well might, a general horror, and the practice was abandoned, though the
law was not abrogated. It was the mild and enlightened Sir Samuel
Romilly who first brought in a bill to annul the old acts which ordered
the most revolting mutilation of the corpses of traitors, agreeable to a
sentence expressed in the most barbarous jargon. Mark, this was only a
few years since, I believe in 1811.

What must have been the taste of our forefathers, who suffered
miscreants to obtain their livelihood for the moment by stationing
themselves at Temple-bar, after the rebellion in 1745, with
magnifying-glasses, that the spectators might more nicely discriminate
the features of those unfortunate gentlemen whose heads had been fixed
over the gateway. No London populace, however tumultuary, would now for
a moment tolerate such an outrage upon all that is decent and
humane--(From a clever letter in _the Times_ of April 12, by Colonel
Jones.)

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THE SELECTOR AND LITERARY NOTICES OF _NEW WORKS._

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THE ALTRIVE TALES.

By the Ettrick Shepherd.