a case of ludicrous disproportion, the contrast between a country town or
village, on the one hand, and, on the other, a work more lasting than
brass--a [Greek: _chtaema es aei_]--a murder such in quality as any murder
that _he_ would condescend to own for a work turned out from his own
_studio_.

Coleridge, whom I saw some months after these terrific murders, told me,
that, for _his_ part, though at the time resident in London, he had
not shared in the prevailing panic; _him_ they effected only as a
philosopher, and threw him into a profound reverie upon the tremendous
power which is laid open in a moment to any man who can reconcile himself
to the abjuration of all conscientious restraints, if, at the same time,
thoroughly without fear. Not sharing in the public panic, however,
Coleridge did not consider that panic at all unreasonable; for, as he said
most truly in that vast metropolis there are many thousands of households,
composed exclusively of women and children; many other thousands there are
who necessarily confide their safety, in the long evenings, to the
discretion of a young servant girl; and if she suffers herself to be
beguiled by the pretence of a message from her mother, sister, or
sweetheart, into opening the door, there, in one second of time, goes to
wreck the security of the house. However, at that time, and for many
months afterwards, the practice of steadily putting the chain upon the
door before it was opened prevailed generally, and for a long time served
as a record of that deep impression left upon London by Mr. Williams.
Southey, I may add, entered deeply into the public feeling on this
occasion, and said to me, within a week or two of the first murder, that
it was a private event of that order which rose to the dignity of a
national event. [2] But now, having prepared the reader to appreciate on
its true scale this dreadful tissue of murder (which as a record belonging
to an era that is now left forty-two years behind us, not one person in