of picture and of poetry,—what we have read with astonishment reflected on the difference and what we have dreamed of,-rise up and between a real committer of a murder, and the crowd in upon us such eye-scaring portraits idea of one which he has been collecting and of the man of blood, that our pen is abso- heightening all his life out of books, dreams, lutely forestalled; we commence poets when &c.? The fellow, perhaps, is a sleek, smugwe should play the part of strictest historians, looking man, with light hair and eyebrows, and the very blackness of horror which the the latter by no means jutting out or like deed calls up, serves as a cloud to screen the a crag,-and with none of those marks doer. The fiction is blameless, it is accordant which our fancy had pre-bestowed upon with those wise prejudices with which him. nature has guarded our innocence, as with I find I am getting unawares too serious; impassable barriers, against the commission the best way on such occasions is to leave of such appalling crimes; but, meantime, the off, which I shall do by generally recomcriminal escapes; or if,-owing to that wise mending to all prosecuting advertisers not abatement in their expectation of deformity, to confound crimes with ugliness; or rather, which, as I hinted at before, the officers of to distinguish between that physiognomical pursuit never fail to make, and no doubt in deformity, which I am willing to grant cases of this sort they make a more than always accompanies crime, and mere physical ordinary allowance,-if, owing to this or any ugliness,-which signifies nothing, is the accident, the offender is caught and brought opponent of nothing, and may exist in a good to his trial, who that has been led out of or bad person indifferently. curiosity to witness such a scene has not CRITO. ON THE INCONVENIENCES RESULTING FROM BEING HANGED. 66 globe. My brain sickens, and my bosom labours to be delivered of the weight that presses upon it, yet my conscious pen shrinks from the avowal. But out it must SIR,-I am one of those unhappy persons | drawn down upon me this vengeance, so whose misfortunes, it seems, do not entitle disproportionate to my actions on this them to the benefit of pure pity. All that is bestowed upon me of that kindest alleviator of human miseries comes dashed with a double portion of contempt. My griefs have nothing in them that is felt as sacred by the bystanders. Yet is my affliction, in truth, of the deepest grain-the heaviest task that was ever given to mortal patience to sustain. Time, that wears out all other sorrows, can never modify or soften mine. Here they must continue to gnaw as long at that fatal mark Why was I ever born? Why was innocence in my person suffered to be branded with a stain which was appointed only for the blackest guilt? What had I done, or my parents, that a disgrace of mine should involve a whole posterity in infamy? I am almost tempted to believe, that, in some preexistent state, crimes to which this sublunary life of mine hath been as much a stranger as the babe that is newly born into it, have O, Mr. Reflector! guess at the wretch's misery who now writes this to you, when, with tears and burning blushes, he is obliged to confess that he has been-HANGED Methinks I hear an involuntary exclamation burst from you, as your imagination presents to you fearful images of your correspondent unknown-hanged! Fear not, Mr. Editor. No disembodied spirit has the honour of addressing you. I am flesh and blood, an unfortunate system of bones, muscles, sinews, arteries, like yourself. Then, I presume, you mean to be pleasant.— That expression of yours, Mr. Correspondent, must be taken somehow in a metaphorical sense In the plainest sense, without trope or figure-Yes, Mr. Editor! this neck of mine has felt the fatal noose, these hands have tremblingly held up the corroborative prayerbook, these lips have sucked the moisture of the last consolatory orange,-this tongue has chanted the doleful cantata which no performer was ever called upon to repeat, this face has had the veiling night-cap drawn over it my fancy in that respect, I endeavoured, by mingling in all the pleasures which the town affords, to efface the memory of what I had undergone. But, alas! such is the portentous and allpervading chain of connexion which links together the head and members of this great community, my scheme of lying perdu was defeated almost at the outset. A countryman of mine, whom a foolish law-suit had brought to town, by chance met me, and the secret was soon blazoned about. In a short time, I found myself deserted But for no crime of mine.