Note 68 — Chapter III · TRADITIONARY AND POETICAL AGES OF THE WORLD.

This learned and illustrious poet, who had no doubt, borrowed his “priscæ vestigia fraudis”[69] from the 2d Chapter of Genesis, might have also anticipated the gross wickedness which should continue to prevail, notwithstanding the advent of the Divine Instructor, until death should put an end to mortal strife, and the spirits of the just be made perfect. It is lamentable in the present Age of Respectability, to behold so many of these vestigia as the newspapers exhibit, those daily records of crime and debauchery, murder and suicide; to read the reports of the police, inquest, and law courts, one would scarcely believe that he lived in a Christian country, but rather that he dwelt in the midst of Pagan Rome. It is our deliberate opinion that the publication of such reports is injurious to the morals of the country, and that an immediate stop should be put to it by legislative enactment. The reading of newspapers is now so universal, and the taste for The Horrible so rabid, especially among the lower orders, that we are fully persuaded that the perusal of the reports of trial for crime, under the temptation of the Devil, and the pressure of similar circumstances, too frequently leads to its commission. It would serve all the good purposes that can possibly be gained by publicity, merely to record the names and crimes of the offenders, without entering into all the shocking details, so disgusting to the truly humane and Christian portion of the community.