onnected with the top of the
instrument, and in a moment the axe descended, which was in the form of
a square, cut diagonally, heavily charged with lead. The executioner and
his assistants placed the body in a shell, half filled with saw dust,
which was almost completely stained over with the brown blood of former
executions; they then picked up the head, from a bag into which it had
fallen, within the curtain, and having placed it in the same gloomy
depository, lowered the whole down to the sextons, who covering it with
a pall bore it off to the place of burial.

The velocity of this mode of execution can alone recommend it. The pangs
of death are passed almost in the same moment, which presents to the
terrified eye of the sufferer the frightful apparatus of his disgraceful
dissolution. It is a dreary subject to discuss; but surely it is a
matter of deep regret, that in England, criminals doomed to die, from
the uncertain and lingering nature of their annihilation, are seen
writhing in the convulsions of death during a period dreadful to think
of. It is said, that at the late memorable execution of an african
governor for murder, the miserable delinquent was beheld for _fifteen
minutes_ struggling with the torments of his untimely fate! The
guillotine is far preferable to the savage mode, formerly used in
France, of breaking the criminal upon the wheel, and leaving him
afterwards to perish in the most poignant agonies.

As I have alluded to the fate of governor W----, I will conclude this
chapter by relating an anecdote of the terror and infatuation of guilt,
displayed in the conduct of this wretched man, in the _presence_ of a
friend of mine, from whom I received it--A few years before he suffered,
fatigued with life, and pursued by poverty, and the frightful
remembrance of his offences, then almost forgotten by the world, he left
the south of France for Calais, with an intention of passing over to
England, to offer himself up to its laws, not without the cherished hope
that a lapse of twenty years had swept away all evidence of his guilt.

At the time of his arrival at this port town, the hotel in which Madame
H---- was waiting for a packet to Dover was very crowded--the landlord
requested of her, that she would be pleased to permit two gentlemen, who
were going to England, to take some refreshment in her room; these
persons proved to be the unfortunate Brooks, a king's messenger, charged
with important dispatches