the big field to be hung in, and a band of music,-I'd ask no more. When asked by the gentlemen who made such able and eloquent efforts in his behalf as his counsel, how he thought he would feel at the last moment, Well,' said he, coolly, 'I've tried to imagine how I should feel under the gallows, but I know how I shall feel; I shall feel pretty much the same as I do now, and the same as I did in the court-house. Did n't I look the judge right in the eye, then? I've always felt the same; my feelings haven't changed, and they won't change; for I can't realize anything so very dreadful about dying, only I should like to have a band of music, the big field, and twenty thousand spectators.' 'I hope,' he said on one occasion, that the sheriff won't tickle me with that rope; if he does I shall be sure to laugh. I hope he'll grease the rope, so that it'll come well down under my ear, and then put a fifty-six under, on to my feet, and so pull my head off at one jerk.' On being asked whether he did not feel sorry that he had killed Mr. Suydam, 'Yes,' he answered, carelessly, but not on my own account, nor on his; but I feel sorry for his wife and children.'

With respect to his state of preparation for the eternity into which he was about to be plunged, the following extract will convey an idea: Here the jailer, who had gone out, again returned. Peter cried out, "Here, Conover, this snow storm makes it dreary and feel cold; pile on the coals, make the stove fire red hot; I'm going to a warm place in the next world, and I want to get used to it." "Peter, Peter," said the jailer. "Oh, well," said Peter, "I know I must put on a sober face, because we 're going to have a prayer meeting here presently, and they 'll ask me if I've thought seriously about my latter end, and I shall say, Oh, yes; deeply! deeply!", On being told, on one occasion, that he ought to show less levity, and be thinking of more serious matters, if ever he meant to, he laughed, and said, 'Oh, you know I've got four days to live yet; and the parsons tell me that the thief on the cross did n't begin to repent till an hour before he died, and yet he went to heaven, they say; so I've got plenty of time.' On another occasion, the following account is given of his language: Some clergymen went in to see him this afternoon, and after he had told one of them how he had been doing, and how he had felt, the parson told him that if that was all, he would go to hell for all that. Peter became very indignant, and exclaimed, "Then what am I to do? I've read that book-(pointing to the Bible)-I've tried to

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understand it as far as my humble abilities will let me; I believe what it says; I've confessed my crime; I've confessed that I've done wrong; and I've prayed to God to forgive me for it; and I know nobody else can forgive me if he does not; I've forgiven everybody that ever did me wrong, as I hope to be forgiven; I owe nobody any ill-will in the world; I have no hard feeling against a human being; I know I must die on Friday next; I know that the sentence is just; I've suffered too much poverty and misery in this life to care very much about leaving it; I know I'm not properly prepared to die, and I pray to God to prepare me before I die; 1 believe in the Bible, and I believe in God; and I believe that he's more merciful than men are. And if, after all this, I am to be sent to hell, why, I think it's very hard, and I shoul I like to know what I am to do, or what you want me to do. At any rate, I don't want any of your prayers, and I don't want you to come near me again. And if heaven be such a place as this Bible tells me it is, why, I'm very sure that you won't go there, and that there 'll be very few like you to be found in any part of it."

In the case of the execution of Stephen M. Clarke, only seventeen years of age, for setting fire to a building in Newburyport, it was found necessary to force him from his cell, and drag him to the scaffold, amidst a parade of soldiers and martial music! How dreadful! To drag a fellow-being, a mere youth, flush with life, and put him to death in the most cruel manner. Who does not execrate in his heart those laws which require such a horrid spectacle?

The law knows no bounds to its cruelty, for we have an account of the execution of a pirate, in Boston, even after his attempt to commit suicide. It appears that he had been narrowly watched, but the sheriff leaving him for a moment, he seized the opportunity, and attempted to take his own life. But so barbarous and stern is the law, that life must be taken by its own ministers. While the wound was flowing fresh, and while life was almost extinct, he was taken in a chair, placed under the gallows, and cruelly murdered!

EXECUTION OF TWO BROTHERS-FATAL ACCIDENT.

From proceedings of a general meeting of the Howard Society, Dublin, 1832.]

