nciples of equity, systematizing their
expression and making them simple, uniform and absolute in practice.
When a judge in one of the largest and most enlightened States of the
Union grants a writ of error to a convict whom he has twice sentenced
to be hanged, it is plain to the dullest unprofessional eye that
something is radically and mischievously wrong with bench, bar,
or legislature, or with all three. It makes the administration of
justice, in its best aspect, a lottery; the goddess blindfolded, it
may be, but only for drawing from the wheel. In the worst aspect it
makes of it a hideous mockery. With the proverbial uncertainty of the
law we have been long familiar. It is measurably curable. We are now
confronted by its proverbial certainty to go wrong. Whether the cause
lie in the mode of election and tenure of judges, a tendency of the
bar to limit its responsibility by the title and the ethics of the
attorney, or the endless tinkering of forty legislatures, or in all
of these combined with other influences that might be suggested, it is
evident that we are ripe for law reform, and that our Romilly cannot
appear too soon.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Sonnets, Songs and Stories. By Cora Kennedy Aitken. London:
Hodder & Stoughton.

This little book is one of that numerous class which is the despair of
the critic. Its spirit is so much better than its letter that one is
left in doubt whether its author is incapable of more careful finish,
or is simply disdainful of it. Mrs. Aitken is apparently a lesser
Mrs. Browning, cast in a Scotch mould. She is fond of writing upon
patriotic or historic themes, and through all her poems runs a current
of strong religious feeling. Without being in any sense an imitator of
Mrs. Browning, there is a certain trick of phrase here and there which
recalls her style, while the choice of subjects continually reminds
one of Mrs. Browning's favorite themes. One of her sonnets, called
"Unless" (an awkward title enough, by the by) begins thus:

Sweetheart, I tell thee, I, a woman born
To live by music, and to soar and sing,
As stars for shining, flowers for blossoming,
Could never sit beneath the stars and mourn
With missing aught from such high destinies.

That is very suggestive of Mrs. Browning's style, and it were easy to
multiply instances; such as this, for example, from the poem called
"In York:"

The broad vaulted aisles are so still we can hear
T