Again a date was asked for, and Spinkle was at fault.

"You surely must recollect the day?" urged the commissioner calmly.

The same voice repeated," The day the rich Mr. Drummond signed his will-April-fools' day."

"Who is it that so presumptuously interrupts this inquiry?” said the commissioner sternly. "A repetition of such conduct will entail disagreeable consequences on the offender."

It mattered not. The threat was too late. Hilda had accomplished a feat. To Spinkle, Mr. Drummond's name was caviare ; and any allusion to his will agony. He faltered in his speech,— complained of illness,-said his memory failed him,- and slunk

away.

The baronet's party were delighted. A look of triumph lit up each countenance. The Count's legal representative seemed at a loss what step to take; and the commissioner then decided that the party next examined should be Sir Philip himself.

THE TALES OF OLD!

BY WILLIAM JONES.

THE tales of old, that nerv'd the bold
To deeds of love and duty;

That woke the sigh, or dimm'd the eye,

Of innocence and beauty!

Who heed them now? The chilling brow,
And colder heart reprove them,

Forgot the lays, of ancient days,

As those who once could love them!

Around the hearth, with honest mirth,
Our fathers gather'd daily,

'Twas good to see, how merrily,

The moments pass'd, and gaily!
The Jester there, inspir'd by cheer,

Would tell his quaintest story;

While Minstrels came, and sung the fame,
Of those enshrin'd in glory;

Those tales of old, were often told
By pilgrim, monk, or friar,

Who sung of war, in regions far
Where valour might aspire!

Of gallant deed, where, once achiev'd,

A host could not repel them,

For themes like these, our sires would please,

And they alone could tell them!

473

LAST SCENES OF THE CONDEMNED.

BY AN EYE-WITNESS.

BY W. H. MAXWELL, ESQ.

THIRTY years have passed since I witnessed an execution for the first time; and although the accidents attached to professional life have obliged me to see many a spirit pass "unhoussell'd, unannealed," but, as we piously trust, not " unforgiven," that sad scene of "law asserted" will never be forgotten. Connaught, in my early days, enjoyed an unenviable notoriety; in common parlance, it was always associated with a place unknown to ears polite, but, according to general belief, remarkable for its pleasant society and high temperature. Carthage was, and so was Rome; and in criminal statistics "the land of the west" has yielded to Munster so decidedly, that Jack Ketch declares the Western Circuit is merely waste of time for a professional gentleman-namely, himself to visit; and he feelingly observes, that instead of travelling, as he did formerly, with post-horses, he is "obligated to settle himself on the side of one of Biancona's jaunting-cars, cheek-by-jowl with English bagmen, cattledealers, parish-priests, and people of that sort."

The criminal law in Ireland, at the period we recall, was unmercifully and indiscriminately administered; the foulest murder and the abstraction of a sheep being, as far as penal consequences went, in the eyes of justice alike offensive. We have in our own experience witnessed the anomalous meting out of legal retribution, and than its visitations nothing could be so uncertain and eccentric. We have seen a man hanged who should have been once only, and lightly too, whipped at the market-place; and we have heard of a London firm, which after trafficking for years by forgery, as was clearly ascertained, comfortably wind up with half a million, all concerned, during a long and felonious career, being estimated good and honourable men, eligible to the highest City honours, ay, and even to civic majesty-Heaven save the mark!

Before we proceed, a declaration of our criminal creed may be desirable. We distinctly and emphatically protest that for felony, be the perpetrators high or low, we are no apologists. Our code, probably, will be best understood by a straightforward confession, that we would hang a murderer, transport a highwayman, treadmill a thief, and to borrow from our well-beloved brother, Master Jonathan, one of his expressive and gentlemanly phrases-cow-hide a young regicide, the administration being mensal and for the period of a calendar year, so that pot-boys in general might be edified by the example.

From circumstances, generally beyond our own control, we have been present when many criminals have paid the forfeiture that law demands, and the safety of society unfortunately, but imperatively, requires-and we state, from personal experience, that frequent exhibitions of the last penalty which justice imposes upon crime, as far as example is supposed to go, become totally inoperative.

