in the Elizabethan
play:

"There is a way of winning more by love,
And urging of the modesty, than fear:
Force works on servile natures, not the free.
He that's compelled to goodness, may be good,
But 'tis but for that fit; where others, drawn
By softness and example, get a habit."

H

HAMAN HANGED ON HIS OWN GALLOWS.

ESTHER Vii. 10.

ARBONAH was one of the chamberlains of that king Ahasuerus, who reigned from India even unto Ethiopia, over an hundred and seven and twenty provinces. And Harbonah it was that said before the king,—when Haman, the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, the Jews' enemy, had gone one step too far in his enmity to the Jews, and had let his vaulting ambition overleap itself in his insolent confidence in royal favour, Harbonah it was that prompted royal vengeance with the suggestive reminder,-" Behold also, the gallows fifty cubits high, which Haman had made for Mordecai, who had spoken good for the king, standeth in the house of Haman." Then the king said-catching at once at the chamberlain's suggestion-" Hang him thereon." "So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai."

Somewhat musty is the adage that no law is more equitable than that by which the deviser of death perishes by his own

device: nec lex est æquior ulla, quam necis artificem arte perire sua. Musty it might be even in Harbonah's days; but the chamberlain, in the excitement of so signal an example, would feel that time cannot stale, nor custom wither, the force and import of that retributive law.

Mr. de Quincey, in his memorable narrative of the revolt of the Tartars, or flight of the Kalmuck Khan and his people from the Russian territories to the frontiers of China (1771), relates in conclusion how Zebek-Dorchi, the author and originator of this great Tartar exodus, perished after a manner specially gratifying to those who compassed his ruin; the Chinese morality being exactly of that kind which approves in everything the lex talionis. "Finally, Zebek-Dorchi was invited to the imperial lodge, together with all his accomplices; and under the skilful management of the Chinese nobles in the emperor's establishment, the murderous artifices of these Tartar chieftains were made to recoil upon themselves, and the whole of them perished by assassination at a great imperial banquet.” Iterated and reiterated in holy writ is the retributive law that the wicked shall fall by his own wickedness; that transgressors shall be taken in their own naughtiness; that he that seeketh mischief it shall come unto him. The presidents and princes under King Darius, who sought occasion against Daniel, and persuaded their reluctant sovereign to cast the prophet into the den of lions, who however wrought him no manner of hurt,— upon them the lex talionis vindicated its literal severity when they in their turn were cast into the lions' den, and the lions had the mastery of them, and brake all their bones in pieces or ever they came at the bottom of the den.

The early ballads of almost every literature delight in these retributive surprises. Genuine was the zest of our fathers for such a retort as that of William of Cloudesly on the Justice who is having him measured for his grave :

So fond is popular history of teaching this sort of philosophy by examples, that examples to the purpose are widely accepted which are yet not historical. Cardinal Balue, under Louis XI., is pointed out in his iron cage, as a malignant inventor punished in and through his own invention; but Michelet has exposed the fallacy of supposing Balue the inventor of those iron cages which had long been known in Italy. Still he had the "merit” of being their importer into France; and the lex talionis has its application to him. One remembers of course the Regent Morton hugged to death by the "maiden" he had been the means of introducing into Scotland. The French doctor, Guillotin, is even now not uncommonly believed to have perished in the reign of terror by the instrument invented by and named after him; whereas he quietly died in his bed, many, many years later than that. But the Revolution history is well stored with instances like that of Châlier, condemned to death by the criminal tribunal at Lyons,-the guillotine, which he had sent for from Paris to destroy his enemies, being first destined to sever his own head from his body. A bungling executioner prolonged the last agonies of this man, who in fact was hacked to death, not decapitated. He tasted slowly, as Lamartine says, of the death, a thirst for which he had so often sought to excite in the people; "he was glutted with blood, but it was his own." Alison recognises in the death of Murat a memorable instance of the moral retribution which often attends upon "great deeds of iniquity, and by the instrumentality of the very acts which appeared to place them beyond its reach." He underwent in 1815 the very fate to which, seven years before, he had consigned a hundred Spaniards at Madrid, guilty of no other crime than that of defending their country; and this, as Sir Archibald adds, "by the application of a law to his own case, which he himself had introduced, to check the attempts of the Bourbons to regain a throne which he had usurped." No man, Lord Macaulay affirms, ever made a more unscrupulous use of the legislative power for the destruction of his enemies than Thomas Cromwell; and it was by an unscrupulous use of the legislative power that he was

himself destroyed. Those who tauntingly reminded Fenwick, when attainted in 1696, that he had supported the bill which attainted Monmouth, were warned that they might perhaps themselves be tauntingly reminded in some dark and terrible hour, that they had supported the bill which attainted Fenwick. "God forbid that our tyrants should ever be able to plead, in justification of the worst that they can inflict upon us, precedents furnished by ourselves!" Again, it is in recording how, late in life, a horrible calumny settled upon Cicero, that Mr. de Quincey, without lending a moment's credit to the foul insinuation, nevertheless is free to recognise the equity of this retribution revolving upon one who, he asserts, had so often slandered others in the same malicious way. "At last the poisoned chalice came round to his own lips, and at a moment when it wounded the most acutely." Sape, as Seneca has it, in magistrum scelera redierunt sua.

For

"in these cases

We still have judgment here; that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice
To our own lips."

Plutarch rejoices in showing in Hercules an avenger who adapted the special mode of vengeance to the distinctive deserts of the wrong-doer. He punished with the very mode of punishment devised by those who were now made to suffer it. Antæus he killed in wrestling, and Termerus by breaking his skull, it being the specialité of Termerus to destroy the passengers he met by dashing his head against theirs. Theseus was the imitator of Hercules in this retributive system; he punished Sinis, a bandit,-who used to kill travellers by binding them to the boughs of two pine-trees, which were then allowed to swing back and separate-by making an end of him in the self-same way; Procrustes again he stretched on his own bed. Phalaris, the tyrant of Agrigentum, infamous for his cruelty, and specially for the device devised for him by Perillus