der. On reaching the platform at top, he was placed on a small step or shelf fixed to the lower end of an upright board about five feet long, to which he was instantly bound by means of two straps This board was then turned down, with the man attached to it, by means of a hinge or pivot, in such a way that he was stretched along horizontally, at full length, with his face downwards. A slight push by the executioners impelled the board along a grooved plane, till the man's neck came directly under the fatal knife, suspended high in the air, between two upright posts. In the next instant the cord which held the bolt was pulled-the weapon descended, and in the twinkling of an eye, the murderer's head, separated from the trunk, fell into a box placed at the further end of the scaffold. It took exactly fourteen seconds from the time the prisoner's foot first touched the scaffold till he lay a lifeless corpse before us.

'The next proceeding was to draw back the board on which the headless body now lay, to unstrap it, and to trundle it in the most unceremonious way possible, all gory and horrible as it was, into a large oblong basket on one side. The box into which the head had fallen, when separated by the blade, was then lifted up, and its ghastly contents pitched, with equal unconcern, into the basket. All this was fearful enough; but when the basket, streaming with gore, was lifted off the platform into the cart, and driven away, its ghastly track could be followed all along the quais!

The gendarmes now gave the crowd free permission to approach the scaffold; a licence of which they availed themselves with the greatest eargerness, apparently desirous of gloating their sight with a nearer view of the actual evidences of what had taken place. In this they were amply gratified; for the crimson flood was still streaming along the flooring, and dripping between the planks on the streets. The huge knife, too, and the ponderous mass of wood and metal to which it was fixed, as well as the pillars of the horrible machine, being literally bathed in blood, were very terrible to behold.

Meanwhile the executioners set to work, with the utmost sang froid, to wash the guillotine; and a row of persons, all chattering and laughing, as were the rest of the crowd, having been stationed between it and the Seine, a series of large buckets full of water were handed up. I counted no fewer than twenty-four of these, which were required before the whole machine could be purified from the stains left upon it by the execution. During the half-hour which elapsed while this was going on, I caught myself repeatedly saying, with Lady Macbeth, who would have thought the old man had so much blood in him? But the consequences of this process of ablution werd such as I certainly had never contemplated, nor have I ever heare them described, though they serve to explain, in a perfectly intelligible manner, a well-known characteristic expression of the French revolution, which up to that time I had considered as merely figu

VOL. I.

55

rative; I allude to the descriptions of the « streets running with blood.»

It must be understood that since a large quantity of water is contaminated, or rendered red, by a few drops of blood, the effect of dashing upwards of twenty bucketsful of water on the scaffold was to fill all the gutters in the neighbourhood with a red stream. Now, as the rush of men, women, and children to the point of attraction was so great that they neither saw nor cared for what was under-foot, the whole place, and even the pavement of the adjacent streets for some distance, was covered with footmarks, every one of which told its separate tale of horror.'-wol. ii. pp 88-93.

Now, what effect had this bloody business upon the people present ?

'During the whole ceremony the sound of the most animated general conversation never ceased for a single moment; and altogether, I must say, that anything less impressive, in the way of example, I never beheld. In the first place, the procession from the prison to the guillotine, in an ordinary wood-cart, would have been ludicrous had it not been for the terrible end of the journey. Secondly, the excessive hurry of the final proceedings, by which the unhappy man was hurried out of the world in less than a quarter of a minute after he mounted the scaffold, gave an air of rude and savage precipitancy to the action, very hurtful, I thought, to the effect on the minds of the spectators. Then came the fearfully shocking scene of the basket, and, lastly, the washing, which really looked more like the cleaning out of a shambles than anything else; followed up, as it was, by the paddling of the feet of the multitude in the streams which flowed from the place of execution.

It might be possible, no doubt, to remove some portion of these disagreeable accompaniments of this method of inflicting capital punishments; but I should say that the worst points about it, namely, that very haste which is sometimes pointed out as its chief recommendation, and the hideous quantity of blood which is spilt, can never be got rid of; and I am quite convinced, from what I then saw in Paris, that the corruption of taste, and the induration of feeling, together with the total absence of all solemnity and of any instruction derivable from impressive example, are sufficient to outweigh every advantage which can be imagined to belong to the guillotine, as compared to the gallows. Besides which, I am thoroughly persuaded by the English method of execution, as now arranged at the "new drop, the sufferings of the unfortunate culprits are to the full as brief as they are in the case of the guillotine. It is dreadful to think that the punishment of death should ever be necessary; but as long as civil society exists, there will be some crimes which can

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be kept in check only by means of this extreme measure. be true, as the best authorities on such subjects seem to be agreed upon, it becomes a most important consideration to decide which method is the least painful to the unhappy sufferers, and at the same time the most calculated to leave on the minds of the spectators that impression of awe and respect for the laws of the country, to produce which appears to be the only legitimate object of judicial punishments.

To talk of hanging being "a dog-like death» is quite to mistake the nature of cause and consequence: for surely if a man commit a murder, or stir up a rebellion, or otherwise conduct himself much worse than any dog, he forfeits all claim to delicacy on that score. And if the question of bodily suffering were settled to be eqnal in both cases, as I believe it is, it seems to be a waste of sympathy to consider the matter in the light alluded to.

