58 



instances are only less frequent in our own times, they are not 

 a whit less appalling. The very forms to which " the tyranny 

 of Civilization" binds us, sometimes wither the natural and 

 honourable instincts of the heart ; so that certain actions of 

 an enlightened age exceed in cool atrocity anything that is 

 known in barbarous times. All the horrors recorded in the 

 ballad of Sir Hugh, — were they even as true as " lewed men 

 and lered," gentle and simple, supposed them to be, — would 

 appear kindness and gentleness if contrasted with some of the 

 facts which are revealed in modern law courts. Thus, let us take 

 one of the nearest facts. The newspapers record, in connexion 

 with the recent assizes (July, 1848), the following case that 

 came before the Irish judges. In the open day, the life of a 

 gentleman was menaced by the members of a family whose 

 resentment he had incurred. Several sisters and a male rela- 

 tive kept watch, while he was dragged into an inner apartment 

 of the cottage and brutally murdered. One of four brothers 

 beat him on the head with an axe, as cattle are felled in the 

 slaughter-house ; and another, seizing the instrument, applied 

 the sharp edge of it vigorously to the throat of the dying 

 victim. The aged mother, who had long passed three-score 

 years and ten, held a basin in her palsied hands to catch the 

 blood ! ! Those who are fond of horrors will find other facts 

 alluded to in the note : * from which it does not appear that we 

 have much to boast of in modern times. 



It may suffice to conclude this summary by simply cpioting 

 the very sensible remarks of Bishop Percy. " If we consider, 

 on the one hand, the ignorance and superstition of the times 

 when such stories took their rise, the virulent prejudices of the 



* Celebrated Murderers. — Simmonds, " the man of blood," Hertford, executed 1808 ; 

 Captain Grant, 1816 ; murderers of the Lynch family, at " Wild-goose Lodge," 1817 ; 

 the Ashcrofts, 1817 : Cheune 11 and Calcraft, 1820 ; Thurtell, 1824 ; Burke and Hare, 

 1828; Mary Ann Burdock, " the Bristol murderess," 1835; Greenacre, 1837; 

 Courvoisier, 1840; Good, 1842; "Puck" Ryan, 1847; Rush, 1849 ; the murderer 

 of Mrs. Henrichson and family, Liverpool, 1849. 



