Without attaching any credit to this representation until we have more minute particulars of the case, we can oppose to it a worse illustration of the effects of the philosophy and morality taught by Queen Mab. It had a disciple the descendant, and heir of an ancient, an honourable, and a titled family. That family was disgraced by his vices from his youth to his death. These to, with the principles of which they were the natural offspring, most righteously deprived him of the guardianship of his children, but unhappily drove their mother to ruin, prostitution, and suicide, whilst he consoled himself for the loss of a wife's society, by first seducing one daughter of his friend, and afterwards living in an incestuous connection with another. For his sake we exult not, but would rather weep, that he is no more, since nothing short of a greater miracle than those which whilst living he ridiculed and rejected, could snatch him from the punishment due to his crimes; but for the sake of the world, we rejoice that both he and the reviver of the principles he adopted, have run their race of impiety and sin.

The two surviving friends of Shelley, who were about, it is currently reported, to engage with him in a periodical work, to be printed abroad, but imported into and circulated in England, in support of the principles which we have here reprobated and exposed, may, and we hope will, take warning by his death. Lord Byron, and even Leigh Hunt, have talents that may, if properly directed, render essential service to society; but if they continue like Shelley to pervert them to the insult of their Maker, and the injury of themselves, let them remember that they may also be partakers in his fate.

The death of this highly gifted, but miserable man, has of course prevented any legal proceedings against him, on account of the work which we have now reviewed; nor, had he been still alive, and even in England, should these proceedings have been instituted against him, as the edition now in circulation was published without his consent, by a man named Clark, from a copy privately printed and circulated many years ago. Against this surreptitious publisher those proceedings should therefore be directed, which, we understand, the Society for the Suppression of Vice to have very properly instituted, though we are at a loss to conceive why they have not long since been brought to an issue, which, at all events, should not now be delayed.

This state of things induces us to make a few remarks upon a subject to which one of the leading reviews has directed the public attention,-the refusal of the Lord Chancellor to grant injunctions to restrain the pirating of works of an irreligious and immoral tendency, on the ground that no man can have a property in them which the law will protect. And surely no principle can be sounder, notwithstanding Mr. Murray's philippic against it, in the official organ of his sentiments, the production, if we mistake not, of a lawyer, from whose talents and judgment, as exhibited in other articles of the Quarterly Review, and also in a later separate publication, we should have expected better things. Can a man, in any sound system of legislation, be at the same time criminally punishable for an act, and entitled to a civil right to protect him in doing wrong-the very statement of his proposition evinces the absurdity of the doctrine for which the reviewer contends. A man publishes a libel, for which it is admitted that he is justly punishable by fine and imprisonment (though with respect to Don Juan, to which the remark applies as forcibly as to any book we have lately seen, except the works of Sir Charles Hanbury Williams and Queen Mab, we cannot but smile at the halfcensuring, half-apologetical tone of the Quarterly); another man reprints it, and the original publisher brings his action against him for the violation of a privilege granted by a particular statute for the encouragement of sound learning: is it to be endured, that a privilege is to be granted to him by the court one hour, for the exercise of which he may be severely punished in the next? It is an established, and a sound maxim of law, universally and wisely pervading our whole system of jurisprudence, that he who asks for protection from the law must place himself rectus in curia; he must stand in court free from any imputation upon his claim. If a man seeks damages for a libel, he cannot recover them, if he himself is a libeller by trade, though that may be, and is perhaps no defence of the libel upon him. The editor of the Quarterly may recollect this case, because it was properly decided in his favour. If I sue for money lent, though prima facie entitled to what I advanced to another, I cannot recover a halfpenny of it if my loan was tainted with usury, because that is against the declared policy of the law; and the same doctrine prevails, where money has been lent for purposes of gambling, or to be applied to any other illegal use. These are wise provisions for throwing an additional protection round the honest part of society, by deterring those who are dishonest from run

ning the risk of punishment, which supineness, mistaken compassion, or a thousand things may prevent or delay, by the knowledge that in violating the prohibition of the law, they abandon, as far as the particular transaction is concerned, its protection also. This applies to the ordinary provisions of our law, as it is administered in our courts; but à fortiori must it do so to its extraordinary proceedings, meant to give redress in cases which the unavoidable delays of those courts would otherwise involve in great hardship. Of this nature, pre-eminently, are injunctions in Chancery; an exertion of a vigour beyond the law, to prevent injuries immediately impending. When, therefore, a wrong has not only been committed, but is continuing, such, for instance, as the cutting down all the wood on an entailed estate, wasting a trust property, infringing a patent, or pirating a book, this injunction is properly granted, restraining the alleged offender in his course, and compelling him to account for his gains by it, but always accompanied by this condition, that the complainant shall bring his action at law, to determine by the verdict of a jury his pretended right. But if it appears, upon the hearing of his application for this injunction, that the complainant can have no right, as no man can have in a known violation of the law, the Chancellor is bound, in justice as in policy, to say-establish the rights you claim in a court of common law, you do not entitle yourself to the interference of one, whose established maxim is, that those who seek relief in equity must act and have acted legally and equitably themselves. This is the situation of Messrs. Murray and Lawrence, and if they were not too prudent to bring the merits of their publications, and consequently the nature of their rights, to the decision of a jury, the courts of Westminster are open to redress them still. This they dare not do; this they never intended to do; or if they did, they will do it now, though we would not advise them to try the experiment.

