Vistas.=

=Nuova Codice Penale per il Regno d'Italia.=

A. COFFIGNON. =La Corruption a Paris.= Paris, La Librairie Illustree. 7th
edition. No date.

INTRODUCTION.

There is a passion, or a perversion of appetite, which, like all human
passions, has played a considerable part in the world's history for good
or evil; but which has hardly yet received the philosophical attention
and the scientific investigation it deserves. The reason of this may be
that in all Christian societies the passion under consideration has been
condemned to pariahdom; consequently, philosophy and science have not
deigned to make it the subject of special enquiry. Only one great race
in past ages, the Greek race, to whom we owe the inheritance of our
ideas, succeeded in raising it to the level of chivalrous enthusiasm.
Nevertheless, we find it present everywhere and in all periods of
history. We cannot take up the religious books, the legal codes, the
annals, the descriptions of the manners of any nation, whether large or
small, powerful or feeble, civilised or savage, without meeting with
this passion in one form or other. Sometimes it assumes the calm and
dignified attitude of conscious merit, as in Sparta, Athens, Thebes.
Sometimes it skulks in holes and corners, hiding an abashed head and
shrinking from the light of day, as in the capitals of modern Europe.
It confronts us on the steppes of Asia, where hordes of nomads drink
the milk of mares; in the bivouac of Keltish warriors, lying wrapped in
wolves' skins round their camp-fires; upon the sands of Arabia, where
the Bedaween raise desert dust in flying squadrons. We discern it among
the palm-groves of the South Sea Islands, in the card-houses and
temple-gardens of Japan, under Esquimaux snow-huts, beneath the sultry
vegetation of Peru, beside the streams of Shiraz and the waters of the
Ganges, in the cold clear air of Scandinavian winters. It throbs in our
huge cities. The pulse of it can be felt in London, Paris, Berlin,
Vienna, no less than in Constantinople, Naples, Teheran, and Moscow. It
finds a home in Alpine valleys, Albanian ravines, Californian canyons,
and gorges of Caucasian mountains. It once sat, clothed in Imperial
purple, on the throne of the Roman Caesars, crowned with the tiara on
the chair of St. Peter. It has flaunted, emblazoned with the heraldries
of France and England, in coronation ceremonies at Rheims and
Westminster. The royal palaces of Madrid and Aranju