be otherwise—and its author became famous. One axiom forms the basis of the work: "The art is greatest which conveys the greatest number of great ideas." The first volume shows what painters have best imitated Nature. The second treats of Beauty -typical and vital. Perhaps this volume contains the finest of Ruskin's writing. The subject, almost illimitable, is treated with a master's hand. The author of "Modern Painters" has produced a book which has no parallel in any European language. It is impossible here to do any justice even to an outline of its contents, and we do not attempt it, but refer our readers to the book itself. So far, we have spoken chiefly of his magnum opus. Mr. Ruskin's other works are"Seven Lamps of Architecture," 1849; "The Stones of Venice," 1851-53; "Construction of Sheepfolds;" "Two Paths;" "Harbours of England;" "Political Economy of Art;" "Unto this Last;" Sesame and Lilies;" "Ethics of Dust;" "Kings' Treasuries and Queens' Gardens;" "War, Commerce, and Work;" "Letters to a Working Man;" "A Wreath of Wild Olives." 66 There is no more honoured name in contemporary English literature than that of John Ruskin. In his books, he has discharged the noblest functions of a writer; but it were enough to make him famous in his generation had he done no more than teach our Philistine art-critics what is the true standard to which art criticism should be raised. IN PLAIN-CLOTHES MEN. N a recent paper in this magazine on the detective police of Paris, we are afraid that we left no very satisfactory impression on the minds of our readers as to the probity of Vidocq and his successors in the same cunning art. Detectives are not at any time the kind of people whose services we are anxious to employ, if we can possibly help it; but, at the same time, they have been found almost indispensable instruments in the proper regulation of crime, especially in large cities. In the following notes, therefore, we propose to recapitulate some facts connected with the rise of the detective police system in this country, more especially in London. It may be worth while for a moment to glance back, and remember what sort of guards for their lives and property our grandfathers before us enjoyed; and the comparison between these and the orderly, active, and civil policemen whom we of a later generation are so accustomed to is sufficiently striking. "Most men," said a writer twenty years ago, "who have arrived at that age when the last one or two buttons of the waistcoat are allowed to be unloosened after dinner, can remember the time when the safety of life and property in the metropolis depended upon the efforts of the parochial watchmana species of animal after the model of the old hackney coachman, encumbered with the self-same drab coat, with countless capes, with the self-same Belcher handkerchief or comforter, speaking in the same husky voice, and just as sottish, stupid, and uncivil. At night-for it was not thought worth while to set a watch in the daytimethe authorities provided him with a watchbox, in order that he might enjoy his snooze in comfort; and furnished him with a huge lantern, in order that its rays might enable the thief to get out of his way in time. As if these aids to escape were not sufficient for the midnight marauder, the watchman was provided with a staff, with which he thundered on the pavement as he walked-a noise which he alternated with crying the hour and the state of the weather, in a loud singing voice, and which told of his whereabouts when he himself was far out of sight." This was the model policeman of the last generation; and up to the year 1828-and, indeed, for ten years later-the Charleys were the sole defence by night of the persons and property of this great metropolis. For all real practical purposes, there might just as well have been no police at all. Crime and robberies, of course, increased more and more every day. It was scarcely safe for any ordinary persons to move out of their houses after dark; and main thoroughfares, which one might now travel as safely at one in the morning as at noon-day, were at nightfall the skirmishing grounds of footpads and ruffians of all kinds. Mr. Colquhoun, a magistrate, wrote a work on the police at the beginning of the century, in which he estimated that the annual value of property stolen at the time at which he wrote was at least a million and a half, and that the number of receivers of stolen goods had increased between 1780 and 1800 from three hundred to three thousand. Crime, too-paradoxically enough, as it may seem-received an additional encouragement from the very system of the authorities which was intended for its suppression. A class of men of whom Jonathan Wild was the first father, were allowed to pursue the calling of informers against the thieves to an almost unlimited extent. The interest of these, the earliest of English detectives, was not to suppress crime, but to fill their own pockets with the blood money which they received for their informations. Hence, it was their deliberate practice to wink at intended robberies until, to use their own phraseology, "the matter had ripened ;" and then, the deed done, the victim was secured, duly consigned to Tyburn, and the price of his life complaisantly pocketed by the informer. In those days, when boys were hanged for stealing a fourpenny loaf, and the pettiest theft met the same penalty as the most atrocious murder, we may be sure that the informers had plenty of work always on hand; and not a Black Monday passed, the year round, but saw a fresh crop of the hideous fruit hanging on the deadly nevergreen tree." Old Townsend, the Bow-street officer, in giving his evidence before the Commissioners sitting in 1816 to inquire into the police of the metropolis, said— "I remember, in 1783, when Serjeant Adair was recorder, there were forty hung at two executions. The unfortunate people laugh at it now: they call it a bagatelle." And speaking of the highwaymen, he said "Formerly there were two, three, or four highwaymen some on Hounslow Heath, some on Finchley Common, and some on the Romford-road. I have actually come to Bow-street in the morning, and while I have been leaning over the desk, had three or four people come in, and say 'I was robbed by two highwaymen in such a place,' 'I was robbed by a single highwayman in such a place."" These last unpleasant gentlemen were abolished by the establishment of the horse patrol, planned by Sir Richard Ford, and the first innovation on the useless police system. Things were rapidly coming to such a pass that people began to cry out that something must be done. The utter incapacity of the old Charleys, as they were called, was a jest and a bye-word-if there could be room for jesting about the matter at all. Practical jokes of all kinds were played upon them by the night revellers and young men of the period; the climax of the fun consisting in upsetting the poor fellow in his box when he was on the doze, making him a prostrate prisoner until help came to release him from his predicament. This dozing propensity of the antiquated watchman was well illustrated by Erskine in one of his stories: "A friend of mine," he said, "was suffering from a continual wakefulness, and various methods were taken to send him to sleep, but in vain. At last, his physicians resorted to an experiment which succeeded perfectly. They dressed him in a watchman's coat, put a lantern in his hand, and placed him in a sentry-box-and he was asleep in ten minutes." As everybody knows, the credit of instituting a thorough reform in the metropolitan system is due to the late Sir Robert-then Mr.