I can only say that I have used no exaggeration whatever in describing these two terrible scenes,-the one in England, the other in France; nor have I a moment's hesitation in saying that while the French method is not only unimpressive but disgusting, and calculated to shock the feelings of the multitude, and to corrupt their manners, the solemn ceremony of an English execution is not only one of the most striking and awful scenes in the world, but is essentially instructive, from being directly calculated to vindicate the outraged majesty of the laws, and thence to deter the turbulent and wicked from interfering with the well-being of society.' - voll. ii.

In these observations we concur; we think Captain Hall has set this dreadful question at rest. There is a curious branch of the object into which he hardly enters; we mean the amount of suffering actually inflicted by the cord and the knife. It is a dark and disgusting one; but without going into the details which a recent French author has accumulated and sifted con amore, we may state our opinion that, even on the score of humanity, the gallows is far preferable to the guillotine.

The great attraction of the last volume is the ascent of Mount Etna: and it is amusing to observe how earnestly the author tries to persuade Mr. Burford to give the world a panorama drawn from the top of Mongibello,' whilst he himself is painting it with his pen in the most masterly style.

In spite of our hurry, or perhaps in consequence, it was necessary to stop for breath at the end of every ten or twelve paces; and as the footing was among loose ashes, and the wretched sea-sick feel

ing encreased, our utmost efforts brought us only within about fifty or sixty paces of the top, when the sun leaped up from the eastern sea; and long before the plains of Sicily, or even the mountains of Calabria, spread out at our feet, caught the least touch of his direct rays, the whole top of the volcano was bathed in gold. This effect of height we often see from below, and always admire, but it is very rarely that we are made actual sharers in the anticipated splendour. The physical superiority in level then gives us a feeling of moral elevation above the rest of the world, and mingles with the other sources of interest which crowd about the imagination at such a mo. meut and amply repay the fatigues of the ascent. What struck me most was the map-like appearance of Sicily, with a considerable part of which, but only round the coast, we had already become familiar. The Lipari Islands, the sea near the Faro of Messina, the ports of Catania and Syracuse, the highlands over Girgenti, and even those near Palermo, and the Mediterranean lying beyond those places, together with an immense range of the Calabrian mountains, capped with clouds, but several thousand feet below us-to say nothing of the rich fields of the interior of Sicily spread like a carpet-all filled the eye, and rather embarrassed the attention, by bringing at once into one enormous panoramic view so many objects widely separated, geographically speaking, never seen together upon any other occa

sion.

The moment of the sun's disk showing itself above the sea is, no doubt, the grand object; still I have invariably found, when watching for this splendid phenomenon from great elevations, that the hour, or three-quarters of an hour, before the sun's actual appearance, possesses a wonderful degree of interest, and amply repays the additional exertion of reaching the highest point in good time. The gradual manner in which the curtain of the night is drawn up, and the enormous landscape exposed to view, from such an elevated station as Etna, is what no imagination can pretend to conceive-no experience in the smallest degree prepare us for. We have the au thority of Captain Smyth, the great surveyor, for saying that the radius of vision from that spot is about one hundred and fifty miles -or, in other words, that the eyes take in, at one view, a range of the earth's surface three hundred miles in width! It will be easily understood that certain parts of this gigantic panorama enjoy the touches of the coming day long before others. The highest and the most eastern, of course, are the first lighted up-but owing to the shaded sides of all objects situated in that direction being turned to the spectator, very curious modifications take place, and give to those elevated spots which lie to the westward a priority of distinctness in their details which we should not have anticipated. As the fields and towns, and the various indentations of the coast become visible, and the colours of the foliage begin to show themselves, we

are apt to fancy the sun must be close at hand; but it is generally long after this period that he actually appears-such is the surpassing splendour of his rays. This effect is perhaps encreased by the clearness of the air at great altitudes.

'After the sun has fairly risen, I think the most interesting thing to look out for is the shadow of the mountain, which is fluug upwards of a hundred miles over the western country. It is true, its edges are ill defined in the distance, and at some places can scarcely be made out; but still the general effect is very grand, and as the sun gradually gets higher, and the light reflected from the clouds, and from the sky, even when there are no clouds, is distributed over the earth, the parts under the shadow of the mountain become so softened in their tints, as to engage the attention even of those who have least feeling for the beauties of nature.'-vol. iii. pp. 37-52.

It

This is the last patch we can afford; though much of high interest remains untouched, particularly a notice of some recently discovered manuscripts of Tasso (vol. iii. p. 197), which prove, as the Captain says, that the poet was not only in love with the lady Leonora of Este, but, what is agreeable enough, was beloved again. The chapter On the Improvements which have been introduced into the arts of Seamanship and Navigation of late years, should be read and acted on by every one who has the welfare of our marine at heart. makes us long to have the gallant Captain afloat again; for, pleasant as he is on shore, he is without a rival on the merry sea,and smart will be the ship and happy the crew, monkey and all, which may have the good fortune to be under his command. With this valuable essay ends a book full of varied information, rich in materials for thinking, and certainly, as a whole, far more amusing than any novel or romance of recent manufacture that we have happened to encounter.

(QUARTERLY REVIEW.)