A mob is, therefore, not only under the influence of its worst passions, but every hour of its existence these are growing more potent, in the mob as an entity, and in the persons which compose it. The only true mercy which can be shown to such an assembly, aside from any question of the safety of community, is to suppress it; to suppress it at once; and to use every means necessary to that end. Relentless rigor is the only measure adequate to the occasion. It is the weakness of civilization that it hesitates to be cruelly kind. The mistake of the military authorities in regard to the New York riot, was lenity. The prompt and vigorous bombardment, in the beginning of the rising, of a block of the houses in which the rioters were safely ensconced, while covertly firing on the soldiers and policemen, would have done more to quell the mob than all subsequent proceedings, and would have saved life in the end. It would have forced the inhabitants of these houses who, as things were conducted, could safely give all possible aid to the insurgents, to compel these to lay down their arms, in order to insure the safety of the sympathizers. Had the first, and the second, and the third house from which the assassins were permitted to fire been battered to the ground with cannon shot, the last two days of fighting would have been unnecessary. The police cowed the mob wherever they met them, because they showed no quarter. They hit hard and they hit often. They felt that the way to knock the riot in the head, was to knock the rioters in the head. And they did it, as Inspector Carpenter says, 'beautifully.' New York feels as proud of these Metropolitan policemen as he does; and that is saying a great deal. We discover, then, by this brief analysis of the great riot, that social outbreaks of this kind have their _immediate_ and _tangible_ causes, which are superficial in their character, and vary with the occasion; that these causes depend for their disturbing power upon others which are more _fundamental_, and which inhere in the nature of our present social relations; that so long as the wealthy and intelligent classes shall decline the permanent guardianship and organized care of the poor and ignorant masses, the liability to such recurrences will remain; that when they break forth, the safety of community and mercy to the rioters alike demand that the mob be scattered on the instant by an iron and relentless hand; and, finally, that the only method by which society will be permanently and effectually freed from a liability to the terrors of mob-rule, is the reorganization of its economical arrangements in such a manner that the miseries of poverty and ignorance shall be forever removed from the community, and a social providence be firmly established which shall secure physical comfort and kindly sympathy to all classes of citizens. THE DESERTED HOUSE. A PRE-RAPHAELITE PICTURE FROM NATURE.