views changed, he could never become a thorough
Carlylean; and after undertaking to write about Carlyle in Mr. Morley's
series he abandoned the attempt chiefly because, as he told me, he found
that he should have to adopt too frequently the attitude of a hostile
critic. Meanwhile Carlyle admired my brother's general force of
character, and ultimately made him his executor, in order, as he put it,
that there might be a 'great Molossian dog' to watch over his treasure.

VIII. VIEW OF THE CRIMINAL LAW

I come now to the third book of which I have spoken. This was the
'General View of the Criminal Law of England,' published in 1863.
Fitzjames first begins to speak of his intention of writing this book in
1858. He then took it up in preference to the history of the English
administrative system, recommended by his father. That book, indeed,
would have required antiquarian researches for which he had neither time
nor taste. He thought his beginning too long and too dull to be finished
at present. He was anxious, moreover, at the time of the Education
Commission to emphasise the fact that he had no thoughts of abandoning
his profession. A law-book would answer this purpose; and the conclusion
of the commission in 1861, and the contemporary breach with the
'Saturday Review,' gave him leisure enough to take up this task. The
germ of the book was already contained in his article in the 'Cambridge
Essays,' part of which he reproduces. He aspired to make a book which
should be at once useful to lawyers and readable by every educated man.
The 'View' itself has been in a later edition eclipsed by the later
'History of the English Criminal Law.' In point of style it is perhaps
better than its successor, because more concentrated to a single focus.
Although I do not profess to be a competent critic of the law, a few
words will explain the sense in which I take it to be characteristic of
himself.

The book, in the first place, is not, like most law-books, intended for
purely practical purposes. It attempts to give an account of the
'general scope, tendency, and design of an important part of our
institutions of which surely none can have a greater moral significance,
or be more closely connected with broad principles of morality and
politics, than those by which men rightfully, deliberately, and in cold
blood, kill, enslave, or otherwise torment their fellow-creatures.'[89]
The phrase explains the deep moral interest belonging in hi