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How long did they stop him, Mrs. Furlong?'

Long enough to rob him of his watch and ten pounds, I assure you."

Well, as I have no watch, and only five, they need not detain me half the time. And if I should come back, bare and barbarously beaten, like poor Joseph Andrews, you are no Mrs. Tow-wouse, Madam-I could not be in better hands.'

"I am glad to see you so merry, Sir."

Merry, Madam! I never mean to be serious again, except at my own funeral, and then it will be expected of me that I should look grave. I have learnt, since that I have been here, that melancholy is to be medicined by mile-stones; that a slight attack of it is to be subdued by four of those communicative monuments taken in the morning before breakfast, and four at night following supper; a severe one, by twenty ditto, in two portions or potions, washed down by three pints of sherry, and kept down by two mutton chops and shalots, and two volumes of Joseph Andrews,-a prescription of more virtue than all which have been written from old Paracelsus's days to Dr. Paris's.'

"Well, Sir, you certainly are not the gentleman you came in, and I am glad to see it. Here is your bill, and if you will run the risks of the road at this late hour, I can only wish you safe home, and a long continuance of your present good spirits."

Thank you, Mrs. Furlong, thank you! And if I come this way again, I shall certainly, as the poet says,

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So good night, Madam. Once more, good night

Blessings

be on every foot of Mrs. Furlong-that best of physicians; for SHE HAS CURED ME OF MYSELF!'

TO NATURE.

"Rura mihi, et rigui placeant in vallibus amnes!
Flumina amem, sylvasque, inglorius!"-

GREAT daughter of the Sire Supreme!
In whose reflective charms we see,

Unscathed, the mitigated beam

Of viewless Deity.

O, lead me, Nature, to thy shade!

Far from life's varying cares and fears;
Affections spurn'd, and hopes betray'd,
And naught unchanged, but tears ;—-

And guide me on, through sun and storm,
With thine immortal steps to range;
In variation, uniform;

Immutable in change.

1

Oh! teach me, on the sea-beat hill,
Or by the mountain torrent's roar,
Or in the midnight forest still,

Thy great and awful lore!

Nor less, beside the calm clear sea,
Or, in the leafy cool reclined,
With thine own greenwood minstrelsy
Restore a wearied mind :-

And grant my soul a bliss to own
Beyond earth's mightiest to bestow,
Which Love himself might give alone,
If Love be yet below.

Oh! I have loved thee from a child!

And sure, on childhood's rapturous hour,
Thine eye of loveliness hath smiled,
With most approving power :—

For in that season bright and sweet
Roams the blest spirit pure and free,
Ere woman's art, or man's deceit,
Hath stol❜n a thought from thee.

And I would be thy child again,
Careless, and innocent, and still:

Oh! snatch me from mine own wild reign
To heed a holier will!

Oh! sadly is the soul unblest,

That ne'er the sacred joys hath known, Of those who in thy temple rest

Majestically lone!

And, smit with a celestial love,

In secresy converse with thee,

And hear thee bring them from above
Thy wondrous history!

How, when the great Omnifick word
Through the far halls of Chaos rang,
And life the dark cold billows stirr'd,
Thy charms to order sprang-

Forth danced, thy genial steps beneath,
Herbage and flower; to weave thy pall,
Campania brought her painted wreath;
Her roseate treasures, Gaul.

Recount thy Sire's unbounded power,
Recount his unexhausted love,
Who sent thee, from this cloudy hour
The shadows to remove-

And teach me, in thy still recess,

To search a clearer page than thine,
Where Mercy, Wisdom, Faithfulness,
Illumine every line!

So when I cease on thee to gaze,
May I thine Author's glory see,

In realms whose voice shall chant his praise,
When thou no more shalt be!

THE EXECUTION OF CALAS.'

