The Sun. — 1861-09-28 (London, England)

ROMAN EXECUTION.  The execution at Rome, for the murder of a ponfical gendarme in a fight, of Locatelli, whose inno• cence is established by the Telegram which we pub. lished yesterday, is described in a letter from Rome of the 21st :—" Locatelli had all along denied having caused the gendarme's death, but the evidence against him, chiefly that of French soldiers and gendarmes, seems to place it beyond doubt that he stabbed him during the fight, in which he himself was also severely wounded. He maintained this point obstinately, and when informed last night that he was to be executed this morning he merely replied, Very well; I die an innocent man. I request that no one may be admitted to disturb me.' Nor could any of the priests, Passionist monks, or official confortatori, who exert themselves on such occasions to induce criminals to confess and receive the sacrament before submitting to death, prevail upon Locatelli to accept of the last consolatory offices of religion. At half-past 7, half an hour's grace having been ineffectually granted for the prisoner to repent in, he was led to the scaffold, the rolling of drums drowning his shouts of ' Viva l'ltalia !" Viva Vittorio i manuele P and similar political rallying cries. Courageous to the last, Locatelli firmly ascended the scaffold steps, whence he would fain have spoken to the crowd had he been permitted, resisted the last efforts to convert him made by a Capuchin monk on one side and a Passionist on the other, averted his head from the crucifix, and resigned himself calmly to the hands of the veteran headsman, Mastro Titta, who, assisted by two stout Adjutants, was so rapid in his office that the gasping exclamations of the spectators,' B fatto ." seemed rather one of surprise than of horror. Locatelli was a fine man of 37 years of age, with a black beard, rendered more conspicuous by his white dress and cap. His social condition was that of a railway porter, and he figured somewhat disadvan tageously in the police reports. Having got their fill of horrors, and muttered their curses after the three executioners, who slunk off, with hats slouched over their eyes, by the temples of Vesta and Fortuna Virilis and across the Ponte Rotto to their official residence on the other side of the Tiber, the crowds of spectators dispersed quietly, the troops marched off with drums and trumpets, and the rustics, who had stopped their ox-carts or buffalo waggons to gaze astounded on the unexpected scene of blood, shut their mouths at last, and, striking their goads into their ponderous teams, resumed their road to wards the Porta San Sebastiano and the Appian Way. To do justice to the humane feelings of the softer sex in Rome, it must be observed that women, although sufficiently fierce when passion stirs the ancestral blood in their veins, are very rarely to be seen among the lookers-on at such spectacles as I have described. The vengeance of the Ecclesiastical Government pursues such criminals as refuse to be reconciled to the Church even after their deaths, for their corpses are merely corded up in sacking, and thrown by night in some remote, unconsecrated spot outside the city walls, with a barrowful of lime over them to ensure a rapid decomposition."  ''''