read concerning a murderer: “One of the saddest sights we have ever witnessed was the prison van going along Waterloo Place at midnight under the beautiful moonlight with a great crowd running after it cheering loudly the poor wretch within--cheering that never ceased till the van disappeared inside the prison gate. The crowd was composed chiefly of young men, many of them well dressed, and not a few accompanied by their sweethearts. The scene suggested a convoy by the students of a favourite singer rather than that by the youth of even the lowest class in Edinburgh of a brutal murderer of a harmless English gentleman.” And, again, in another newspaper: “On Monday many visitors were in Seaham for Bank Holiday and the flower show. Those who visited the cavern where the girl is supposed to have been murdered were ten times more numerous than those who went to the flower show. Nearly all were strangers to the town, and had journeyed thither for the express purpose of viewing the scene of the tragedy. Many took a memento of some sort, either a chipping of rock, a pebble, or a stone from the cave. Some went so far as to take water from the pool where deceased was found, away with them in bottles.” It is well known that when a woman has murdered her husband it is by no means unusual for a number of letters to be sent to her, before the issue of the trial is known, containing offers of marriage. It is not possible to regard the criminal as a hero or a saint after we have once seriously begun to study his nature. He is simply a feeble or distorted person to whom it has chanced--most often, perhaps, from lack of human help--to fall out of the social ranks. It is as unreasonable and as inhuman for a whole nation to become excited over him, and to crave for the minutest details concerning him, as we now deem it to expose the miseries of any other abnormal person--man of genius or idiot, leper or lunatic--to the general and unmerciful gaze. Not that any of these may not be studied; they must be studied, but not delivered over to unrestrained curiosities, sentimentalities, cruelties. No external force can change this attitude; no censorship of newspapers will avail. Only the slow influences of education, and a rational knowledge of what criminality means, can effect a permanent change. But until this has been effected, one of the most fertile sources of crime, what has been well called the contagion of crime, will remain, as it is to-day, a danger in all civilised countries, a danger which is suggesting heroic remedies. The minute details of every horrible crime are to-day known at once by every child in remotest villages. The recital of it stirs up all the morbid sedimentary instincts in weak and ill-balanced natures; and whenever a large community grows excited over a crime, that community becomes directly responsible for a whole crop of crimes, more especially among young persons and children.[113]