Page:Celebrated Trials - Volume 1.djvu/9

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PREFACE.

TILL the assemblage in the present volumes, the English language was possessed of no popular collection of celebrated trials and remarkable cases of criminal jurisprudence.

The NEWGATE CALENDARS as chroniclers of roguery and of vulgar depravity, in their various forms, have usually been compiled in language, which sympathized and accorded with their subjects.

The STATE TRIALS, in seeking to exhaust all the legal and technical details, degenerate into intolerable dulness, and are useful only as a body of information to be consulted by professional men, in regard to analogous cases which present themselves in practice: though, in this respect, they are so valuable, that no law-library ought to be without them.

At the same time in forming a selection of interesting and important trials from the range of the juridical proceedings of various nations, the editor has adopted no existing model. The only one similar in its general object is the voluminous series in the French language, entitled CAUSES CELEBRES. But more persons praise this work than have read it; for it is altogether Gallic—light, frothy, prolix, and sentimental— and in no way adapted to the chastened taste and matter-of-fact curiosity of English readers. It is a series of novels in manner, while the

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