798 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



who would refuse any work, however anxious on other grounds to ac- 

 cept it, if it involved the frequent perusal of long manuscripts in varied 

 handwritings. No doubt the tendency to a broad and coarse but beau- 

 tifully legible handwriting, which has conquered the upper class and 

 is slowly filtering downward, is diminishing this reluctance, but it 

 would be more rapidly removed if a little trouble were taken to teach 

 children to read handwriting. They hardly see any till they begin to 

 receive correspondence, and are never compelled to read any, and con- 

 sequently learn to write what they can not read, without intelligence 

 and without pleasure. — Spectator. 



A CONSIDEEATION OF SUICIDE. 



By J. H. HOPKINS. 



"'^riCHOLAS RIDLEY and Hugh Latimer stood at the stake to be 

 -i^^ burned for heresy. Fastened to the body of each was a bag of 

 powder, placed there by friends with the intention of bringing the 

 sufferings of the victims to a speedy termination. Latimer died first. 

 The flames, rising rapidly, touched the bag of powder, and the torture 

 for him was at an end. Ridley was not so fortunate. The wood, pre- 

 pared for his execution, being green and tightly packed, the fire 

 smoldered, and he was long in agony, crying out that he could not 

 bui-n ; until one of the spectators having loosened the fagots and 

 admitted air, the flame swept up to the powder and brought death. 



It is certain that the use of powder was not included in the sen- 

 tence of death. It was permitted, not authorized. Death being sure, 

 the persecutors were magnanimous enough, at the last, to allow it to 

 come quickly. As the Athenian tribunal granted the privilege of 

 hemlock to Socrates ; as the English executioners failed to carry out, 

 literally, the horrible sentence of hanging, drawing, and quartering ; 

 so the Marian ofiicials did not insist on the extreme rigor of the sen- 

 tence. But was this hastening of death, in a way unauthorized by 

 law, either murder on the part of the friends of Ridley and Latimer, 

 or suicide on their own part ? 



Under the old, stern common law, literally construed, the martyrs 

 who used and the friends who furnished the powder were guilty, the 

 former of siiicide and the latter of murder. " The law of England," 

 says Blackstone (vol. ii., p. 189), "wisely and religiously considers 

 that no man hath a power to destroy life but by commission from 

 God, the author of it ; and, as the suicide is guilty of a double offense, 

 one spiritual, in evading the prerogative of the Almighty, and rushing 

 into his immediate presence uncalled for, the other temporal, against 

 the King, who hath an interest in the preservation of all his subjects, 