The bad effect of these exhibitions we will practically establish, and prove that the expurgation of the code of England, from its excess of sangrinary enactment, has abated and not increased serious crime. We recollect well, when for divers market-days after the judge of assize, in the south and west of Ireland, had paid his half-yearly visit, his Majesty was minus two or three subjects, as the case might be. As the law then stood, burglars and highwaymen were favoured with "a long day.”* Murderers being limited to forty-eight hours, and hence to throw in Sunday as a dies non, the delinquent was usually tried upon a Friday.

I recollect seeing two rebels hanged in '98, having been carried by the nurse, in company with a score of spider-brushers, to witness the spectacle. What makes me recollect it is one of those youthful impressions which time can never obliterate. The artist was a blackdrummer, a man of herculean proportions, and his apparatus was the triangled spars used in the market-place to weigh agricultural produce in the morning, and, in the present case, put a rebel past praying for "in the afternoon."

Probably the hanging might have passed entirely from young memory, had not another circumstances fixed it indelibly on childish recollection. The nurse was pretty, and she had made a tender impression on the heart of a gallant highlander, who was servant to an officer, and, with his master, a frequent visitor at the house. We, the nurse and I, were not early enough to witness the turn-off, but unluckily, as it turned out, in good time to see the decapitation. Donald introduced the object of his affections and myself within the ring of bayonets which encompassed the deadly apparatus, and just at the moment when the unhappy men had been suspended a sufficient time to warrant their decollation.

The negro cut the ropes, the bodies fell heavily on the grass, and with a grin, the wretch proceeded to complete his disgusting office. One operation was sufficient. I yelled, the nurse-maid fainted, how we made our exit I cannot guess, but as the heads were afterwards spiked upon a public building of the town, we had an opportunity, in our daily walks, to become perfectly familiar with them. What building will the English reader fancy was selected to be thus ornamented? The gables of the Assembly Room! and while, for many a month, these relics of humanity were streaming their matted hair in the night-breeze, divided only by the ceiling and the slates, and not a dozen feet below, half a hundred of the fair sex were executing that pleasant contre danse, intitulated "the wind that shakes the barley."

The effect of that brutal exhibition upon me, was one that years and a strong nervous temperament could only overcome; while for the remainder of her life, my nurse never ventured to cross a lobby without a lighted candle. Circumstances, however, with me, abated early impressions-and the recollection of hemp and its concomitants had nearly subsided, when accident as strangely recalled them.

We were then being indoctrinated in the polite literature dispensed in the Dublin University, and anno ætatis 16, when a cousin

• Often do I recollect, when a boy, hearing the culprit, in reply to the common quare, "Why sentence of death," &c., make the common response of, "A long day, my lord!" Execution sometimes being deferred for three weeks.

of ours met us in the street, and asked us to breakfast with him next morning at Kilmainham, adding, as inducements, that there were a couple of men to be hanged. Country air, and new-laid eggs, and these united, being too seductive offers to be refused-of course we willingly consented.

In Ireland, hanging was no novelty then, and few indeed, but regular amateurs, would take the trouble, or pay a sixpenny fare upon a bone-setter, to witness what they could see handier, by far, after every commission. I, however, accepted my kinsman's invitation-and admitted by a prison authority on giving my card, was shown directly to the execution room.

"Gentlemen, breakfast is ready," said a gaol attendant, and we proceeded forthwith to the room appropriated to the office of the guard. "Don't hurry, we are not limited, as they are at Newgate; any time before twelve does here. My curse upon that cook!" and he turned a steak over,-" Hard as a deal board! don't touch it, gentlemen, we'll have another in half a shake. We lay our own eggs here, aint they beauties," and, pointing to some half dozen, the Scoundrel hurried out.

"Good Heavens !" I exclaimed, "are these two wretches, in half an hour, going to their final audit?”

"Ay, and that heartless vagabond is thinking only of steaks and eggs. I have had this duty twice, and for a week after am haunted by hemp and hangmen. 'Tis folly, we must conquer it."

He raised the teacup, it scarcely touched the lips, when bang went the prison bell, as the sounded note of preparation. The delf was replaced upon the table instantly.

