struggles which they produced in his mind, between his sacred office and his personal comforts. Mr. Le Bas lets us into another secret, which adds tenfold strength to these remarks. We need hardly say that in every station of life, the duties of which are compatible with those that spring out of the endearing bonds of marriage, we shall always be found strenuously recommending the formation of those bonds, as the best safeguard of society. But let those persons who doubt the uses of celibacy, in offices connected with severe missionary labours for the propagation of the Gospel, read of the almost total prostration of intellect, natural and amiable in itself we fully admit, but highly inconvenient and detrimental to the cause of religion, by which the Bishop was affected, in consequence of the indisposition of his lady-of whom we desire however to speak with the utmost possible respect. The Bishop says in one of his letters, "I sometimes wonder at the manner in which, amid the continual havoc around me, I have been preserved, and my wife also, without whom, in solitude and destitution, I should be as nothing!"-upon which his biographer observes ;

In this last sentence he touches upon a subject of heavy disquietude. There was nothing which he appeared to contemplate with deeper consternation than the possibility of his being left to survive the faithful companion of his fortunes. This feeling was rendered more intense by a severe indisposition, under which she was then suffering, and by the recollection that he had once, since his residence in India, been actually on the point of losing her, by an attack of cholera, from the effects of which she was with great difficulty recovered; and this, at a time when that dreadful Scourge was sweeping off the native population by myriads. His terrors were further aggravated by the circumstance that he was without children, and that the loss of Mrs. Middleton would, therefore, consign him to a state of the most hopeless and appaling desertion. She had been the partaker of all his anxieties; and, without her, the world was, to his imagination, a scene of such dreariness and bereavement, that his heart sunk at the very thoughts of it.'-vol. ii. pp. 308, 309.

Look also at the petty murmurs that follow, than which we ask, what can be more inconsistent with the true elevation of mind and spiritual character of a Christian Bishop?

'At this time, too, his mind was kept almost upon the rack by his extreme anxiety to hear from England, and by the repeated disappointment of his expectations in that particular. From this source of uneasiness, indeed, he had, in the course of his residence in India, suffered almost continual disturbance. Not a vessel could enter the Ganges without bringing out something, whether in the shape of letters, or pamphlets, or money, or missionaries, to some of the religious societies established in Calcutta ; and it very frequently happened that the Bishop learned from others, the proceedings of those with whom he was so closely connected in England, long before the slightest intimation of their movements reached him, officially, from themselves. He was frequently kept in a state of harassing suspense by this irregularity and delay in public communications. At this period, more especially, it happened that ship after ship arrived at Cal

cutta, without bringing him a single line on any one of the various and pressing matters which then absorbed his thoughts. That some of his papers relative to the college, and to other important and difficult affairs, had reached England a twelvemonth before, he had fully ascertained; and he was awaiting, with agitation and anxiety, the letters which should satisfy him that his measures had been approved. Under these circumstances, it can be no subject of wonder that, in allusion to the opening passage of the above letter, he should continue thus:

"There is something gloomy in this commencement: I ascribe it partly to the remembrance of the day; partly to the weather (as gloomy and comfortless as I ever knew in England in November); and partly to the sad disappointment which I have lately sustained in not having any tidings from home. Three ships, bearing several thousands of letters for Calcutta, have brought me but two or three, of no interest, and of a very old date. It is impossible that any man in England, in the centre of life and business and intelligence, can comprehend the sensations which such disappointments create. He must first place himself in my situation !"'—vol. ii. pp. 309, 310.