-Peel. It is not so well known, perhaps, that the first tentative experiment of Sir Robert's in this matter was his establishment of a Bow-street day patrol. In 1828 he obtained the appointment of a committee of the House of Commons to inquire into the expediency of establishing a uniform system of police in the metropolis. At the present day, it seems astonishing that the new system should have found many and stout opponents. In the place of a few constables, here was a drilled and compact body of six thousand men, taught to act in masses and when placed individually, each working as part and parcel of a thoroughly organized system. Much of the usual nonsense about "the liberty of the subject" and "military rule" was ventilated by either the thoughtless or the interested; and the opposition was not mollified by the appointment as one of the commissioners of Colonel Rowan, who had lately held a command in that half-soldier half-police force, the Royal Irish Constabulary. The unreasoning prejudice unfortunately came to something more serious than words or nicknames for the New Police such as "Peelers," "Bobbies" (after the name of the originator), "Raw Lobsters," "Crushers," &c. In 1833, a collision took place between the unpopular police and the mob in Coldbath Fields. A meeting of Chartists was to be held there, and serious disturbances being apprehended, the New Police were ordered to disperse it. This was, of course, done after a brief struggle; but in the mêlée three of the police were stabbed, and one of them mortally. A more significant idea of the feeling which seems so irrationally to have actuated the popular mind at that moment cannot be given than in the verdict of "justifiable homicide," returned by the jury at the inquest on the body of the dead constable. The thieves and pickpockets, of course, looked upon the new organization with any thing but favour; and several hand-to-hand conflicts took place between gangs of these worthies and the new custodians of the public peace, at the crowded places-such as the Angel at Islington, and the Elephant and Castle over the water, and other central | positions-where thieves and their partizans were accustomed most to congregate. Having said thus much of the establishment of the police force as it at present exists, which all honest people admire for its efficiency, we will revert to the detective police. That such a detective system as that worked by the villainous informers of the Jonathan Wild school could survive the growing sense of public obloquy, and the new and now readily accepted police organization, was utterly impossible. When the metropolitan force was established, in 1829, the old Bow-street officers, not caring to attach themselves to the new order of things, resigned their posts, and set up as private detectives or informers on their own account. It was not until fifteen years after the establishment of the police force that the idea was entertained by Government of introducing into it a separate detective element. Sir James Graham may be said to be the originator of the detective police system in this country. This subsidiary force was at first constituted of three inspectors, nine sergeants, and a body of police, who were euphoniously styled plain-clothes men, whose services were in readiness at any moment. There were about six policemen in each division who took upon themselves the duty of detectives when required, thus giving a number of a hundred and eight auxiliaries. In all large meetings, whether in the open air or in a public building, then as at the present moment, these men were distributed among the crowd, dressed according to the charac ter of the assembly. Thus, at more select meetings, our detective would be dressed as irreproachably as the chairman; at an agricultural gathering, the same gentleman would wear a smock frock, or the dress of a small farmer; at a rough political meeting, his fustian jacket and short clay pipe would announce him as the most uncompromising of Red Republicans; and so on through a hundred other disguises, as occasion may require. As may readily be imagined, it is not every policeman who is fit to be a detective. | The detective art, like all other arts, is to a great extent a matter of natural bent. One policeman may enter the force and show himself so naturally gifted in this way that he is told off to the plain-clothes division almost at once. Another may remain in the force for years without detecting a crime. "Yet," as a writer on this subject has said, "Bow-street, great as was its fame, did not turn out more intelligent detectives than we now possess." The officers, although they are not "hail fellow well met" with every thief, as in the last century, still find it necessary to keep up a personal knowledge of the criminal population, especially with that portion of it whose members they may at one time or other be likely to "want." The detectives, as well as thieves, are generally famed for some particular line of business. One is good at housebreakers, another knows how to follow the swell mob; and a third is a crack hand at forgers. In fact, each detective may be said to have his own forte. And this has been very aptly explained elsewhere thus: By confining themselves to distinct branches of the art, they acquire an especial sense, as it were, for the work; and it is remarkable how much their trouble is lightened by the division of labour. The detective stands in a very different position from the ordinary policeman. His work, long and laborious though it may be, must, to succeed, never see the light. Although he may have followed a case for years, all the public knows of it is summed up in the four words used by the constable who states the charge at the police-court-"From information I received," &c. The detective lays the foundation, which, from the shifting soil he has to deal with, is frequently far more extensive than the superstructure. His duty is to pursue the criminal through all his shiftings and turnings, until the case is |