Revolting as the idea of torture is to us, it would not be fair to concentrate our indignation on the Nurembergers, as we are tempted to do, when we see these things and still more when, in the Castle, we visit the stupendous collection of torture-instruments, those melancholy monuments of human error. For torture as a system of trial, as the great alternative to the ordeal, has received the sanction of the wisest lawgivers throughout far the greater portion of the world's history. It is, indeed, only quite recently that we have in practice acknowledged Quintilian's objection to torture--that under it one man's constancy makes falsehood easy to him whilst another's weakness makes falsehood necessary. History, too, has shown us the evil effects of this system upon the judge, who became inevitably eager to convince himself of the guilt of the poor wretch whom he had already caused to suffer. How completely the prisoner thus became a quarry to be hunted to the death is shown by the jocular remark of Farinacci, a celebrated authority in criminal law, that the torture of sleeplessness invented by Marsigli was most excellent, for out of a hundred martyrs exposed to it not two could endure it without becoming confessors as well. This form of torture was practised in England even without the continental limit of time. But on the whole, torture in England fell short of the best continental standard. Still, it remains true to say that human ingenuity could not invent suffering more terrible than was constantly and legally employed in _every_ civilised community. Satan himself, one writer exclaims, would be unable to increase its refinements. A visit to the Tower of London will prove that Nuremberg was not a solitary and disgraceful exception to the manners of her day. The robber-barons, who flourished under King Stephen in England used the same methods as their German brethren to extract ransoms from the rich merchants they captured, using knotted ropes twisted round the head, crucet-houses, or chests filled with sharp stones in which the victim was crushed, sachentages, or frames with a sharp iron collar preventing the wearer from sitting, lying, or sleeping. A visit to the Castle of Nuremberg shows us that the rich merchants were ready to use similar arguments to the robber-barons.