you, and is very sorry you think ill of her: and,
as for me, I love you; you know how I love
you. I hid my face in my hands; and sobbed
out, Oh, you must not; you must not; my poor
father has one disobedient child already. He
said softly, Don't cry, dear one; have a little
patience; perhaps the clouds will clear: and,
meantime, why think so ill of us? Consider, we
are four in number, of different dispositions, yet
all of one mind about Julia marrying Alfred.
May we not be right; may we not know
something we love you too well to tell you? His
words and his rich manly voice were so soothing;
I gave him just one hand while I still hid my
burning face with the other; he kissed the hand
I yielded him, and left me abruptly.

If Alfred should be right! I am staggered
now; he puts it so much more convincingly."

"April 5th. A letter from Alfred, announcing
his wedding by special license for the 11th.

Made no reply. What could I say?

Papa, on my reading it out, left his very breakfast
half finished, and packed up his bag and
rushed up to London. I caught a side view of
his face; and I am miserable. Such a new, such
a terrible expression: a vile expression! Heaven
forgive me, it seemed the look of one who
meditated a crime."

PATCHED LAW.

WE have all heard something of a society
"For Promoting the Amendment of the Law,"
and we know how laboriously many of the
foremost men in the legal profession strive to
harmonise and arrange in compact rows the
clumsy foundations of a legal system designed
for a half-civilised society. There is no department
of law that does not require their attention.
Let us take, for example, one in which
they have been lately working to some purpose,
and show how in dealing with the common
course of crimes and offences, the old coat of
criminal law has been outgrown, has burst
into rents and broken into holes, but has been
cherished with darns and patches down, to our
own day: nothing so revolutionary as a refit
being dreamed of.

If an Anglo-Saxon murderer were caught in
the act, knife in hand, or if an Anglo-Saxon thief
were taken with the plunder in his hand, or on
his back, there was no process of law called for;
the constable, sheriff, or lord of the franchise,
might kill him without inquiry.* But if he were
not so caught, nobody was wise enough to see
the force of circumstantial evidence. To this
day, the effect of the strongest circumstantial
evidence is lost upon the unsophisticated Anglo-
Saxon; murderers and murderesses, condemned
most righteously upon such evidence, find
upholders of their innocence, and petitioners in
their favour, all over the land. The original
Anglo-Saxon, yet untouched by Norman wit,
never looked, when there was possibility of
doubt, to the shrewd linking of fact with fact.
The question was simply one of character. Was
the accused a man likely to rob or murder? If
the injured man were the accuser, he must bring
seven witnesses to swear that he did not accuse
in malice. If the accused were of inferior rank,
his lord and two thanes having sworn to his
character, his own oath and that of a certain
number of friendly neighbours would suffice to
free him, or he might appeal to the ordeal of
boiling water or hot iron. If the lord refused
his testimony, there must be more inferior oaths
of confidence, or a more severe ordeal.
Conviction involved, in such cases, not capital
punishment, but the infliction of a penalty
which was the price of redemption from death;
with this was sometimes joined a penalty paid
in the person. A man frequently charged with
theft, at last forfeited a hand or foot as well as
money. There were penalties also of banishment
and slavery, and four or five crimes were
at one time set forth, any one of which was
pronounced inexpiable.
* An ancient Scotch law is exquisitely pointed
and brief:—"Gif ony mon steal a cow, he sall be
hangit."

The courts which decided these questions were
the sheriff's circuit, or tourn, and the leet. The
tourn was held by the sheriff and bishop, twice
a year in every hundred. The leet was an
inferior court, for a hundred or manor too remote
to be conveniently included in the circuit. The
judges in these courts had nothing to
investigate. They simply saw that, at a sort of public
meeting, each party produced or failed to produce
the due number of swearers for or
against character; the whole arrangement of
the evidence being a local matter; the judges
had also to see that ordeals appealed to were
gone through, and that fines incurred were paid.
The king had a jurisdiction above that of all
courts, and gave special protections of law, under
the name of 'the king's peace,' to those whom
he favoured.

When the Normans came, they modified the
law they found, and began by making the king's
peace, not an exceptional favour, but the
universal guarantee. It was proclaimed, once for
all, at the beginning of each reign; but the
proclamation was regarded as so necessary, that,
in the interval between the death of one
monarch and the recognition of his successor, the
crown courts were held to have no power of
inflicting punishment. Henry de Bracton, who
was one of Henry the Third's judges in the
year twelve 'forty-four, wrote a book on the
Laws and Customs of England, in which he
describes "how and in what order the judges
ought to proceed in their eyre" (that is to say,
in itinere, on their circuit). They were to give
at least fifteen days' notice of their coming to
each place, and then, having read the writ under
which they sat, should call together privately
six or more of the chief men of the county, and
teach them how they were lawfully to keep the
peace, how and when to raise hue and cry and
arrest suspected persons, or those who bought