MY DEAR SPALINGRIER, I took up my pen yesterday to write to you, but could not; it was not that I wanted matter to relate, but firmness to relate it. Now don't be frightened by this, nor suppose some calamity has befallen yours or mine; though indeed the murder of the innocent is your affair, and mine, and every one's. I think you once congratulated me, or reproached me with, (I forget which) my strong nerves. Had you seen me yesterday, you would never again do so; strong as they might be, poor Calas proved too strong for them. You must have heard his execution was determined on; and you have probably heard it was deserved. Oh, my friend! you did not see him die-I did, and in his death, his acquittal. Guilt could never yet so mimic innocence, but that the last scene would lift the mask; never, if death be a cheat, did he look so honest as here. What a grievous thing to have the weight of innocent blood to account for! yet surely Calas' judges have that to answer for. A thousand exchequers, to my thinking, could not buy out a drop of it; a thousand battles could not show horror equal to it. When justice is guided by bigotry to the destruction of innocence, she well deserves to be painted blind an antidote becomes a poison; a cure, a plague; and a blessing, a bitter curse. I thought I had so often looked death in the face that his ugliest grimace could not scare; and that after having so often dared him and seen him dared, so often inflicted him and seen him inflicted, I must have met him in his worst form. But, no! I had not seen virtue fall by the hand of power without the consolation of a tear, without the reputation of a martyr. Time, they say, wears out all sorrows; but his art must exceed my faith, if he can ever efface the sorrow of good Calas broken on the wheel! The effect on me was such as I cannot express. It is so deeply fastened in my breast, that I cannot lay it upon my paper; nor can I turn my thoughts from it. It is still obtruding itself upon my imagination. You know how you feel after reading a horrible romance; that may give you a faint idea of my state-one painful thought suggests a worse. When I think on Calas, I think of his grey hairs-then of his words-then of his groans-but a truce to sentiment-I will describe.

Obliged to join my troop, which were attending the execution, I mounted Fontabras more tardily than I should have done for a charge, hoping all might be over when I reached the square; but, alas! the genius of cruelty is too subtle a planner to be overreached by plain thinking, too skilled an epicure to devour her food; she loves by mumbling it to prolong her pleasure, yet is she not to be satisfied with a bare taste! but, enough! She may be said without a metaphor to gnaw the very bones: she was this time too cunning for me; she had but just lifted the curtain when I took my seat. When I reached the square, I found it blockaded by persons of all ranks, for this trial had excited universal admiration. The great majority, however, were of the lower order, and of them the plurality were women, for I have always remarked, the fair sex, though averse perhaps to the acting of a tragedy, are greedy of its representation. My uniform, however, was my passport, and, making way on all sides, they suffered

Calas was a merchant of Toulouse, of the reformed religion, broken on the wheel upon a false accusation, originating in his supposed hatred of his son (who had committed suicide) for being of the Catholic religion, and on that account accused of murdering him. The story of the protection of his family by Voltaire, and of the reversal of the infamous sentence upon him, must be familiar to our readers.-We think of the execution of Riego when we read this.

This, says the chronicle, is the name of the ecclesiastic in the canton of Berne, to whom this letter was written, and by whom it was communicated. The writer was the famous cavalry officer, Le Fualde Conté, mentioned by Frederic in his History of the Seven Years' War.-This is the first time we have seen this letter in an English garb.

May, 1831.-VOL. I. NO. I.

G

me to canter up to my post at the head of the squadron, that lined the scaffold. Fronting me stood the instrument of torture; but as such a thing I am sure never yet met the eyes of the pastor of Rullingen, a description may be necessary. Imagine a wheel of iron about two feet in diameter, so broad that a man could lie on it, and yet not broad enough for him to lie easily, the circumference grooved cross-wise at regular intervals, so that the blow from the crow-bar of the executioner might be the more certain to break the limb or splinter it more effectually; this wheel raised above the level of the scaffolding half a foot by means of chains made fast from the axis, at either side, to iron posts at the interval of six feet. The wheel is of hammered iron, and so weighty that though elevated as I mentioned, it requires no inconsiderable force to swing it. It is elevated in order to enable the criminal's body to perform the circuit of the machine, and an apparatus is provided for stretching the human body to the completion of the circle. This engine was further defaced by the gouts of blood and mouldering flesh which the last occupant had left as his memorial on its circumference. In the back ground two inferior artists in death held between them the manacled culprit. A chubbyfaced mayor, in whom custom and obesity seemed to have stifled all painful feelings, sat erect in his chair to the right, with watch in hand, awaiting the moment to begin the torture. On the other side, a tall monk of the order of La Trappe, whose stern but contemplative countenance formed a powerful contrast to the city magistrate, was silently surveying the preparations, sometimes casting a searching look to the criminal, sometimes muttering an inarticulate prayer from the missal which he held in his bony hand. The executioner, a horrid fellow with a face veritably a hangman's, was busied in his appalling preparations. His dress, his make, his physiognomy, all were in unison with his character. His dress like his bloody trade was scarlet, closely fitted to his trunk, and setting in the fullest light the gigantic proportions of his frame-his heavy and unwieldy feet, his tremendous arms and brawny shoulders. His country I understand is Germany, and, indeed, his face presented the beau ideal of a German given by the most violent libellers of the nation. Insensibility and brutish stupidity vied in his countenance with a ferocious admiration of sottish enjoyment; such a man as would break you on a wheel for his amusement, and drink himself into insensibility for his pleasure. His face, which seemed to have been supernaturally enlarged at the lower extremity for the reception of a hideous mouth, was roughly shaved for this occasion save under the chin, from which the shaggy and unkempt hair luxuriantly hung in filthy curls so as to conceal completely his bull-like neck. Gradually narrowing to the top, what should have been his forehead formed the peak of a cone, in which two closely-set eyes rolled palely and leeringly on their sunken axis with an unfeeling glare and celerity of evolution, which formed a striking contrast to the unwieldiness of his other motions. His very name, Hans Boucher, was in character, and must excite an association even in a man not given to punning. He was occupied in binding his victim with no gentle grip to the hellish machinery I have been describing, and binding his legs above the ancles to the iron with such pressure that the blood stood black in the extremities of his feet: he returned to his stool waiting for the next signal of the magistrate to bind his hands. There was a mighty feeling in the crowd against the condemned man; "The murderer of his son" resounded from all sides, and the gamut of exultation broke sullenly in varied cadence from the mass of beholders, at the prospect of his approaching punishment. I was anxious to observe the behaviour of the criminal: it was not that of a man conscious of an unpardonable crime. He turned his swimming eyes and hoary locks to the crowds and blessed them. The magistrate gave the signal, and the unhappy sufferer was made fast to the engine by his dreadful attendant, and so stretched

