M. De Vassor wrote with a faulty pen, when he asserted, in his history, that the only good thing Louis XIV. did, in his long reign of fifty-six years, consisted in his vigorous attempts, to suppress the practice of duelling. Cardinal Richelieu admits, however, in his _Political Testament_, that his own previous efforts had been ineffectual, although he caused Messieurs de Chappelle and Bouteville to be executed, for the crime, in disregard of the earnest importunities of their numerous and powerful friends. No public man ever did more, for the suppression of the practice, than Lord Bacon, while he was attorney general. His celebrated charge, upon an information in the star chamber, against Priest & Wright, vol. iv. page 399, Lond. 1824, was ordered to be printed, by the Lords of Council; and was vastly learned and powerful, in its way. It is rather amusing, upon looking at the decree, which followed, dated Jan. 26, 2 James I., to see how such matters were then managed; the information, against Priest, was, "_for writing and sending a letter of challenge together with a stick, which should be the length of the weapon_." Such measures are surely well enough, as far as they go; but can be of no lasting influence, unless certain processes are simultaneously carried on, to meliorate the moral tone, in society. Without the continual employment of moral and religious alteratives--laws, homilies, charges, decrees, ridicule, menances of disinherison here, and damnation hereafter will be of very little use. They are outward applications--temporary repellants, which serve no other purpose, than to drive back the distemper, for a brief space, but reach not the seat of the disorder. As was stated, in a former number, nothing will put an end to this practice, but indoctrination--the mild, antiphlogistic system of the Gospel. Wherever its gentle spirit prevails, combined with intellectual and moral culture, there will be no duels. Temperance forms, necessarily, an important part of that antiphlogistic system--for a careful examination will show, that, in a very great number of cases, duels have originated over the table--we import them, corked up in bottles, which turn out, now and then, to be vials of wrath.