forth; the longer spear or lance, like those which Arnold de Winkelried gathered into his own body, when he made a way for his followers through the hostile spearmen; the battle-axe, with which Clovis hewed down the second Alaric in battle, and two captive princes; the Saxon hammer; the pike, with which the Irish insurgents pierced Lord Kilwarden in his carriage; the bayonet, commonly destined for the humbler breasts of the common ranks on the field; the universal sword, struck by which, in fourteen or fifteen places, Gaston de Foix fell at Ravenna; and the dagger of closer warfare, and for the final blow: all these are one formidable class of instruments of death, "the murderous steel." A shot from an engine gave the death-blow to Richard the First of England; a stone from the machines of the besiegers of Jerusalem struck down that awful person who went about its streets for months, crying, "Woe! woe!" The introduction of gunpowder brought in more distant, and, to the inflicter, less horrid means of death-but to the sufferer, more sudden, and often more ghastly. Some, like Nelson, or Marceau, or Joubert, fall by the steady bullet of the rifleman-or like Benyowsky, or like Abercrombie, by that of the musketeer; others, like Moore, or Bessieres, or Duroc, or Brueys, or Sale, by the shattering grape which lays open their vitals. The great Duke of Berwick and Prince Francis of Brunswick were killed by balls which struck off their heads; a smaller ball struck Charles the Twelfth in the temple; Dampierre died after losing a leg by a cannon-ball; Turenne was killed by such a ball; and both Moreau and Lannes lost both their legs, and survived a few hours. Mounting the wall of Rome, the Constable Bourbon was struck by a ball from an arquebuss, and fell back dead into the ditch. The explosion

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