The hands of the officers of the law were held up when they came to the charmed portals of the sacred sanctuary. The old Mosaic law and the time honored charters of the Crown decreed it. And while the officer was thus thwarted and Justice cheated, the “boys of Westminster Knoll”; “the birds of St. Martin’s”; the “Bravoes of Alsatia” and “Freemen of the Borough,” flourished and lived. Many of them, perhaps, belonged to the large class of the “predestined lost” and if their inner lives had been scanned, there were no doubt mitigating circumstances why they happened to be as they were. It may have been decreed, from the beginning that they should be criminals, instead of honest men. However this may be, they contributed to the quota of the crime of the world and with the right and wrong then obtaining, have past away forever. Let us be thankful that as many of them as did successfully embrace the privileges of sanctuary were spared through this merciful custom, for, in the end, it will make no difference whether this or that criminal suffered death just at this or that particular time, or a little later. He paid the penalty of the flesh certainly, without much delay and that he was allowed to consort with holy men, free from the war of the outside world, and feel the influence of their altruism for a time, and listen to the service of the sacred altar, with its superstitious chant, could but have had a softening and leavening influence upon his life. So while inconsistent with a proper administration of justice, which contemplates the visitation of equal punishment upon all alike, under similar conditions, for the same crimes, amid the rapine and murder of the middle ages it was often a shield for innocence, as well as a protection for crime and we can hardly regret that there was such an oasis in the desert, where the persecuted could find rest from the wild beasts of the desert domains—“wilder than wildest wolf or bear.” They all have gone, who suffered then—gone, “with the snows of yesterday”—the way the Mammoth went his way. So whether it was good or ill, since sanctuary gave to those who lived and suffered here below, “one little glimpse of Paradise, to ope the eyes and ears of men,” we would not have it otherwise. FOOTNOTES: [1] The six cities appointed in the book of Numbers were only for those who “killeth any person unawares.” (xxxv.) [2] Chapter XIX. 4. [3] Joshua, XX. 4, 5. “These were the cities appointed for all the children of Israel, and for the avenger that sojourneth among them, that whomsoever killeth any person unawares, might flee thither, and not die by the hand of the avenger of blood, until he stood before the congregation.” _idem._ 9. [4] Chapter I., 50, 52. [5] Joshua, XX., 4, 5. [6] I. Kings, 1, 50, 51.