NOTABLE TRIALS.
Notable Trials Romances of the Law Courts. By R. Storry Deans, Barrister-at-Law. With Illustrations. (Cassell and Co. 6s.)—The craving of the public for stories of battle, murder, and sudden death seems inexhaustible, and for those who have no objection to a twice-told tale, or whose education in criminal literature has been neglected, this volums will provide a fund of entertainment. It must be admitted that the fare is of a very miscellaneous order ; but that is no legitimate ground for com- plaint. We have a selection of the best-known cases from the State Trials,—Sir Thomas Overbury, Horne-Tooke, Lady Lisle, Lord Mohun, and (mirabite dicta!) Ship Money. With these are a list of the modern murders which obtain a place in every similar collection,—Madeleine Smith, Palmer, Dr. Pritchard. and Courvoisier, as well as a sketch of the career of Charles Peace, and of the Tichborne Claimant. The murder of Constable Brett by the Manchester Feniana, and the Clerkenwell explosion, have a compartment of their own. Mr. Deans has a pretty notion of story-telling, and he works with the enthusiasm of one who has made for himself the discovery that there is nothing to surpass, in human interest, the records of the Law Courts. As a practising barrister, he is able to avoid the many pitfalls which beset the amateur, and he does not shrink from forming conclusions of his own. He doubts whether Palmer really killed Cook by strychnine, and he thinks that the verdict In Madeleine Smith's case should have been "Not guilty" rather than "Not proven." Surely it is about time that that unhappy woman, who, we believe, is still alive and a resident in London, should have the benefit of the Statute of Limitations. Those who are carried away by Mr. Deans's Macaulayesque denunciation of Jeffreys should read Professor Churton Collins's article on the hero of the Bloody Assize in last September's National Review.
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