facit:
nec potest esse immunis a sanguine qui voluit effundi; aut videri non
interfecisse, qui interfectori et favit et proemium postulavit." "Human
life," says he, "is guarded by laws of the uttermost rigor, yet custom has
devised a mode of evading them in behalf of murder; and the demands of
taste (voluptas) are now become the same as those of abandoned guilt." Let
the Society of Gentlemen Amateurs consider this; and let me call their
especial attention to the last sentence, which is so weighty, that I shall
attempt to convey it in English: "Now, if merely to be present at a
murder fastens on a man the character of an accomplice; if barely to be a
spectator involves us in one common guilt with the perpetrator; it follows
of necessity, that, in these murders of the amphitheatre, the hand which
inflicts the fatal blow is not more deeply imbrued in blood than his who
sits and looks on: neither can _he_ be clear of blood who has countenanced
its shedding; nor that man seem other than a participator in murder who
gives his applause to the murderer, and calls for prizes in his behalf."
The "_praemia postulavit_" I have not yet heard charged upon the Gentlemen
Amateurs of London, though undoubtedly their proceedings tend to that;
but the "_interfectori favil_" is implied in the very title of this
association, and expressed in every line of the lecture which I send you.

I am, &c. X. Y. Z.

* * * * *

LECTURE.

GENTLEMEN,--I have had the honor to be appointed by your committee to the
trying task of reading the Williams' Lecture on Murder, considered as one
of the Fine Arts; a task which might be easy enough three or four centuries
ago, when the art was little understood, and few great models had been
exhibited; but in this age, when masterpieces of excellence have been
executed by professional men, it must be evident, that in the style
of criticism applied to them, the public will look for something of a
corresponding improvement. Practice and theory must advance _pari passu_.
People begin to see that something more goes to the composition of a fine
murder than two blockheads to kill and be killed--a knife--a purse--and a
dark lane. Design, gentlemen, grouping, light and shade, poetry, sentiment,
are now deemed indispensable to attempts of this nature. Mr. Williams
has exalted the ideal of murder to all of us; and to me, therefore, in
particular, has deepened the arduousness of my task. Like