f the most decided spirit. To acknowledge this fact is not to applaud
their conduct, or admire their general ultimate character....

We have constantly remembered what we early read in the works of Mr.
Burke, that it is the propensity of degenerate minds to admire or
worship _splendid wickedness_; that, with too many persons, the ideas of
justice and morality are fairly conquered and overpowered by guilt when
it is grown gigantic, and happens to be associated with the lustre
of genius, the glare of fashion, or the robes of power. Against this
species of degeneracy or illusion it has been our uniform endeavor to
guard ourselves, and our conscientious practice to warn and exhort
others. The integrity and delicacy of the moral sense, whether in
individuals or communities, form a most important subject of the care of
all public writers and speakers, in all transactions by which, or the
history or treatment of which, the public, judgment and feelings may
be affected. Hence, when mail robbers or murderers are to be tried or
executed, we should be disposed to avoid all extraordinary bustle, or
concern, or voluminous details about their fate; we should deem it the
true policy of practical ethics to abstain from everything calculated to
produce adventitious interest or consequence for the culprits. It is not
with pleasure that we hear of the crowds that besiege the door of the
court-room, or see in the newspapers the many columns of evidence, with
an endless repetition of trifling circumstances, any more than we
can rejoice for the cause of moral and social order when convicted
highwaymen or murderers are carried to the gallows as _saints_, and hung
amidst vast assemblages, either merely indulging a callous curiosity,
or losing all the horror of their offences in emotions of compassion or
admiration, awakened by the dramatic nature of the whole scene.

* * * * *

=_Thomas S. Grimke,[47] 1786-1834._=

From "Addresses, Scientific and Literary."

=_154._= LITERARY EXCELLENCE OF THE ENGLISH BIBLE.

The translation of the Bible, in the reign of James I., is the most
remarkable and interesting event in the history of translations....
The great excellence of the translation is due to six considerations.
_First_, it was made under a very solemn sense of the important duty
devolved on those who were thus selected. Hence arose that prevailing
air of dignity, gravity, simplicity, which is so conspicuou