nation of sound, could not fail of seeming a little singular as
applied to such a subject, but every thing that pleases in France is
tres jolie. From this painting, I was, by importunity, led to view the
other parts of the collection, which were composed of large pictures, by
french masters; and so natural is local prejudice, every where, that I
was almost held down, before the works of the _best artists of Rouen_,
upon which, as I am at liberty _here_, I shall beg to make no comment.

In the students' room, below, were some paintings curious, and valuable
only, from their great antiquity, and a few good copies by the pupils. A
picture was pointed out to me as a very fine thing, the subject was a
fat little cherub, with a full flowing wig, fiddling to St. Francis, who
from his gloomy appearance seemed not to possess half the musical genius
of a dancing bear.

Upon my return through the market place, I beheld the miserable wretch,
at whose trial I was present in the morning, led out to execution. He
was seated upon the bottom of a cart, stripped above to his shirt, which
was folded back, his arms were pinioned close behind, and his hair was
closely cropped, to prevent the stroke of the fatal knife from being
impeded. A priest was seated in a chair beside him. As the object of my
excursion was to contemplate the manners of the people, I summoned
resolution to view this gloomy and painful spectacle, which seemed to
excite but little sensation in the market place, where its petty traffic
and concerns proceeded with their accustomed activity, and the women at
their stalls, which extended to the foot of the scaffold, appeared to be
impressed only with the solicitude of selling their vegetables to the
highest bidder. A small body of the national guards, and a few boys and
idlers surrounded the fatal spot. The guillotine, painted red, was
placed upon a scaffold, of about five feet high. As soon as the criminal
ascended the upper step which led to it he mounted, by the direction of
the executioner, a little board, like a shutter, raised upright to
receive him, to which he was strapped, turned down flat, and run into a
small ring of iron half opened and made to admit the neck, the top part
of which was then closed upon it, a black leather curtain was placed
before the head, from which a valve depended, which communicated to a
tub, placed under the scaffold to receive the blood, the executioner
then touched a long thin iron rod, c