ld have traced every step of its progress with anxiety, and hailed
its success with the most ardent delight. Poor Sir Samuel Romilly!
Quando ullum invenient parem? How long may a penal code at once too
sanguinary and too lenient, half written in blood like Draco's, and
half undefined and loose as the common law of a tribe of savages, be the
curse and disgrace of the country? How many years may elapse before a
man who knows like him all that law can teach, and possesses at the same
time like him a liberality and a discernment of general rights which
the technicalities of professional learning rather tend to blunt, shall
again rise to ornament and reform our jurisprudence? For such a man, if
he had fallen in the maturity of years and honours, and been borne from
the bed of sickness to a grave by the side of his prototype Hale amidst
the tears of nobles and senators, even then, I think, the public sorrow
would have been extreme. But that the last moments of an existence of
high thoughts and great virtues should have been passed as his were
passed! In my feelings the scene at Claremont [The death of Princess
Charlotte.] this time last year was mere dust in the balance in
comparison.

Ever your affectionate son,

T. B. M.

Cambridge: Friday, February 5, 1819.

My dear Father,--I have not of course had time to examine with attention
all your criticisms on Pompeii. [The subject of the English poem for the
Chancellor's prize of 1819 was the Destruction of Pompeii.] I certainly
am much obliged to you for withdrawing so much time from more important
business to correct my effusions. Most of the remarks which I have
examined are perfectly just; but as to the more momentous charge, the
want of a moral, I think it might be a sufficient defence that, if a
subject is given which admits of none, the man who writes without a
moral is scarcely censurable. But is it the real fact that no literary
employment is estimable or laudable which does not lead to the spread
of moral truth or the excitement of virtuous feeling? Books of amusement
tend to polish the mind, to improve the style, to give variety to
conversation, and to lend a grace to more important accomplishments. He
who can effect this has surely done something. Is no useful end served
by that writer whose works have soothed weeks of languor and sickness,
have relieved the mind exhausted from the pressure of employment by an
amusement which delights without enervating, which rel