atrocity that has the charm of being novel, and certain depraved minds
fasten to it like leeches. They brood over and revolve it--the idea
grows up, a horrid phantasmalian monomania; and all of a sudden, in a
hundred different places, the one seed sown by the leaden types springs
up into foul flowering.

[An old Spanish writer, treating of the Inquisition, has some very
striking remarks on the kind of madness which, whenever some
terrible notoriety is given to a particular offence, leads persons
of distempered fancy to accuse themselves of it. He observes that
when the cruelties of the Inquisition against the imaginary crime of
sorcery were the most barbarous, this singular frenzy led numbers to
accuse themselves of sorcery. The publication and celebrity of the
crime begat the desire of the crime.]

But if the first reported aboriginal crime has been attended with
impunity, how much more does the imitative faculty cling to it. Ill-
judged mercy falls, not like dew, but like a great heap of manure, on the
rank deed.

Now it happened that at the time I write of, or rather a little before,
there had been detected and tried in Paris a most redoubted coiner. He
had carried on the business with a dexterity that won admiration even for
the offence; and, moreover, he had served previously with some
distinction at Austerlitz and Marengo. The consequence was that the
public went with instead of against him, and his sentence was transmuted
to three years' imprisonment by the government. For all governments in
free countries aspire rather to be popular than just.

No sooner was this case reported in the journals--and even the gravest