The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-03-18 00:00:00

turned to the right at the quattre fontane, and soon passed
the model of our Hyde Park, Achilles mounting guard at the
Pope's door. We ran down the said Quirinal on the oppo-
site side, crossed the Saburra, and after being obstructed by
the masons and the muddy road round the spot where they
are repairing all that remains of the Forum of Nerva, we
skirted the arch of Septiinius S'everus and the Mammertine
prison, with all its recollections of Cateline and St. Paul,
and passing under the Capitol, and along the Palatine and
the Caesarean ruins on its brow, we arrived. in twenty-five
minutes good walking, (no man lounges to an execution,) at
the Arch of Janus, close to which, by the church of St.
Giorgio, in Velabro, we came suddenly upon the frightful
object of our curiosity. Very few people were collected at
this hour ; for they were in the secret, and we were not.
There is a great deal to be done at Rome between the foot of
the scaffold and the fall of the axe (a sentinel at each angle
of the scaffold, and some dirty men and boys, not above one
hundred persons in all, were staring up at the apparatus). It
was evident that some time would elapse; nor, indeed, did
the first of the two heads, the penitent and the confessed
one, fall till three hours after; while the impenitent and ob-
durate malefactor kept the crowd waiting for seven or eight
hours afterwards, and died unshriven, after nearly biting off
the priest's ear, who had placed it near his mouth to catch
the hoped for sounds of his late repentance. Our first
feeling was disappointment ! A ruder apparatus could
not have been seen at an impromptu execution in New
Zealand. Our imagination had suggested a squared, dove-
tailed, morticed piece of solid carpentry—a framed ma-
chine ; and had attached to it some perfection of mecha-
nicp.l contrivance, some spring, as if to discharge an arrow
from the bow when the minute came. We saw a rude
square piece of dirty timber with the rhomboidal knife
screwed to it, prevented from falling by two rude bolts of
rusty iron the supports of which could be withdrawn, and its
extremities let into a coarse groove, between two poles
daubed with soap; a stout cord, and an iron peg to which
it was attached till wanted. The whole thing seemed inse-
cure on its legs ; the uprights shook, and the stage was not
so steady as that on which a show is stilted in a country fair.
Much rain bad fallen ; the earth was muddy below the scaf-
fold, and they had thrown down some cart-loads of rubbish
(among which you might have picked up, as you always may
at Rome, bits of porphyry, verde antiques, and fine marbles.)
Under the scaffold, at the height of nine steps from the
ground, there was seen a box—a mysterious, common-look-
ing servant-maid's box, without a lock—a large pot of wa-
ter, and a sponge! Thickly strewed with sawdust was the
stage above. Attached to the place destined to receive the
neck (a hole like our stocks for the ancles, and to get to
which it was plain that the sufferer had to kneel and lean for-
ward, at a sort of prie Dieu,) there hung a bag of a leather
like a workman's apron. On the right of the fatal instru-
ment, and quite close to it, was the Tiber and the Temple of
Vesta; on the left there was the Arch of Janus ; before it
was the Aventine and the Circus Maximus; and behind, the
Piazza Montanra, the Theatre of Marcellus, and all the St.
Giles and the Billingsgate of Rome. If the incident were
striking to have met the crucifix in the great Christian tem-
ple of modern Rome, it was not less so to see the modern
instrument of capital punishment (so associated with revolu-
tionary horrors in our times) alight, as it were, from the
clouds, like an obscene vulture, amidst the ruins of Rome,
and over the Cloaca Maxima of the Tarquins. We stayed
about the wild and desolate spot for more than two hours,
to study the crowd, and then determined to meet the com-
ing procession at some short distance, and see what kind of
character nature had impressed on the features going to be
stuck on two spikes waiting for them on the front rail of the
scaffold ; for the paper had said, " Con esposizione della
testa," and we knew it would be as good as its word. The
morning was cold and damp for Rome, so we kept in motion,
and talked with tradespeople (such trade as is exercised in
this filthy quarter—whip thongs, drovers' poles, sausages,
candles, Indian corn, flour, salt fish, macaroni, fennel roots,
aquavitle, coarse brown or white earthern ware) standing at
their doors.

