Danish or Anglo-Saxon. A gentleman, singularly distinguished by his unrivalled knowledge of the antiquities both of literature and of art, * who heard that these ornaments had passed into the hands of a tradesman, addressed a letter to the Council, and obtained an order for a drawing of one of the bracelets, though not without opposition. This bracelet was purchased by an intelligent antiquary, but all the others of these most singular jewels have shared the fate of the Darics, which, when consigned by Hastings to the Directors, were, after being duly examined by the committee of treasury,' faithfully forwarded to Goldsmith's Hall, and melted into ingots: and the bullion being weighed and assayed, the value was carried to account, and a thankful letter written to the Governor-general, acknowledging the receipt of the thirty-six pounds odd shillings which thus recruited the finances of the Company. Such acts occur almost as frequently as there can be any temptation to commit them; and the only chance of preventing the deeds of Vandalism, is by offering some reasonable premium for the preservation of those remains which are worth destroying by the finder: but how many are irretrievably lost? The magic shield of Edwin§ has, probably, been long since converted into tea-spoons or sugar-tongs.

Drawings of antiquarian objects are properly enumerated by Mr. Markland amongst the contents of his museum. Of these the society already possesses a large and valuable collection, many by the late Mr. Charles Stothard. We will not say that he was an artist who cannot be equalled, but we may assert, that, as yet, no one has ever united equal accuracy and feeling, and that he is the model whom every antiquarian artist must follow if he wishes to excel. Stothard's pencil was always guided by his mind. Those who have not attempted to draw with precision, are scarcely aware how inaccurately the eye sees any intricate or complicated object, until its lines and structure are fully intelligible to the understanding. Stothard never began his drawing, until, by previous study, he had fully satisfied himself of the tint, the form

Mr. Douce.

Mr. Henderson.

Hickes, Diss. Ep. 187. § Whilst these sheets are passing through the press, a singular article of this description has been put into our hands-it is a very attenuated plate of gold, measuring about four inches by one, lately discovered at Llanpeblic, (Caernarvon,) near the Roman station of Segontium. The characters with which it is covered, are, for the most part, Greek—and as Cæsar states, that Greek letters were known to the Druids, it might at first be supposed that we possess a genuine remain of the Celtic age; but on examining the text this pleasing vision is dispelled. The first word is AAONAI; and the other Hebrew names and epithets, such as EANAI, IAN, EAAION, which can be distinctly traced, show that it is a Basilidian talisman. After the inscription in Greek letters, another follows, in astral or magical characters. Though not British, this relic of antiquity is extremely curious. According to Irenæus, the Basilidian doctrines prevailed in Gaul immediately after the Apostolic age, and the talisman, which, from the shape of the characters, appears to be of the second century, affords an important proof of the rapid extension of the heresy to the remotest provinces of the Roman world,

and

and the bearing of every part and portion of his subject, We know, for instance, that he passed three days, from sun-rise till sun-set, in examining the tomb of Sir Oliver de Ingham, before he ventured to commence the admirable drawing, engraved in his Monumental Antiquities,* In architectural antiquities, notwithstanding the great interest which has been excited of late years, much still remains to be done. And it would be very desirable to preserve correct architectural drawings of ruined buildings, which offer the most authentic examples, uncontaminated by restoration, and unpolluted by repair: we do not want pretty, tasteful representations for young ladies' albums or the drawing-room table, but sound and scientific portraits and dissections, exhibiting those details of construction, which can alone afford any real help to the architect. Fountains, Selby, Croyland, Lindisfarne, and, indeed, all the finest of our desecrated fanes have, as yet, been treated only by the delusive pencil of the lovers of the picturesque.

A museum of antiquities, properly organized, would not only tend to the preservation of the objects, but ultimately show the real use to which they are to be applied. By an assemblage of details, the observer may be led to generalize. The main error of our English antiquarians has arisen from their narrowing their views to particular points of research, and by confounding the interest arising from singularity, with the interest of history.