-Far be it from me to arraign the justice of my country, which, though tardy, did at length recognise my innocence. It is not for me to reflect by most of those who had been my intimate upon judge or jury, now that eleven years friends. Not that any guilt was supposed have elapsed since the erroneous sentence was pronounced. Men will always be fallible, and perhaps circumstances did appear at the time a little strong Suffice it to say, that after hanging four minutes, (as the spectators were pleased to compute it, a man that is being strangled, I know from experience, has altogether a different measure of time from his friends who are breathing leisurely about him, I suppose the minutes lengthen as time approaches eternity, in the same manner as the miles get longer as you travel northward,)-after hanging four minutes, according to the best calculation of the bystanders, a reprieve came, and I was cut DOWN——— Really I am ashamed of deforming your pages with these technical phrases- if I knew how to express my meaning shorter to attach to my character. My officious countryman, to do him justice, had been candid enough to explain my perfect innocence. But, somehow or other, there is a want of strong virtue in mankind. We have plenty of the softer instincts, but the heroic character is gone. How else can I account for it, that of all my numerous acquaintance, among whom I had the honour of ranking sundry persons of education, talents, and worth, scarcely here and there one or two could be found who had the courage to associate with a man that had been hanged. Those few who did not desert me altogether were persons of strong but coarse minds; and from the absence of all delicacy in them I suffered almost as much as from the superabundance of a false species of it in the others. Those who stuck by me were the But to proceed. My first care after I had jokers, who thought themselves entitled by been brought to myself by the usual methods, the fidelity which they had shown towards (those methods that are so interesting to the me to use me with what familiarity they operator and his assistants, who are pretty pleased. Many and unfeeling are the jests numerous on such occasions,—but which no that I have suffered from these rude (because patient was ever desirous of undergoing a faithful) Achateses. As they passed me in second time for the benefit of science,) my the streets, one would nod significantly to first care was to provide myself with an his companion and say, pointing to me, enormous stock or cravat to hide the place- Smoke his cravat, and ask me if I had got a you understand me ;-my next care was to wen, that I was so solicitous to cover my procure a residence as distant as possible neck. Another would inquire, What news from that part of the country where I had from * * Assizes? (which you may guess, suffered. For that reason I chose the Mr. Editor, was the scene of my shame,) and metropolis, as the place where wounded whether the sessions was like to prove a honour (I had been told) could lurk with maiden one? A third would offer to insure the least danger of exciting inquiry, and me from drowning. A fourth would tease stigmatised innocence had the best chance of me with inquiries how I felt when I was hiding her disgrace in a crowd. I sought swinging, whether I had not something like out a new circle of acquaintance, and my a blue flame dancing before my eyes? A circumstances happily enabling me to pursue fifth took a fancy never to call me anything * but Lazarus. And an eminent bookseller complaining of the hard and unfeeling and publisher, who, in his zeal to present prejudices of the world; and the sweet maid the public with new facts, had he lived in has again and again declared, that no those days, I am confident, would not have irrational prejudice should hinder her from scrupled waiting upon the person himself esteeming every man according to his last mentioned, at the most critical period of intrinsic worth. Often has she repeated the his existence, to solicit a few facts relative to consolatory assurance, that she could never resuscitation, had the modesty to offer me consider as essentially ignominious an acci— guineas per sheet, if I would write, in his dent, which was indeed to be deprecated, but Magazine, a physiological account of my which might have happened to the most feelings upon coming to myself. innocent of mankind. Then would she set forth some illustrious example, which her reading easily furnished, of a Phocion or a Socrates unjustly condemned; of a Raleigh or a Sir Thomas More, to whom late posterity had done justice; and by soothing my fancy with some such agreeable parallel, she would make me almost to triumph in my disgrace, and convert my shame into glory. But these were evils which a moderate fortitude might have enabled me to struggle with. Alas! Mr. Editor, the women, whose good graces I had always most assiduously cultivated, from whose softer minds I had hoped a more delicate and generous sympathy than I found in the men, -the women began to shun me-this was the unkindest blow of all. But is it to be wondered at? How couldst thou imagine, wretchedest of beings, that that tender creature Seraphina would fling her pretty arms about that neck which previous circumstances had rendered infamous? That she would put up with the refuse of the rope, the leavings of the cord? Or that any analogy could subsist between the knot which binds true lovers, and the knot which ties malefactors? I can forgive that pert baggage Flirtilla, who, when I complimented her one day on the execution which her eyes had done, replied, that, to be ** Mr. sure, was a judge of those things. But