n every age have
pictured in glowing colors the gradual but sure approach of the
millennium, yet we are, apparently, still as far from that elysium of
purity and unselfishness as ever. Whenever the wolf and the lamb lie
down together, the innocent bleater is invariably inside the other's
ravenous maw. There may be--and we have reason to know that there is--a
marked diminution in certain forms of crime, but there are others in
which surprising fertility of resource and ingenuity of method but too
plainly evince that the latest developments of science and skill are
being successfully pressed into the service of the modern criminal.
Increase of education and scientific skill not only confers superior
facilities for the successful perpetration of crime, but also for its
concealment. The revelations of the newspapers, from week to week, but
too plainly indicate an undercurrent of vice and iniquity, whose depth
and foulness defy all computation.

We are not in accord with those pessimists who speak of New York as a
boiling caldron of crime, without any redeeming features or hopeful
elements. But our practice in the courts and our association with
criminals of every kind, and the knowledge consequently gained of their
history and antecedents, have demonstrated that, in a great city like
New York, the germs of evil in human life are developed into the rankest
maturity. As the eloquent Dr. Guthrie, in his great work, "The City, its
Sins and its Sorrows," remarks: "Great cities many have found to be
great curses. It had been well for many an honest lad and unsuspecting
country girl that hopes of higher wages and opportunities of fortune,
that the gay attire and gilded story of some acquaintance, had never
turned their steps cityward, nor turned them from the simplicity and
safety of their country home. Many a foot that once lightly pressed the
heather or brushed the dewy grass has wearily trodden in darkness, guilt
and remorse, on these city pavements. Happy had it been for many had
they never exchanged the starry skies for the lamps of the town, nor had
left their quiet villages for the throng and roar of the big city's
streets. Weil for them had they heard no roar but the river's, whose
winter flood it had been safer to breast; no roar but ocean's, whose
stormiest waves it had been safer to ride, than encounter the flood of
city temptations, which has wrecked their virtue and swept them into
ruin."

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