twenty who could not sign their names_--and this in the centre of
civilization in the middle of the nineteenth century!

But a short time since, the _Morning Chronicle_ gave its readers a
list of twenty-two trials, for child-murder alone, that had been
_reported_ in its columns, and these were stated to be but one-half of
those that had taken place in the short period of twenty-seven days!
On the same occasion it stated that although English ruffianism had
"not taken to the knife," it had

"Advanced in the devilish accomplishment of biting off noses and
scooping out eyes. Kicking a man to death while he is down," it
continued, "or treating, a wife in the same way--stamping on an enemy
or a paramour with hobnailed boots--smashing a woman's head with a
hand-iron--these atrocities, which are of almost daily occurrence in
our cities, are not so much imputed crimes as they are the
extravagant exaggerations of the coarse, brutal, sullen temper of an
Englishman, brutified by ignorance and stupefied by drink."

On the same occasion the _Chronicle_ stated that in villages few young
people of the present day marry until, as the phrase is, it has
"become necessary." It is, it continued, the rural practice to "keep
company in a very loose sense, till a cradle is as necessary as a
ring." On another, and quite recent occasion, the same journal
furnished its readers with the following striking illustration of the
state of morals:--

"In one of the recent Dorsetshire cases, [of child murder,] common
cause was made by the girls of the county. They attended the trial in
large numbers; and we are informed that on the acquittal of the