from thy more exalted mind, Celestina, I expected a more unprejudiced decision. The person whose true name I conceal under this appellation, of all the women that I was ever acquainted with had the most manly turn of mind, which she had improved by reading and the best conversation. Her understanding was not more masculine than her manners and whole disposition were delicately and truly feminine. She was the daughter of an officer who had fallen in the service of his country, leaving his widow, and Celestina, an only child, with a fortune sufficient to set them above want, but not to enable them to live in splendour. I had the mother's permission to pay my addresses to the young lady, and Celestina seemed to approve of my suit. Often and often have I poured out my overcharged soul in the presence of Celestina, At the sight of this paper, I ran in frantic haste to Celestina's lodgings, where I learned, to my infinite mortification, that the mother and daughter were set off on a journey to a distant part of the country, to visit a rela- | tion, and were not expected to return in less than four months. Stunned by this blow, which left me without the courage to solicit an explanation by letter, even if I had known where they were, (for the particular address was industriously concealed from me,) I waited with impatience the termination of the period, in the vain hope that I might be permitted to have a remnant of this frame (the mangled trophy chance of softening the harsh decision by of reprieved innocence) with credit to my a personal interview with Celestina after her return. But before three months were at an end, I learned from the newspapers that my beloved had-given her hand to another! Heart-broken as I was, I was totally at a loss to account for the strange step which she had taken; and it was not till some years after that I learned the true reason from a female relation of hers, to whom it seems Celestina had confessed in confidence, that it was no demerit of mine that had caused her to break off the match so abruptly, nor any preference which she might feel for any other person, for she preferred me (she was pleased to say,) to all mankind; but when she came to lay the matter closer to her heart, she found that she never should be able to bear the sight-(I give you her very words as they were detailed to me by her relation)—the sight of a man in a nightcap, who had appeared on a public platform -it would lead to such a disagreeable association of ideas! And to this punctilio I was sacrificed. self, in any of those barbarous countries. No scorn, at least, would have mingled with the pity (small as it might be) with which what was left of me would have been surveyed. The singularity of my case has often led me to inquire into the reasons of the general levity with which the subject of hanging is treated as a topic in this country. I say, as a topic : for let the very persons who speak so lightly of the thing at a distance be brought to view the real scene,-let the platform be bonâ fide exhibited, and the trembling culprit brought forth,—the case is changed; but as a topic of conversation, I appeal to the vulgar jokes which pass current in every street. But why mention them, when the politest authors have agreed in making use of this subject as a source of the ridiculous? Swift, and Pope, and Prior, are fond of recurring to it. Gay has built an entire drama upon this single foundation. The whole interest of the Beggar's Opera may be said to hang upon it. To such writers as Fielding and Smollett it is a perfect bonne-bouche.-Hear the facetious Tom Brown, in his Comical View of London and Westminster, describe the Order of the Show at one of the Tyburn Executions in his time:-"Mr. Ordinary visits his melancholy flock in Newgate by eight. Doleful procession up Holborn-hill about eleven. Men handsome and proper that were never thought so before, which is some comfort however. Arrive at the fatal place by twelve. Burnt brandy, women, and sab To pass over an infinite series of minor mortifications, to which this last and heaviest might well render me callous, behold me here, Mr. Editor! in the thirty-seventh year of my existence, (the twelfth, reckoning from my re-animation,) cut off from all respectable connexions; rejected by the fairer half of the community,-who in my case alone seem to have laid aside the characteristic pity of their sex; punished because I was once punished unjustly; suffering for no other bath-breaking, repented of. Some few penireason than because I once had the misfortune to suffer without any cause at all. In no other country, I think, but this, could a man have been subject to such a life-long persecution, when once his innocence had been clearly established. Had I crawled forth a rescued victim from the rack in the horrible dungeons of the Inquisition, had I heaved myself up from a half bastinado in China, or been torn from the just-entering, ghastly impaling stake in Barbary, had I dropt alive from the knout in Russia, or come off with a gashed neck from the half-mortal, scarce-in-timeretracted cimeter of an executioneering slave in Turkey, I might have borne about the tential drops fall under the gallows. Sheriffs' men, parson, pickpockets, criminals, all very busy. The last concluding peremptory psalm struck up. Show over by one."