and collected manner: one in particular, with a countenance
serene and placid, expressing his thanks to the chief justice for his
impartial trial; and to the Governor for rejecting his petition for
life. In this tranquil frame they submitted to the executioner. The
spectators were affected to tears: the officers and clergymen,
overpowered, hurried from the scene: the criminals died, as they were
singing--

"The hour of my departure's come,
I hear the voice that calls me home;
Oh, now my God, let troubles cease,
And let thy servant die in peace."

About this time Dunne, the bushranger, was executed: he attained a
considerable distinction by his crimes; more, by his protracted evasion
of pursuit, and his sanguinary resistance of capture; and still more, by
the ceremonies of his execution and the honors of his funeral. He came
forth to the scaffold, arrayed in a robe of white, adorned, both before
and behind, with a large black cross. He wore a cap with a similar
token, and carried a rosary in his hand. He was presented with a coffin
of cedar, ornamented with the devices of innocence and sorrow; and
bearing a plate, which told his name and the time of his death! As he
advanced, with several youthful fellow sufferers (of whom it is only
said, that they seemed _much terrified_), he continued to exclaim,
smiting his breast with theatrical expression of grief--"O, Lord,
deliver us!" He was followed by forty couples to the grave. Such were
the honors paid to a murderer. It is not astonishing, that witnesses
were insulted, and had to appeal for protection. A proposition was made
by the government newspaper, to render penal the taunts which prisoners
were accustomed to use against such as assisted in the suppression of
outrage.

The public effect of these exhibitions will be extremely questionable by
sober-minded and pious men. To see a criminal depart from this life in a
hardened and contemptuous spirit is, indeed, appalling; but the
serenity, and even rapture, thus common when terminating a career of
guilt and cruelty, often entered into the calculation of transgressors.
Among the miserable forms of vanity, is the triumph of boasting
penitence; and even when nothing else remains, the _eclat_ of a public
execution. Some were anxious to commit to writing their own last
confessions of guilt, to secure a posthumous interest in the terror or
pity of mankind.[173] The fullest appreciation of that system of mercy,