in his traditions of the days of Sycorax, and her god Setebos, and regarding all good done as a wrong offered to his old claim of ancestral right,-and the winged meteor of Fancy, I had almost said, the Spirit of winged words, whose very life is perpetual change, were alike indispensable, and may, for the purpose of our illustration at least, be regarded as typifying the lubber and limber elves of Antiquarianism and Philology, whose services you will require, but whose usurpation you must resist."

While lingering upon these passages, however, our limits contract, and our lessening space admonishes us to conclude. We have not touched the abstruser parts of the subject, as our object was to make this article as little professional as possible. It is not only lawyers who may study Dr. Anster's pages with advantage, but all who love literature and science will find here matter to interest them, and a charm of fancy and expression which throw the brilliancy of the writer's own mind over the driest details of the driest subject. Nor is it merely genius which gives a charm to these pages. The sublimity of the concluding passage has a moral and religious grandeur of its own, which is reached by no eloquence but that of the highest kind-the eloquence of the heart.

"Our first thoughts of law, before it becomes a matter of speculation with us, are connected with its restraints, not with the advantages derived from these restraints As far as the law is from withinthe voice of God echoed in the human heart -a principle co-existent with man, susceptible of new development with each advance of civilisation-it is a language pointing out our own duties, not suggesting to us the rewards which arise from their performance. As far as it is from without-the imperative

language of the legislator, addressing all, regarding all as possible offenders-its language is necessarily of menace. The sanctions, which it proclaims as guards of its decrees and ordinances, are punishments, not rewards. The imagination is seized and pre-occupied by this language. We think of law but in its terrors. We do not remember that by it, and by it alone, can society, with all its artificial relations, subsist. We forget that it is the protection from the violence of others which renders possible for us the indulgence of the thousand almost capricious enjoyments which each day brings round us in increasing abundance. What hundreds and thousands are there who live happily and peaceably, and yet whose happiness and whose peace would be wholly impossible but for that unseen dominion of law which prevents any interference with their comforts, while they move on within their unambitious circle of domestic duties, quiet enjoyments, and inoffensive hopes. They have known and obeyed law under the name and with the feeling of religion. When we think of the wickedness of men, of the inordinate passions everywhere at work, the possibility of society continuing to exist, for the most part progressive too in good-for such, with occasional and doubtful exception, is the history of man-we think of ourselves and of society as if there was for ever going on around us-as there is the agency of God, which we at times almost see visibly revealed. There is a passage in the Hebrew Scriptures which from my earliest childhood always impressed me as one of singular beauty. Elisha is in a situation that seems of great danger. A hostile army encompasses the city where he is, and he is the object of their leader's vengeance; and his servant said unto him, 'Alas! my master, how shall we do?' And he answered, 'Fear not, for they that be with us are more than they that be with them.' And the prophet prayed and said, 'Lord, I pray thee to open the eyes of this young man;' and he saw, and behold the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.'"