"It is weakness, womanly, but I cannot eat upon a hanging morning," said my kinsman with a shudder.

The morning meal was hurried over. Every half-minute-stroke upon the prison bell would have demolished the appetite of a cannibal. Presently we were informed that the last sad scene of criminal life was about to be enacted, and as we entered a large and spacious room on the first floor of the building, the criminals appeared at the opposite door, each attended by a priest.

The

Never were two malefactors in everything so dissimilar. first who stepped across the threshold of the execution room was a remarkably fine young man, over six feet in height, and in bodily proportion, a study for a sculptor. His dress was neat-shirt, kneebreeches, and silk stockings, white-and at the elbows, wrists, knees, and ancles, relieved by crimson rosettes; these, from their colour, we were told, being intended to intimate that he was innocent of the crime for which he was about to suffer. He wore neither coat nor waistcoat. Nothing could be more manly and collected than his bearing, and when he issued from the door-way he recognised us, the lookers-on, with a bow that was absolutely graceful. His demeanour was firm, but totally removed from anything like a display of vulgar bravado. After he had paid us a polite acknowledgment, he seemed for the brief space that intervened, we would call it some three minutes, totally absorbed in religious duties, and listening, with breathless attention, to every syllable that issued from the lips of his spiritual director.

His companion in crime, a returned transport, was a mean, lowsized, pallid wretch, dressed in a frieze great coat-and, to all

appearance, so thoroughly unnerved as to be insensible to the admonitory instructions of his confessor. He was supported by a turnkey, and all mental power appeared in him so entirely prostrated, that his brief passage from time to eternity seemed insensibly effected.

The general economy of Irish gaols are dare we use the phrasefar more civilized than the metropolitan one of Newgate, so far as hanging goes. The offensive preparations, like murders in Greek tragedy, are completed out of sight. The ropes lead in, within they are adjusted, and the exhibition of the criminal on the drop, and the fall of the machinery, by which, as Thistlewood remarked, the great secret of hereafter should be revealed, are things nearly instantaneous. On this occasion all had been mercifully pre-arranged to abridge a painful interval. The tall and handsome malefactor, a burglar, shook us individually by the hand, and bade us an eternal farewell, and then stepped upon the iron grating of the scaffold, placing his feet correctly on the drop as the executioner directed. Stupified, and like a dreaming man, his companion was mechanically led out by a couple of the gaol functionaries. The authorities had humanely guarded against any want of precaution that should extend their sufferings. In less than half a minute, a spring within the walls was touched, the iron gratings parted, and before a minute had elapsed, suffering was over, and another, and, we charitably trust, a better state of existence succeeded to that, in which vice cannot expect happiness, or virtue command it.

It is due to ourselves to state, and we therefore apprize and assure the reader, that our personal experience with the last penalties imposed by outraged justice upon criminals, has arisen from accidental circumstances altogether. We have no morbid fancy for witnessing life extinguished-at best it is a sorry sight,-but, at the same time, we disclaim all maudling sympathy for a murderer, and with perfect indifference we can read an account of his execution. While we consider, however, that he well deserves his doom, we should not have the slightest curiosity to view the parting agony of the wretched malefactor. We admit that the atrocity of the crime robs the criminal of our pity; while, in our opinion, his removal from the stage of life confers a benefit on society. The safety of the body politic demands the sacrifice, and by every ordonnance, human and divine, blood must be atoned by blood.

In human character the distinctions are not more numerous and minute than those which aggravate and extenuate criminal offendings. One sad scene at which we were obliged professionally to be present, would suffice to point what we emphatically contend for,— that there exist, and are easily traceable, multitudinous gradations in the scale of criminality.

Many years ago the assize-town of a western county was "disturbed from its propriety," by the harrowing exhibition of six unhappy malefactors undergoing the extreme penalty the law exacts for murder. Of the actual guilt of all no shadow of doubt existed; for all, save one, had freely admitted the perpetration of that crime which is considered beyond the reach of mercy.

Being within the circle of the military cordon which surrounded the place of execution-a roughly-constructed apparatus, formed of some scaffolding-poles crossed horizontally by a spar,-I witnessed