Daily National Intelligencer

Truly there is no little weight in the objections of our serio-comic correspondent; and the tragic effects which he imputes to our gloomy selections might well make us pause in a practice liable to produce such serious consequences. But suppose these lugubrious details do now and then give the horrors to some sensitive reader, still we think there is something to be said in their favor, independently of any gratification which they may afford to unfeeling curiosity, or the "amateurs of human suffering." May we not urge in their defence, that they admonish the heedless, and furnish matter for reflection to the moralist; may they not force a wholesome lesson upon the unthinking, and, by shewing the rocks upon which these perish, perchance teach others to escape some one of "the thousand ills that flesh is heir to?" So much, we think, may be fairly advanced in defence of our "chapter of accidents." As to the propriety of giving publicity to crimes which disgrace human nature, our opinion has always accorded with that of our correspondent, and we have uniformly discountenanced the practice, both by precept and example, except in some rare case in which a useful end was sought in the exception.