that his body, his hands and feet meeting, described the circumference of 51 the wheel. The man of death then stood beside him awaiting the signal to begin his horrible chastisement. The monk, who had been for some time engaged in prayer, rose from his knees, and thinking this a fit time to address the criminal when death had made sure of him, ere it began its operations, slowly approached and coldly bade him think upon his sins. I think I shall be able to give you the conversation as it fell from them, for it made too great an impression on me to be soon forgotten. "I have thought on them, father," returned Calas, none, I would lie here entirely happy; although," added he, looking "for could I think I had round, "happiness does not often make her couch thus."-" We are all sinners," replied the friar, “but thou art a mighty one." ledge it," said Calas, “but I thank Heaven, I can never acknowledge the "I acknowcrime for the which ye have brought me here."-" Sinful brother," answered the monk," thy debt is grievous, and thy creditor is urgent, thy time is short but thy account is long." "I know it," replied Calas, "and therefore will not plunge myself into deeper embarrassment by acknowledging an item more monstrous than all that debt; well I know my time is short, for were it stretched out until that sun, which is now shedding his last beams upon me, should have reverted from his travel to the spot he now holds in heaven, it would be too little to clear the arrears which have been gathering on this head during sixty-five such courses; well I know that my time is short."-" Clear as that sun-light which thou blasphemously call'st to witness, and certain as the death which surely awaits thee, thou man of sin, is the truth of thy horrible crime in the eyes of all men. men are justly thine enemies, to refuse the peace of one whose friendWhat a fool art thou then, when all ship is yet open to thee, and to reject that balm which can alone soothe thy broken bones! Know'st thou not, how all hate thee? feel'st thou not that thou deserv'st all hatred? and dost thou, for the forlorn hope of deceiving men, cast away the true stay of the Almighty, who has given to his ministers the power of absolving sinners, though dyed if possible deeper than thou art." hate me, and that I can still pray for them suggests a hope that I am not "I see," replied the Protestant, that all men so all-abandoned of God's spirit as thou wouldst have me think. I cannot, my good father, accept of thy mediation, nor acknowledge thy ministry; yet may I thank, and I do thank, thy good intentions; but death, though he meet me in fouler raiment than he," turning his eyes towards the executioner, "has clad him in, cannot be avoided when the alternative is perjury."-Here the conversation was interrupted by the magistrate's signal to the deathsman to begin his murderous work. The giant lifted a club of iron, and with it struck the extended limb of his victim. Never till that moment did I understand the full force of the text which says, "the iron entered into his soul." You cannot conceive the intense suffering depicted through the heaving trunk, and on the convulsed features, by this bruising between iron and iron. The blow took effect at the knee-joint, and, though given with force, was not intended quite to break the leg, but merely to try the spirit of the sufferer, and to give a specimen of what was to follow. The mayor, however, seemed afraid he had begun too violently, and, beckoning Boucher, said in an under tone, “Unless you make the culprit last the two hours, you lose your place.' replied with a leer of horrid purport, which triumphed in gauging human Boucher suffering, and, resting on his arms, stood awaiting further orders. ever, the sufferer resumed his composure, the monk his lecture. "Think, Howmy son," said he in a softer tone, "how little able art thou in this case of flesh and blood to abide the torments this worm of the earth can inflict; how then will thy immortal spirit, and sensitive essence endure the eternal bruisings of God's wrath? Repent, my son, while there is a way left, or one to show it thee. Thou art one of the many who have lived in

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