-In this sportive strain does this misguided wit think proper to play with a subject so serious, which yet he would hardly have done if he had not known that there existed a predisposition in the habits of his unaccountable countrymen to consider the subject as a jest. But what shall we say to Shakspeare, who, (not to mention the solution which the Gravedigger in Hamlet gives of his fellow-workman's problem,) in that scene in Measure for Measure, where the Clown calls upon Master Barnardine to get up and be hanged, which he declines on the score of being sleepy, has actually gone out of his way to gratify this amiable propensity in his countrymen; for it is plain, from the use that was to be made of his head, and from Abhorson's asking, "Is the axe upon the block, sirrah?" that beheading, and not hanging, was the punishment to which Barnardine was destined. But Shakspeare knew that the axe and block were pregnant with no ludicrous images, and therefore falsified the historic truth of his own drama (if I may so speak), rather than he would leave out such excellent matter for a jest as the suspending of a fellow-creature in mid-air has been ever esteemed to be by Englishmen. One reason why the ludicrous never fails to intrude itself into our contemplations upon this mode of death, I suppose to be, the absurd posture into which a man is thrown who is condemned to dance, as the vulgar delight to express it, upon nothing. To see him whisking and wavering in the air, "As the wind you know will wave a man ; " to behold the vacant carcase, from which the life is newly dislodged, shifting between earth and heaven, the sport of every gust; like a weathercock, serving to show from which point the wind blows; like a maukin, fit only to scare away birds; like a nest left to swing upon a bough when the bird is flown these are uses to which we cannot without a mixture of spleen and contempt behold the human carcase reduced. We string up dogs, foxes, bats, moles, weasels. Man surely deserves a steadier death. when we are seen," as the Angel in Milton expresses it, "least wise,”—this, I am afraid, will always be the case; unless, indeed, as in my instance, some strong personal feeling overpower the ludicrous altogether. To me, when I reflect upon the train of misfortunes which have pursued men through life, owing to that accursed drapery, the cap presents as purely frightful an object as the sleeveless yellow coat and devil-painted mitre of the San Benitos.-An ancestor of mine, who suffered for his loyalty in the time of the civil wars, was so sensible of the truth of what I am here advancing, that on the morning of execution, no entreaties could prevail upon him to submit to the odious dishabille, as he called it, but he insisted upon wearing and actually suffered in, the identical, flowing periwig which he is painted in, in the gallery belonging to my uncle's seat in -shire. Suffer me, Mr. Editor, before I quit the subject, to say a word or two respecting the minister of justice in this country; in plain words, I mean the hangman. It has always appeared to me that, in the mode of inflicting capital punishments with us, there is too much of the ministry of the human hand. The guillotine, as performing its functions more of itself and sparing human agency, though a cruel and disgusting exhibition, in my mind has many ways the advantage over our way. In beheading, indeed, as it was formerly practised in England, and in whipping to death, as is sometimes practised now, the hand of man is no doubt sufficiently busy but there is something less repugnant in these downright blows than in the officious barber-like ministerings of the other. To have a fellow with his hangman's hands fumbling about your collar, adjusting the thing as your valet would regulate your cravat, valuing himself on his menial dexterity Another reason why the ludicrous associates more forcibly with this than with any other mode of punishment, I cannot help thinking to be, the senseless costume with which old prescription has thought fit to clothe the exit of malefactors in this country. Let a man do what he will to abstract from I never shall forget meeting my rascal,— his imagination all idea of the whimsical, I mean the fellow who officiated for me,-in something of it will come across him when London last winter. I think I see him now, he contemplates the figure of a fellow-creature in a waistcoat that had been mine,in the day-time (in however distressing a smirking along as if he knew mesituation) in a night-cap. Whether it be that this nocturnal addition has something discordant with daylight, or that it is the dress which we are seen in at those times · Hieronimo in the Spanish Tragedy. In some parts of Germany, that fellow's office is by law declared infamous, and his posterity incapable of being ennobled. They have hereditary hangmen, or had at least, in the same manner as they had hereditary other great officers of state; and the |