insomuch that they, "upon the killing of any one of their number, are
thereby so alarmed and put upon their keeping, that it hath been found
impracticable for such person or persons to discover and apprehend or
kill any more of them, whereby they are discouraged from discovering and
apprehending or killing," and so forth. There is a strange and
melancholy historical interest in these grotesque enactments, since they
almost verbatim repeat the legislation about the Highland clans passed a
century earlier by the Lowland Parliament of Scotland.

There is one shelf of the law library laden with a store of which few
will deny the attractive interest--that devoted to the literature of
Criminal Trials. It will go hard indeed, if, besides the reports of mere
technicalities, there be not here some glimpses of the sad romances
which lie at their heart; and, at all events, when the page passes a
very slight degree beyond the strictly professional, the technicalities
will be found mingled with abundant narrative. The State Trials, for
instance--surely a lawyer's book--contains the materials of a thousand
romances: nor are these all attached to political offences; as,
fortunately, the book is better than its name, and makes a virtuous
effort to embrace all the remarkable trials coming within the long
period covered by the collection. Some assistance may be got, at the
same time, from minor luminaries, such as the Newgate Calendar--not to
be commended, certainly, for its literary merits, but full of matters
strange and horrible, which, like the gloomy forest of the Castle of
Indolence, "sent forth a sleepy horror through the blood."

There are many other books where records of remarkable crimes are mixed
up with much rubbish, as, The Terrific Register, God's Revenge against
Murder, a little French book called Histoire Generale des Larrons
(1623), and if the inquirer's taste turn towards maritime crimes, The
History of the Bucaniers, by Esquemeling. A little work in four
volumes, called the Criminal Recorder, by a student in the Inner Temple,
can be commended as a sort of encyclopaedia of this kind of literature.
It professes--and is not far from accomplishing the profession--to give
biographical sketches of notorious public characters, including
"murderers, traitors, pirates, mutineers, incendiaries, defrauders,
rioters, sharpers, highwaymen, footpads, pickpockets, swindlers,
housebreakers, coiners, receivers, extortioners, and othe