The duel, for instance, used to be called the "ordeal by battle," and was simply the commitment of the decision of a cause to God. Duels were regularly prefaced by the solemn prayer "God show the right." Now-a-days nobody believes that skill with a pistol is going to be specially bestowed by the Almighty, without diligent practice at a mark. Accordingly, the idea of a divine interposition has long ago dropped out of the question, and duelling is exclusively in the hands of the devil and his human votaries,--is a purely brutal absurdity. But in England, so long was this bloody, superstitious humbug kept up, that any hardened scoundrel who was a good hand at his weapon might, down to the year 1819, absolutely have committed murder under the protection of English law. Two years before that date, a country "rough" named Abraham Thornton, murdered his sweetheart, Mary Ashford, but by deficiency of proof was acquitted on trial. There was however a moral conviction that Thornton had killed the girl, and her brother, a mere lad, caused an appeal to be entered according to the English statute, and Thornton was again arraigned before the King's Bench. In the mean time his counsel had looked up the obsolete proceedings about "assize of battle," and when Thornton was placed at the bar he threw down his glove upon the floor according to the ancient forms, and challenged his accuser to mortal combat. In reply, the appellant, Ashford, set forth facts so clearly showing Thornton's guilt as to constitute (as he alleged,) cause for exemption from the combat, and for condemnation of the prisoner. The court, taken by surprise, spent five months in studying on the matter. At last it decided that the fighting man had the law of England on his side, admitted his demand, and further, found that the matters alleged for exemption from combat were not sufficient. On this, poor William Ashford, who was but a boy, declined the combat by reason of his youth, and the prisoner was discharged, and walked in triumph out of court, the innocent blood still unavenged upon his hands. The old fogies of Parliament were startled at finding themselves actually permitting the practice of barbarisms abolished by the Greek emperor, Michael Palaeologus, in 1259, and by the good King Louis IX of France in 1270; and two years afterwards, in 1819, the legal duel or "assize of battle" was by law abolished in England. It had been legal there for five centuries and a half, having been introduced by statute in 1261.