g the scaffold evinced, gave
another feature perfectly distinct from what had before caught my
attention, while the eagerness of the inhabitant housekeepers to let
"excellent places for seeing," and of certain ambulatory pastrycooks to
accommodate the rapidly increasing multitude with such delicacies as they
had for sale, added to the variety, though not to the solemnity of the
scene.

Some undertaker's men were carrying coffins across the road to the prison,
for the reception of the sufferers after execution. They were much pushed
about, and this caused great mirth. I turned from the general display of
levity with disgust. "On no account," I mentally exclaimed, "will I remain
mixed up with such a herd of heartless beings. But who am I," I retorted
on myself in the next moment, "that I should thus condemn my fellows, and
'bite the chain of nature?'"--for what I saw was nature after all. A mob,
save when depressed by a sense of peril, can never long refrain from some
indications of merriment, however awful the subject of their meeting. The
unfortunate Hackman, in one of his letters to Miss Ray, described himself
to have been shocked by a spectacle of this sort. On the morning of the
day on which Dr. Dodd suffered, Hackman was at Tyburn. While the multitude
were expecting the approach of the culprit, an unfortunate pig ran among
them; and the writer remarks, with indignation, that the brutal populace
diverted themselves with the animal's distress, as if they had come there
to see "a sow baited," instead of attending to behold a fellow creature
sacrificed to justice.

But the pressure of the accumulating thousands was too much for me, and I
asked a female, who, with an infant in her arms, stood full in my way, to
let me pass. I was retiring, when the carriage of one of the sheriffs
drove up to the Sessions-house, and out stepped my friend Sir Thomas ----,
who, in the performance of his duty, came to superintend the last
arrangements within the prison, and to give the governor a _receipt_ for
the bodies of the unfortunates who were to die.

I was instantly recognised, and the sheriff kindly complimented me with
the offer of an introduction to the interior. Such politenesss was not to
be withstood, and I signified my assent with a bow.

We passed up a staircase and into a well furnished and carpeted apartment.
Here I was introduced to the under-sheriff, who, attended by half a dozen
gentlemen, brought in, like myself, as