ART. IX.-1. Letter to the Magistrates of England on the Increase of Crime. By Sir E. E. Wilmot, Bart., London, 1828. 2. The Seventh Report of the Committee of the Society for the Improvement of Prison Discipline, &c. 1827.

THE Letter of Sir Eardley Eardley Wilmot, addressed to the

magistrates of England, on the increase of crime, containing much, though not the whole, truth, is entitled to no small degree of consideration. The author tells us, that within the last seven years he has, in the county of Warwick, tried above two thousand criminals for petty offences! Such experience must have afforded him considerable insight into the habits and springs of action of the vicious part of the community, and enabled him to form a tolerably accurate judgment of the effects of punishment upon the different classes of them, whether in the way of amendment, intimidation, or corruption. When such a man steps for

We beg to recommend to our readers a very interesting memoir of Mr. Stothard; by his widow, (now Mrs. Bray,) who partook largely in his enthusiasm for antiquities, and has interwoven much curious matter of that kind in her romances of St. Foix and the White Hoods,' which may be consulted as very pleasing and very faithful chronicles of the elder day. The memoir of Stothard is written with great ́elegance and much feeling.

ward

ward with such a statement as this, we may feel assured that mischief lurks somewhere; and though the remedy he suggests will not perhaps wholly remove the evil, it is assuredly entitled to respectful attention. Disposed as we are to admit the truth of very many of his observations, we cannot go the whole length of his views upon this subject. He ascribes all, or almost all, of this recent rapid increase of crime to the effects of early imprisonment. Doubtless much mischief springs from committing to prison mere urchins upon every paltry charge of what the law cabalistically calls felony; nor is the absurdity a jot less in subinitting these children to the tedious and somewhat clumsy operations of the machinery of criminal procedure, to the secret investigations of a grand jury, and all the pomp and circumstance of a court of judicature, when a sound whipping at the moment, or a month of solitary confinement upon bread and water, would be infinitely more suitable both to the quality of the offence and the age of the offender; still we can no more believe that early imprisonment is the efficient and primary cause of crime, than that the injudicious treatment formerly of persons afflicted with the smallpox, by shutting them up in the noxious air of rooms hermetically sealed, was the cause of the disease; such folly may have aggravated the symptoms, but could never have originated the disorder. We owe, however, too much to the honourable baronet to quarrel with him about such distinctions; that he denounces a real evil, is granted—the remedy then is the chief poin for consideration. What he proposes we will give in his own

'I would recommend,' he says, not a restoration of those tribunals which formerly existed in every hundred and every village, in the time of our ancestors, but the adoption of the principle in which they originated, viz. the immediate and summary cognizance of offences committed by the youthful depredator, to be heard before an intermediate tribunal, where petty offences may be instantly proceeded against and punished, without sending the offender to undergo the stigma and contamination of a public prison, the publicity of trial, and all those evils which infallibly result from early imprisonment. I would change the law of larceny [simple] as affecting offenders of a certain age, and convert the offence into one of minor character, cognizable by two magistrates, in the same way as offences now are under the malicious trespass act, and many others; and by thus arming the magistracy with the power of immediate conviction on sufficient evidence, or on confession of the parties, I would empower them to punish the young culprit by whipping, confining him in an asylum set apart for this purpose, or by discharging him without punishment at all.'

At such an alteration of the law many will perhaps at first be inclined to startle, as giving new and somewhat dangerous powers.

to.

to the magistracy, as an innovation upon the trial by jury, and a superseding of those judicial formalities so justly considered essential to the protection of innocence; they will be inclined to think, with an old French criminalist, Ayrault, that in proceedings too summary, 'la chaleur, l'indignation, la colère y étant encore, poussent non seulement les parties, mais les témoins, mais les juges, mais l'auditoire-toutes choses avecques le tems passent bien plus humainement qu'à la chaude.'

