qualities; but I do think that Fitzjames's merits as
a solid inquirer may be overlooked by readers who judge a writer by the
brilliance of his pictures and the neatness of his theories.

The book covers a very large field. A brief indication of its general
plan will show how many topics are more or less treated. He begins with
a short account of the Roman Criminal Law; and then of English law
before the Conquest. He next takes up the history of all the criminal
courts, including the criminal jurisdiction of the extraordinary courts,
such as Parliament and the Privy Council. This is followed by a history
of the procedure adopted in the courts, tracing especially the
development of trial by jury. The second volume opens a discussion of
certain principles applicable to crime in general, such as the theory of
responsibility. Next follows a history of the law relating to crime in
general. He then takes up the history of the principal classes of crime,
considering in separate chapters offences against the state, treason,
sedition, and seditious libels; offences against religion, offences
against the person (this opens the third volume), especially homicide;
offences against property, such as theft and forgery; offences relating
to trade and labour and 'miscellaneous offences.' This finishes the
history of the law in England, but he adds an account of the extension
of the English criminal law to India; and this naturally leads to an
exposition of his views upon codification. The exposition is mainly a
reproduction of the report of the Commission of 1878-9, which was
chiefly his own composition. Finally, the old reports of trials, with a
few alterations, are appended by way of pointing the contrast between
the English and the French methods, upon which he has already introduced
some observations.

Mr. Justice Stephen's book, said Sir F. Pollock in a review of the day,
is 'the most extensive and arduous' undertaken by any English lawyer
since the days of Blackstone. So large a framework necessarily includes
many subjects interesting not only to the lawyer but to the antiquary,
the historian, and the moralist; and one effect of bringing them
together under a new point of view is to show how different branches of
inquiry reciprocally illustrate each other. The historian of the
previous generation was content to denounce Scroggs and Jeffreys, or to
lament the frequency of capital offences in the eighteenth century, and
his moral,