Alice, or The Mysteries, Book IV 6.5.85

Alice, or The Mysteries, Book IV - Two or three days after the interview between Lord Vargrave and Maltravers, the solitude of Burleigh was relieved by the arrival of Mr. Cleveland.  The good old gentleman, when free from attacks of the gout,
which were now somewhat more frequent than formerly, was the same cheerful and intelligent person as ever.  Amiable, urbane, accomplished, and benevolent, there was just enough worldliness in Cleveland's nature to make his views sensible as far as they went, but to bound their scope. Everything he said was so rational; and yet, to an imaginative person, his conversation was unsatisfactory, and his philosophy somewhat chilling.

• Alice, or The Mysteries, Book X by Edward Bulwer Lytton.
• And Alice!--Will the world blame us if you are left happy at the last?
• We are daily banishing from our law-books the statutes that disproportion
  punishment to crime.
• Daily we preach the doctrine that we demoralize wherever we strain justice into cruelty.
• It is time that we should apply to the Social Code the Wisdom we recognize in Legislation! 
• It is time that we should do away with the punishment of death for inadequate
  offences, even in books.
• It is time that we should allow the morality of atonement, and permit to Error the right to hope, as the reward ofsubmission to its suffering.
• Nor let it be thought that the close to Alice's career can offer temptation to the offence of its commencement.
• Eighteen years of sadness, a youth consumed in silent sorrow over the grave of Joy, have images that throw over these pages a dark and warning.