The reader will not be surprised to learn that by this time the nervous energies of Dr. Middleton's constitution had begun to fail. Every year seemed to bring with it some fresh embarrassment, with which he had hardly resolution to contend. Nor were these difficulties of a fundamental nature, but of mere routine, which compelled him, as it were, to waste his force in overcoming friction and resistance, instead of bringing it to bear at once upon the grand and vital interests of the church. He laboured,' adds his biographer, under the anxiety and terror incident to a consciousness of decaying powers, impaired resources, and a constantly accumulating task.' This was a situation the worst of all others for a constitution like that of the Bishop. Among other causes of depression which overwhelmed his mind, he looked with a sort of morbid apprehension upon the existence of what was then a comparatively free-press, with which he believed the long continuance of the church incompatible. In short, every thing around him appeared to his troubled vision as fraught with opposition to his plans, and he describes himself, in his correspondence, as a man who is doomed to work in chains, as consuming his life in endless beginnings, and as condemned to a sort of Sisyphean toil. It is impossible not to perceive from all this that the calibre of Dr. Middleton's mind was not of that degree which the duties of an Indian Bishop demanded. It was affected to an unusual excess, upon his being informed that proceedings were instituted against him in the supreme court, by one of his clergy, whom he had censured; the episcopal authority not having been fully defined by law in India, he feared that he should not be sufficiently protected for doing what he conceived to be his duty in the case. A day or two afterwards (the 3rd of July, 1822) he spent eight hours in writing to government respecting the proceedings in question, and feeling

exhausted, he rode out in his carriage with Mrs. Middleton, before the sun was down. The consequences of this imprudent act are described in an affecting style by his excellent biographer.

They had not proceeded far, when the slant sun, which is always dangerous, and especially at the damp and sickly season of the year, shone full upon him. This slight cause, acting upon a shattered frame of nerves, was sufficient to produce fatal effects. He immediately declared that he was struck by the sun, and returned home. On retiring to rest, he said that he thought himself seriously ill, and that he knew not what would be the consequence. He, nevertheless, positively refused to call in medical advice. In the course of the evening his symptoms became aggravated to an alarming degree, and indicated the presence of fever of a type and character scarcely known in England, and very rare even in India. The high pulse, hot skin, and other ordinary symptoms, were present only in a very slight degree; neither were they prevalent, in any considerable extent, during his illness. But there appeared, from the very first, a most distressing anxiety, irritability, and restlesness, which it was impossible to subdue, and which made his illness doubly painful to his family and his friends. He repeatedly insisted on getting up to write; and it was not without the greatest difficulty that he was restrained from actually doing So. All this while, he most strictly forbade Mrs. Middleton to send for a physician; till, at last, on Thursday, the fever had become so violent, that he was persuaded to call in Dr. Nicholson, on whose experience and skill he placed the greatest reliance. He was now, perhaps, fully conscious of his danger. Still, it seems, he would not allow any intimation of his alarming condition to be conveyed to his friends; and, almost to the very last, they remained in total ignorance of the extremity of his danger. In the course of the following Monday there were slight appearances of amendment, some hopes were even entertained that the danger was passing by, and that a favourable crisis might be at hand; but these were soon dissipated by an alarming accession of fever and irritability, which came on towards the evening, He then quitted his library, and walked incessantly up and down his drawing-room, in a state of the most appalling agitation. About nine o'clock his chaplain, Mr. Hawtayne, was admitted to see him; and was inexpressibly shocked to find him on his couch, in a state, to all appearance, of violent delirium; his thoughts wandering, his articulation gone; his faculties, in short, a melancholy wreek, at the mercy of the tempest which had shattered them. In that condition he lay, breathing and struggling violently, till a short time previous to his departure. The severity of the conflict then appeared wholly to cease. A smile of unspeakable serenity and peace spread itself over his features, and, in a few minutes, he gently expired. Such was the tranquillity of the last moment, that it was not marked by a struggle, or even by a movement.' -vol. ii. pp. 320-322.

