Poor Sir Samuel Romilly! Quando ullum invenient parem?
How long may a penal code at once too sanguinary and too lenient, half written in blood like Draco's, and half undefined and loose as the common law of a tribe of savages, be the curse and disgrace of the country?
How many years may elapse before a man who knows like him all that law can teach, and possesses at the same time like him a liberality and a discernment of general rights which the technicalities of professional learning rather tend to blunt, shall again rise to ornament and reform our jurisprudence?
For such a man, if he had fallen in the maturity of years and honours, and been borne from the bed of sickness to a grave by the side of his prototype Hale amidst the tears of nobles and senators, even then, I think, the public sorrow would have been extreme.

But that the last moments of an existence of high thoughts and great virtues should have been passed as his were passed! In my feelings the scene at Claremont [The death of Princess Charlotte.] this time last year was mere dust in the balance in comparison.
Ever your affectionate son, T.B.M.
Cambridge: Friday, February 5, 1819.
My dear Father,--I have not of course had time to examine with attention all your criticisms on Pompeii.

[The subject of the English poem for the Chancellor's prize of 1819 was the Destruction of Pompeii.] I certainly am much obliged to you for withdrawing so much time from more important business to correct my effusions.

Most of the remarks which I have examined are perfectly just; but as to the more momentous charge, the want of a moral, I think it might be a sufficient defence that, if a subject is given which admits of none, the man who writes without a moral is scarcely censurable.

But is it the real fact that no literary employment is estimable or laudable which does not lead to the spread of moral truth or the excitement of virtuous feeling?
Books of amusement tend to polish the mind, to improve the style, to give variety to conversation, and to lend a grace to more important accomplishments.