These, unquestionably, are the evils to be apprehended from the proposed alteration of the law; their compensating balance, however, is to be found in the application of a prompt and more certain, though less severe punishment of the young offender, in sparing him the pain of a long imprisonment before trial, and in rescuing him from the chances of corruption afterwards, by placing him in an asylum where, sheltered from the contaminating air of desperate ruffianism, he may, by severe mental and bodily discipline, be made to feel the curse of crime, and from which he may be in due time restored to society a better not a worse being. Upon principle, and in analogy to other parts of our domestic jurisprudence, we are at a loss to conceive why one justice should be enabled to commit a boy to gaol for six months for taking a peach, or twelve months for stealing a dog, and power withheld from two justices to punish him for stealing a chicken. These are some of the anomalies that are still permitted to deform our criminal code, and which the projected law, if permitted to stand as it is at present framed, will only tend to increase; for the very offence which most fills our gaol with juvenile depredators would not fall within the compass of it, viz. picking pockets-the school in which infant thieves are initiated in the art and mystery of their trade. It is upon the slashed pocket of the lounger that the untutored hand generally first tries its skill; yet in such respect does the law affect to hold our persons, that even the skirts of our coats become objects of its especial protection; and he who presumes, novice as he may be, to dislodge a handkerchief, is considered guilty of what, till lately, was grand larceny, and is still liable to punishment of the higher order. The act, to be really operative and beneficial, should be made to extend to all stealing from the person without violence, with perhaps some greater limitation of the powers delegated to the justices: their jurisdiction might be limited to offenders whose age does not exceed sixteen years; and as a safeguard to innocence and a prevention of any mischief that might arise from a proceeding conducted too much à la chaude,' it might be provided that the justices shall not award their sentence until after a certain lapse of time, or that the offender shall be remanded to the next petty sessions

which usually in the country, we believe, take place every week or fortnight in the metropolis, perhaps, where those who sit in the police courts are for the most part members of the bar, and their acts more under the controul of public opinion, such delay might not be altogether so necessary. In further confirmation of the expediency of making some alteration in the law of larceny, as it affects juvenile offenders, we will submit a short extract from the last Report of the Society for the Improvement of Prison Discipline, which, for the good sense, enlightened views, and philanthropic spirit that pervade every page of it, merits the highest commendation :

Of the extent of crime among the youth of the metropolis an idea may be formed from the fact, that while in the last year the number of prisoners who passed through Newgate, above the age of twenty-one, was one thousand two hundred and sixty-two, those under that age amounted to one thousand six hundred and sixty-nine. It is also lamentable to state that, in the House of Correction, at Brixton, more than one half the number of prisoners were lately found to be under twenty-one. The causes of the evil may be briefly told. Nothing tends more powerfully than pauperism to weaken the natural affections and destroy the sense of parental obligation; whatever, therefore, contributes generally to create indigence among the poor at large, operates with peculiar severity upon their offspring. Of the crowds of boys who inhabit our prisons and infest our streets the depravity of an immense proportion may be traced to the want of care and to the neglect and criminality of their natural protectors. Numbers are without a parent or friend, and derive their subsistence by mendicity and theft. They are frequently committed to prison for short periods; on being discharged, their depredations are renewed both from habit and necessity, until, becoming the associates of old and desperate offenders their career is at length terminated by transportation or capital punishment.'

A very useful clause might, we think, be introduced into the proposed bill, extending the authority of parents by enabling them to call upon the magistracy when they have just cause of dissatisfaction with the conduct of their children, to correct them by imprisonment or otherwise. The absence of a law of this nature is incessantly felt, particularly in the metropolis, where parents are daily presenting themselves at the police offices, under the impression that such a power exists somewhere, beseeching the justices to interpose their authority, and by a timely chastisement snatch their offspring from infamy and ruin. By the Code Napoléon, the father of a child under sixteen may cause him to be imprisoned for any time not exceeding a month, and for this purpose the president of the tribunal of the district is bound at his, the parent's request, to issue a warrant of detention; above

sixteen,