At the period of his decease Dr. Middleton was in the fiftyfourth year of his age, and the ninth of his episcopal career. In person he was rather above the common stature. His complexion is described as florid, his features as handsome and commanding, his form as remarkable for vigour and activity. Upon the examination of his body, no indication of premature decay was discerni

ble in any part of his frame; but some peculiarities were observed in the structure and conformation of the skull and brain, which, ' in the judgment of professional men, amply accounted for that susceptible disposition, and liability to nervous excitement so frequently displayed in his life-time.' Mr. Le Bas says that he was unquestionably an ambitious man, animated by an ardent passion to be distinguished among the wise and the good. This characteristic is conspicuous in all his writings and actions; indeed, too much so, considering that worldly fame is one of the last things which a truly spiritual mind would be desirous of possessing. In literature he was particularly attached to the Greek prose classics, for which his admiration was enthusiastic. His favourite pursuit, however, was ecclesiastical history. He seems to have been warm and generous in his affections, charitable and benevolent, single hearted and high minded. In India he was, however, not very popular. His manners were not polished or conciliating, and in this respect he sunk in the comparison with his successor, the elegant and accomplished Heber. Mr. Le Bas does not in terms tell us this, which we have heard from another quarter, but his duty of impartiality compels him to acknowledge that, by many in India, his personal demeanour was thought to be rather too deeply stamped with official solemnity and rigour;' a fault which he excuses by imputing it to the novelty of the Bishop's situation, which demanded inflexible firmness and unwearied vigilance.' 'Under these very peculiar and trying circumstances,' he adds, 'it would not be surprising if the posture of dignity, which he often felt himself compelled defensively to assume, should, gradually and imperceptibly, have given to his manner an air of constraint and reserve, very far from natural to the man.' In two words, the episcopal dignity sat uneasily upon his shoulders, and deprived his manners of that simplicity which is the charm of life in every situation. An official gentleman, we believe Mr. Bayley, chief secretary to government, writing to one of his friends in England of the Bishop's death, says, in language which cannot be misunderstood, that "his influence was unfortunately weakened by a defect in his own character; his notions of his office led to the assumption of a formal and rather haughty manner; and he was, in consequence, thought pompous, repulsive, and too acutely alive to any supposed want of respect on the part of others." Nevertheless, it would be unjust not to admit that his zeal in the discharge of his duties was unquestionable; if his personal pride and ambition had been less, he must have been deemed one of the greatest ornaments of the protestant church in modern times.

548

ART. VI.-Facts relating to the Punishment of Death in the Metropolis. By Edward Gibbon Wakefield, Esq. 12mo. pp. 198. London: Ridg

way.

1831.

IN giving to our readers an account of this work, we shall not make a single allusion to the unhappy celebrity which the name of its author has acquired, as it seems but just that every man should be allowed to live down the indiscretions of his early life, especially when he has undergone the punishment assigned to his transgressions by the laws of his country. We cannot, indeed, avoid congratulating Mr. Wakefield on the good use which he appears to have made of the three years of his imprisonment in Newgate. He does not scruple to inform us that he has held frequent conversations with thieves and criminals of every age and degree, for the purpose of obtaining a knowledge of their usual habits, and we have here the results of his inquiries. It is obvious that an individual, situated as he was, possessed facilities for the attainment of his object, which could have fallen to the lot of very few others of equal intelligence. He was the fellow-prisoner of numerous delinquents, and of course supposed by them to sympathize in their fate; he was amongst them as often as he pleased, during the period of his incarceration, and they could have had no suspicion that he intended to communicate his remarks to the world. They were, therefore, in a great measure thrown off their guard, and were easily induced, by his superior tact and address, to make confessions to his ear, which they would never have been induced to communicate to a mere casual visitor, much less to the officers of the gaol. It is highly creditable to his character, that he seems to have received not the slightest contamination from this impure contact, and that, instead of avenging his own sufferings upon the virtuous part of society, he has, on the contrary, endeavoured, in this little work, to turn to their advantage many of the hours which he was condemned to count within the walls of Newgate.

His principal object is to illustrate, by the information which he has collected, the effects of capital punishment as administered in London and Middlesex. But to this object he has not confined himself exclusively, for a great, and by no means the least interesting, portion of his book, is occupied with notices of what may be called the art of thieving in this great metropolis, the haunts of those who follow that art as a regular calling, the artifices by which they seduce apprentices and other youths to become members of their fraternity, and, above all, of the defects in our system of police, whereby crime of every description is openly encouraged, and rendered more prosperous than it is in any other country upon the face of the earth. He discloses to us, also, the internal scenery and operations of Newgate, of which the world is