TWO CRIMINALS, WITH A BEHEADING MACHINE.

ON the 4th of August a criminal was beheaded, in the _Place de Greve_. I
did not see the execution, because, as the hour is never specified, I
might have waited many hours in a crowd, from which there is no
extricating one's self. I was there immediately after, and saw the
machine, which was just going to be taken away. I went into a
coffee-house and made a drawing, which is here engraven. It is called
_la Guillotine_, from the name of the person who first brought it into
use in Paris: that at _Lisle_ is called _le Louison_, for a similar
reason. In English it is termed a maiden.[10]

[Note 10: Mr. Pennant, in the second volume of his Tour in Scotland,
has given a long account of such a machine, from which the following
particulars are taken. "It was confined to the limits of the forest of
Hardwick, or the eighteen towns and hamlets within its precincts. The
execution was generally at Halifax; Twenty five criminals suffered
during the reign of Queen Elizabeth; the records before that time were
lost. Twelve more were executed between 1623 and 1650, after which it is
supposed the privilege was no more exerted.----This machine is now
destroyed, but there is one of the same kind, in a room under the
Parliament house, at Edinburgh, where it was introduced by the Regent
Morton, who took a model of it as he passed through Halifax, and at
length suffered by it himself. It is in form of a painters easel, and
about ten feet high: at four feet from the bottom is a cross-bar, on
which the felon laid his head, which was kept down by another placed
above. In the inner edges of the frame are grooves; in these is placed a
sharp axe, with a vast weight of lead, supported at the summit by a peg;
to that peg is fastened a cord, which the executioner cutting, the axe
falls, and beheads the criminal. If he was condemned for stealing a
horse or a cow, the string was tied to the beast, which pulled out the
peg and became the executioner."]

I have seen the following seven engravings of such an instrument. The
most ancient is engraven on wood, merely outlines, and very badly drawn;
it is in _Petrus de Natalibus Catalogus Sanctorum, 1510_.

There was a German translation of some of _Petrarch's_ Works, published
in 1520; this contains an engraving in wood, representing an execution,
with a great number of figures, correctly drawn.

_Aldegrever_, in 1553, published another print on this subject.