ks, bring apparent opposition into intimate
relationship, and make wholeness out of confusion. Not on the stage
alone, in the world also, a man's real character comes out best in his
asides. With Dunbar there is nothing of this. He is a name, and little
more. He exists in a region to which rumour and conjecture have never
penetrated. He was long neglected by his countrymen, and was brought to
light as if by accident. He is the Pompeii of British poetry. We have
his works, but they are like the circumvallations of a Roman camp on the
Scottish hillside. We see lines stretching hither and thither, but we
cannot make out the plan, or divine what purposes were served. We only
know that every crumpled rampart was once a defence; that every
half-obliterated fosse once swarmed with men; that it was once a station
and abiding-place of human life, although for centuries now remitted to
silence and blank summer sunshine.

A LARK'S FLIGHT

Rightly or wrongly, during the last twenty or thirty years a strong
feeling has grown up in the public mind against the principle, and a
still stronger feeling against the practice, of capital punishments.
Many people who will admit that the execution of the murderer may be,
abstractly considered, just enough, sincerely doubt whether such
execution be expedient, and are in their own minds perfectly certain
that it cannot fail to demoralise the spectators. In consequence of
this, executions have become rare; and it is quite clear that many
scoundrels, well worthy of the noose, contrive to escape it. When, on
the occasion of a wretch being turned off, the spectators are few, it
is remarked by the newspapers that the mob is beginning to lose its
proverbial cruelty, and to be stirred by humane pulses; when they are
numerous, and especially when girls and women form a majority, the
circumstance is noticed and deplored. It is plain enough that, if the
newspaper considered such an exhibition beneficial, it would not lament
over a few thousand eager witnesses: if the sermon be edifying, you
cannot have too large a congregation; if you teach a moral lesson in a
grand, impressive way, it is difficult to see how you can have too many
pupils. Of course, neither the justice nor the expediency of capital
punishments falls to be discussed here. This, however, may be said,
that the popular feeling against them may not be so admirable a proof
of enlightenment as many believe. It is true that