James died without a struggle-but, melancholy to relate, the rope by which Alexander was suspended broke, and he was precipitated to the pavement, a distance of nearly forty feet. He fell with the side of his head on his own coffin, which was broken, and rebounded off it a few feet. He was instantly carried in (supposed to be dead) by two officers of the jail. The executioner, also dressed in white, with the part that covered his face daubed over with black, by the assistance of a ladder, soon put another and a stronger rope over the block, and with some difficulty again raised the drop-in doing which, the unfortunate culprit, then suspended, was pushed as much as possible, to the one side, and lowered a little farther. In about twenty minutes from the time he fell, to the astonishment of the assembled multitude, Alexander again appeared, and walked out on the drop more firmly than before, answering to the prayers of the clergy. He took his place, and the signal being given, the drop was again slipped, but rested on the shoulder of James, who was again pushed aside, and Alexander was launched into eternity, but not suddenly. The board slowly moved down, sliding along James's body. The knot of the rope had shifted round under the chin of Alexander, and he suffered dreadfully for several minutes. His whole body was convulsed; during the strangulation he several times put his feet to the wall, and pushed himself from it with great force; his clothes burst open, so that his naked breast was seen; and the cap not being altogether over his face, blood was seen flowing from the wound which he had received on the cheek in the fall. The feelings of the beholders cannot be described-they were most agonizing. At length, his hands fellhis body was seen to stretch—and he hung motionless alongside his brother. After hanging the usual time, they were cut down, and their bodies handed over for dissection.

EXECUTION AND DECAPITATION OF THISTLEWOOD AND FOUR OTHERS, FOR HIGH TREASON.

At four o'clock in the

morning, a number of persons began to assemble near Newgate. Even a guinea was given for a near

view! When Ings stepped upon the scaffold he tried to excite three cheers; he set the example himself, and tried to accompany his voice with a motion of his arms as well as he could in their pinioned state, but this melancholy example of the ill-regulated state of his mind in the awful condition in which he was placed, had no effect upon the immense multitude present, who surveyed the dreadful spectacle before them with becoming silence. Ings immediately followed his attempt to cheer by singing aloud the two first lines of the popular song of 'Give me death or liberty.'

EXECUTION OF ARMSTRONG, HEARSON, AND BECK.

[From the same.]

Hearson, who had joined with great fervor in all the devotional exercises of the morning, surprised all who had seen his previous conduct by the manner in which he behaved after mounting the scaffold. He took his cap off his head, waved it in a sort of triumph, and began to dance like a maniac in his chains. He recognized some individual who was seated on a housetop opposite the scaffold, and immediately shouted out, 'Well done, Will, lad.' A person in the crowd said to him, 'Good by, Curley,' addressing him by the name by which he was known in pugilistic circles, of which both he and Armstrong were great frequenters. This address set him to dancing again. His extraordinary conduct at this crisis of his fate did not appear to arise from any spirit of bravado, but from sudden delirium. He then turned round to the hangman, and complained that he had not an inch of rope. 'Give me rope enough, that I may the sooner be out of misery.' He then burst into a series of ejaculations for mercy to his soul. Armstrong, who was brought last upon the scaffold, was much distressed on seeing the frantic gestures of Hearson. He said to him, 'None of that, George; it is not sense; I must say that I am innocent, because I am so; but I'll have none of this.' He was then tied up to the beam. About eight minutes were consumed in these necessary preparations. Exactly at twenty minutes before twelve, the hangman drew their caps over their faces, and that ceremony seemed to be the signal for a thousand voices to utter the fearful cry of Murder!' and of 'Blood!'

EXECUTION OF MARY JONES.

[From the same.]

Mary Jones was executed, under the shoplifting act; it was at the time when press-warrants were issued, on the alarm about Falkland Islands. The woman's husband was pressed, their goods seized for some debt of his, and she, with two small children, turned into the streets a-begging. 'Tis a circumstance not to be forgotten, that she was very young, (under nineteen,) and most remarkably handsome. She went to a linen draper's shop, took some coarse linen off the counter, and slipped it under her cloak ; the shopman saw her, and she laid it down. For this she was hanged. Her defence was, 'that she had lived in credit and wanted for nothing, till a press-gang came and stole her husband from her; but since then, she had no bed to lie on; nothing to give her children to eat; and they were almost naked; and perhaps she might have done something wrong, for she hardly knew what she did.' The parish officers testified the truth of this story; but it seems there had been a good deal of shoplifting about Ludgate: an example was thought necessary; and this woman was hanged for the comfort and satisfaction of some shopkeepers in Ludgate-street. When brought to receive sentence, she behaved in such a frantic manner, as proved her mind to be in a distracted and desponding state; and the child was sucking at her breast when she set out for Tyburn [gallows.]*

We have not presented these scenes to harrow up the mind of the reader, but rather to show the influence of public executions upon the criminal, and the multitudes who attend such scenes. We see that the poor creatures are overwhelmed with their fate-that they are not led to view their death in a solemn manner, but that, in most instances, they are induced, notwithstanding the efforts of the clergy, to treat the whole matter in a most trifling, indifferent manner. 'Did you not know,' said an assassin upon the wheel,

* Speech of the Right Honorable Sir WILLIAM MEREDITH, Bart., in the House of Commons, May 13, 1777, in Committee, on a Bill creating a new capital felony.