" ' When will the execution take place?'
"' Chi lo sa 1 That depends on the impenilenza. Last
time a man kept the guillotine and its attendants waiting till
near the angelus' (six o'clock, p.m.)
" And he did at last become penitent ?'
" ' No; he held out.'
" ' And in that case, must the sentence be executed ?'
" ' Yes, before sunset. unless the Santo Padre himself in-
terfere, and order otherwise.'

" The day, therefore, might be passed, as in fact it was,
by the people now fast collecting to see blood spilt, as did
their ancestors in the Collosseum hard by. We never as-
sisted at an execution in England ; but what we saw this
morning in a more impressible population, proved to us the
inutility of all such spectacles : the attendance on them, we
are now quite satisfied, is that of mere curiosity. So far
from the crowd being hushed or awed, so far from all men's
tongues being employed in whispers on the horrid crimes
which had entailed the punishment, the movement was one,
we repeat, of mere curiosity. They came to see what the
instrument was like, and what the behaviour of the criminal
would prove. After long waiting, and marching and coun-
termarching of the Pope's whole military force—(leaving, as
it must have done, St. Angelo defenceless)—after seeing a
whole regiment of cavalry and another of infantry manoeuvre
in the mud, and blow their bugles most unseasonably (but
prayer and fireworks benedictions and explosions, go to-
gether this country)y, there was a murmur of eengano,
no.
venga
. Vre 12114 posted ourselves at a wheelwright's door
—a civil man, who offered us a chair—and presently we saw
a huge crucifix moving towards us ; it soon arrived, and was
followed by two carts, each with its criminal seated between
two of the cotifratternita della consolazione, arrayed in a
loose gown and hood, with holes to see through, who ap-
peared intent on their charitable
_duty ; one of the miserable
twain requiring the !vhole support of their arms, which
were passed round his waist, his face fixed on a book,
which they held . close to it—the other making large
use of those cervical muscles which were so soon to be
and looking round with a were
of small
divided,
concern and of natural colour—(the first man's blood had
entirely retreated upon his heart, and the capillaires wereblanched). We had seen enough! Imagination was fully
equal to the rest, and this was the point at which we quitted
the scene,
which, at th time
smiling
of
to
when Romily would have abolished for
these useless and brutalising scenes, again
and again referred horror
the judges of the land, the law autho-
rilies, forsooth, the great question of the peril of doing away
the punishment of death ; they might as well have asked a
committee of parish schoolmasters, apothecaries, and church-
wardens—for it was nota teclnicaolrqauleishtiuomn,anbiutyt_aaup.
great,a
broad, philosophical considerationh
everyf British citizen had had
peal to experience, of which
but too much—a question not to be settled by men in
ermine, with powdered wigs, but by the moral sense, intelli-
gence, and right feeling of the country.in
tllitehaaddmiinrafbalcetp,
lbeeaedn.
settled long before the Christian era,
ing of Diodotus for the people of M
Ythe hands of its ancient
tilene—a colony which
feared reprisals when it relapsed into now
seen, masters the Athenians. (Chucyd. 1. iii.)
seen, and been irrefragrably convinced ,•we
gains made, quarrels broached, Yhe'sdl we
eard s
had
eel
fitted to their tires, under the scaffold of tshhod, and wheels
fitted g
uillotine, and
horses
we determined to add our mite of execration totherepe-
tition of such horrors ; it was not, perhaps, an occasion, Yu
will say, but Homo is always a place for classical
urecollec-
tions, and we recollected the horror which the ancient people
(among the unworthy, priest-ridden, untaught, ill-fed, and
worse-clothed descendants of whom we had passed two
hours) entertained concerning modes of death which mutil-
ated that body which they desired to surrender, Dis Mani-
bus, entire ! The poet alludes to the mutilation of Caius
Marius, when he fell into the" hands of Syne—
Lentulue, hac pcena caruitHoc cruciatuoeciditque eel hegus
INTILGER, et jacuit Catilina CADAVERS TOTO."

Assemblee.—The Farmer's
The Sportsman.—The Belle
Magazine. Rogerson, Norfolklareet, London.
The Sportsman has some excellent articles.
Avery inter-
esting " Memoir of the late Duke of Clereland,A_
uy Nimrod,"