It is urged however, and plausibly urged, on the other side, that by refusing this restraint upon literary piracy, you inevitably increase the publicity of improper books, because unprincipled men will, as was the case with Don Juan, surreptitiously circulate for half-a-crown, and consequently through a wider range, what, on account of the large sum given for copy-right, was originally published at nearly two pounds: and undoubtedly it is so. But to this argument, founded on expediency, we reply, that it is scarcely doubtful whether society is not much better secured against licen tious publications, by preventing large sums being given for

them, to men who seldom write but for gold, on account of no protection being afforded to property in them, than it would be by leaving it open to a daring adventurer to make, by one successful speculation in such mischievous commodities, a sum amply sufficient to indemnify him for the risk of prosecution, by preventing others from participating in his ill-gotten gains, or underselling him in the market. We have no doubt but that the present system, as very properly upheld by the Chancellor in his late decisions, will in the end be more beneficial to public morals, whilst we are quite certain that it better accords with the sound principles of our law, which such an innovation as Mr. Murray, through the medium of his review and reviewer, proposes for his own special benefit, and not for the protection of the public, would render partial, oppressive, anomalous, and unjust. A smuggler or a gamester, we had almost said, and we might say a highwayman and a thief, have in law, in policy, and in equity, as just a claim to an injunction and account against the participators of their illgotten booty, for its misuse, as the publisher of a blasphemous or obscene libel can have to that extra-vigorous remedy,against those who but repeat his wrong, that he may thus secure to himself a larger portion of equally illegal and ill-gotten gains, though he dare not bring an action to protect them.

With these remarks we close an article, for the length of which we should offer an apology, did we not hope that the importance and interest of the subject would suggest one for us. We have taken up so many works, and said so much upon them now, because we wish not that either the attention of our readers, or our own should again be directed to similar outrages upon all that is valuable in religion or morality. We have been severe in our remarks, and we intended to be so; nor can a more appropriate vindication of our conduct, or a better conclusion of our review be afforded, than the following sentence from the preface to Lord Byron's vigorous satire of the English Bards and Scottish Reviewers, which he could little have expected, at the time he wrote it, would ever be turned against himself and his chosen associates and friends:

"The unquestionable possession of considerable genius by several of the writers here censured, renders their mental prostitution more to be regretted. Imbecility may be pitied, or, at worst, laughed at, and forgotten; perverted powers demand the most severe reprehension."

Lectures on the Reciprocal Obligations of Life, or a Practical Exposition of Domestic, Ecclesiastical, Patriotic, and Mercantile Duties. By John Morison, Minister of Trevor Chapel, Brompton. 12mo. London: Smith & Elder. pp. 362.

THE present is emphatically a busy age, and the noble and benevolent institutions by which it is distinguished and adorned, have found employment for every individual who has any pretensions to religion or philanthropy. Both sexes, together with all ranks and ages, are pressed into the service, from the prince to the peer, who shed the lustre of their diadems and coronets upon the gay and brilliant assemblies which they annually convene, to the humble collector or the laborious agent, who either obtains the small contributions of the poor in aid of these resources, or is the constant and faithful distributor of the bounty they impart. But such, alas! is the imperfection of our nature, that we pollute every thing we touch, and have cause for perpetual jealousy over our own conduct, lest we should abuse the holiest institutions to unhallowed purposes, and render that the occasion of practical and personal evil, which is designed to promote the highest and the purest good; and this is most assuredly the case, when the publicity and fame, connected with an active agency in these societies, turn a man from the due discharge of the duties of his station, or render him indifferent to the cultivation of personal and domestic religion. We therefore hail with joy every watchman on the walls of our British Zion, who, faithful to his solemn trust, and aware of his own responsibility, sounds the alarm in the ears of professing Christians, and wakens them to a timely apprehension of the threatened danger.

On this ground we regard Mr. Morison's little volume as a valuable and seasonable present to the religious public; while we entirely concur with him in the importance of another consideration which influenced the composition and publication of these lectures.

"For, irrespective of the influence which public, and oftenrepeated, exertions for the conversion of the world, may have in diverting the minds of some from the sober and unostentatious virtues of private life; it is not a little to be feared, that with not a few of those who are the professed advocates of salvation by grace, the full detail of Relative Duties is becoming every day more unpopular. It is a remarkable circumstance, that, while the class