of shells in the vicinity of magazines has sometimes thrown a multitude of blackened or bleeding corpses far and wide. Men have died without being even grazed by the ball, when it has passed through the air close to their bodies. A whole rank has been mowed down by a single shot. The Greek fire is now lost; but from the seventh to the fourteenth century, it defended Constantinople, pouring its liquid flame into the Turkish fleets and armies, and penetrating within the mail of the soldier.

But, wild as are these horrors of slaughter, and mighty as is this destruction, and uncounted as are the victims. of all times, still it cannot be a very large proportion of mankind that has fallen in battle. The other victims of war are more numerous, and still more numerous its disastrous fruits; but three millions or ten millions, the bloody trophies of so many fields, are but a small body in comparison with even a single generation. Amongst these, however, are numbered a mighty company of renowned names: Pelopidas, Chabrias, Nicias, and the elder Demosthenes, Junius Brutus, Flaminius, Paulus Emilius, Asdrubal, Catiline, Crassus, Pompey the younger, Judas Maccabeus, Leonidas, Darius, the elder and the younger Cyrus, the Emperor Decius, Roderick of Spain, Harold of England, Malcolm Canmore, Simon de Montfort, Edward Bruce; the Dukes of York and Suffolk at Agincourt, the great Earls of Salisbury and Shrewsbury and Thomas, the royal Duke of Clarence, all in France; a host of nobles in the civil wars of England under the Roses; Richard the Third, Philip Van Artevelde, the Scottish Regent Lennox, Sebastian of Portugal, the last Constantine, James the Fourth of Scotland with a squadron of his peers around him, Charles the Bold of Burgundy, the Duke of Nemours, Garcilasso de la Vega,

Gustavus Adolphus; the Duke of Hamilton, the Earls of Lindsey, Dundonald, Northampton, Denbigh, Sunderland, Lichfield, and the Lords Brooke, Falkland, Aubigny, in the later civil wars of England; John Hampden; the Earls of Falmouth and Portland, at sea; the Dukes of Grafton and Schomberg, in Ireland; Lord Downe, Lord Howe, Mackay, Graham of Claverhouse, Wolfe, Braddock, Montgomery, Warren, Kleist, Korner, Scharnhorst, Moore, Desaix, Bagration, Picton, Bozzaris, the Dukes of Brunswick, sire and son; and, to close the catalogue with a name of Christian eminence, the gallant and pious Gardiner.

XI.

Death by Punishment.

"Now, men of death, work forth your will,

For I can suffer and be still;

And, come it slow, or come it fast,
It is but death that comes at last."

SCOTT.

It was a divine ordinance or prediction, that the blood of the murderer should be shed for retribution, for warning, and for the common safety. As soon as families became states, this power of punishment was reserved to the sovereign jurisdiction. Necessity, fear, revenge, and cruelty, extended the same doom to other crimes; and under some form and process of law, the lives of the guilty, and too often of the innocent, have been exacted amongst every people.

The first instance recorded in history is that of the chief butler of Pharaoh, who was hanged; a mode of death to which disgrace has been attached, and which may have been adopted, from the ease of making the dying culprit a spectacle to a multitude. So, by divine command, those heads of Israel were punished who had led the people into guilt; and thus seven of the posterity of Saul were claimed by the Gibeonites, and put to death while Rizpah, the mother of two of them, watched below, and drove the vultures and dogs away. The murderers, the robbers, and even the forgers and thieves of Britain have thus died; and thus the ignobler persons

who were charged with treason; and the sufferer was often taken down from the gallows that his body might be quartered, while his heart was yet throbbing. Amongst this unhappy throng, the half frantic Earl Ferrers, the ingenious Aram, the fallen Dodd, the once elegant Fauntleroy, the atrocious Thistlewood, were conspicuous malefactors. Thus died, too, David, the last Welsh sovereign, Hugh Despenser, Roger Mortimer, the favourites of a king and queen; the patriot Wallace; two successive primates of Scotland, Beatoun and Hamilton, the gallant Kircaldy of Grange, the Jesuit Campian, the unfortunate Sir Everard Digby, the fanatic Hacket, the noble Marquess of Montrose, the enthusiast, Hugh Peters, and such of the judges of Charles the First, as had neither sought clemency nor escape; thus the captive Guatimozin; and thus, bewailed by countrymen and foes alike, the victims of military rigor, Andre and Hale. The immediate cause of death in hanging is strangulation, or the fracture of the neck; and the Spaniards have therefore strangled criminals by an iron band or ring at a stake, sometimes before burning the body. Thus, not as criminals, died the last of the Incas, and Savonarola, and Tyndal.

Decapitation has been almost every where a punishment of common infliction. It was the mode by which John the Baptist, Justin, and Cyprian, suffered martyrdom. So died Cicero, the Constable de Luna, Biron, the young king Conradin, Egmont and Horn, Almagro, Balboa, Gonzalo Pizarro, the Doge Marino Faliero, Carmagnola, Barneveldt, and Lally. Charlemagne beheaded in one day forty-five hundred Saxon rebels. Christian the Second put thus to death ninety-four distinguished persons at Stockholm. In Britain, this kind of execution

was appropriated to crimes of state, charged upon persons of birth; and thus the axe fell upon the necks of the illustrious Waltheof, of Piers Gaveston, of one Percy, Earl of Northumberland, and another, Earl of Worcester, of a Plantagenet, Earl of Lancaster, another, Earl of Kent, another, Earl of Cambridge, another, Earl of Warwick, and the last, the aged Countess of Salisbury; of several Howards, Nevilles, Staffords, Poles, Fitzalans, Grays, Scroops, Tuchets, Bohuns, Beauforts; of the aspiring Essex, the brother Seymours, the kingly Dudley, of Fisher, More, Laud, Strafford, Raleigh, Hamilton, Capel, Derby, Holland, the two Argyles, two Huntleys, Vane, Monmouth, Stafford, Russell, Sidney, of Thomas Cromwell, of several Douglasses and Homes, and Ruthvens, of Derwentwater, Kenmure, Lovat, Kilmarnock, Balmerino, of Anne Boleyn, and Catherine Howard, and Mary Stuart, and her royal grandson, Charles the First. The Swiss culprit sat in a chair, while a blade loaded with lead was swung by the arm of the executioner. In France, when the Revolution demanded a speedier process than the single stroke of a headsman, the guillotine was invented the victim was but laid upon a board, the blade hung in a groove, the board was thrust in, the blade dropped, and all was over. Louis the Sixteenth, Marie Antoinette, the Princess Elizabeth, the Duke of Orleans, Barnave, Bailly, Malesherbes, Lavoisier, Madame du Barri, Charlotte Corday, Vergniaud, Brissot, Madame Roland, Manuel, Guadet, Barbaroux, Kersaint, Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Robespierre, Hebert, Westermann, Chabot, St. Just, Custine, Houchard, Clootz, Dillon, Beauharnois, Fouquier Tinville, were but the foremost of a company of thousands whose heads fell under this dreadful machine, by which the peculiar terror of a death