430 CRITICAL NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. 



piece of statuary, the value of which is unknown from being encrusted 

 with mud and other defacing substances. The first step is to remove, 

 carefully, this incrustation, by which its merit may be discovered and its 

 beauty laid open to general view. This work of purification has been 

 attempted by Mr. Symonds, and from the mode he has adopted, we can 

 readily conceive that he will enlist many admirers into his system. 



The statutes of a single session, it is well known by those who 

 critically observe these matters, contain every variety of anomaly ; and 

 this must be the case until the legislature shall appoint persons to draw 

 or revise all laws, and to couch them in an uniform expression. In 

 some degree the present work would help the discussion of the legis- 

 lature on this point ; but in the meanwhile individual members will find 

 that it is practically useful, to enable them to watch the exertions of 

 others, and to complete their own. Half the labour of pushing a bill 

 through Parliament would be saved, if it were made plain to ordinary 

 understandings — for want of this intelligibility, the magistrates and the 

 people often fall into egregious error. Our Acts of Parliament are written 

 in the style of a foreigner who has learned the language out of book, 

 with the aid of a grammar — grammatical rules are nowhere violated, yet 

 it is difficult to recognise in his finical preciseness one's own language. 

 A law should be written in the tone of the language of the time (for 

 which we have Lord Coke's authority), and when that has become 

 obsolete, it should be altered ; but it will be found that the idiomatic 

 structure, which has relation to the matter of a thing, does not change 

 so fast : and the laws would help to preserve the sameness of meaning. 

 To men who cling to the present system, and yet would introduce 

 all improvements compatible with it, as well as to the rnore comprehen- 

 sive-minded, and yet more practical reformer, who would make the laws 

 as brief, as clear, and as simple as laws might be made, this book will 

 unquestionably furnish some useful auxiliaries. 



The articles which comprise the substance of this volume are arranged 

 under seven distinct heads, as follow : — 



The Art of Reading an Act of Parliament as at present written — the 

 Art of Making a Law — on the Classification and Consolidation of the 

 Statutes — Institutional Reforms connected with Law-making — Parallel 

 Illustrations — Critical Notices on particular Statutes — Suggestions for 

 a Statute of Directions and Constructions — and an Appendix, containing 

 a glossary of proscribed words and phrases, and an abridged table of 

 statutes of session 1834. 



This is not decidedly a theoretical work wholly unfounded in practice, 

 it is right to observe, although it contains many things that are new, 

 many things that are questionable, and many that are imperfectly ex- 

 plained ; still it is, on the whole, an attempt most creditable to the 

 ingenious author, and from which the materials for improving the 

 present wordy and complex system of our parliamentary acts may be 

 profitably gleaned. 



Poems: by Albius. Churton, Holies-street, 1835. 



If these poems were composed so far back as the year 1825, as some 

 of them are stated to have been by the author, we conclude that they 

 were the first ebullitions of an imagination just beginning to feel its own 

 restlessness, a precocious but rather praiseworthy attempt to picture the 

 feelings, the passions, and the phantasies of incipient manhood. In that 

 case they might have soothed the pensive hours of the happy dreamer, 

 and as intellect expanded, have occasionally aflforded a temporary 



