peak a few words in the Place De la
Revolution, it was found necessary to drown his voice in a harsh roll
of soldiers' drums. Not without a meaning do people come forth to see
men die. We stand in the valley, they on the hill-top, and on their
faces strikes the light of the other world, and from some sign or
signal of theirs we attempt to discover or extract a hint of what it is
all like.

To be publicly put to death, for whatever reason, must ever be a
serious matter. It is always bitter, but there are degrees in its
bitterness. It is easy to die like Stephen with an opened heaven above
you, crowded with angel faces. It is easy to die like Balmerino with a
chivalrous sigh for the White Rose, and an audible "God bless King
James." Such men die for a cause in which they glory, and are
supported thereby; they are conducted to the portals of the next world
by the angels, Faith, Pity, Admiration. But it is not easy to die in
expiation of a crime like murder, which engirdles you with trembling
and horror even in the loneliest places, which cuts you off from the
sympathies of your kind, which reduces the universe to two elements--a
sense of personal identity, and a memory of guilt. In so dying, there
must be inconceivable bitterness; a man can have no other support than
what strength he may pluck from despair, or from the iron with which
nature may have originally braced heart and nerve. Yet, taken as a
whole, criminals on the scaffold comport themselves creditably. They
look Death in the face when he wears his cruelest aspect, and if they
flinch somewhat, they can at least bear to look. I believe that, for
the criminal, execution within the prison walls, with no witnesses save
some half-dozen official persons, would be infinitely more terrible
than execution in the presence of a curious, glaring mob. The daylight
and the publicity are alien elements, which wean the man a little from
himself. He steadies his dizzy brain on the crowd beneath and around
him. He has his last part to play, and his manhood rallies to play it
well. Nay, so subtly is vanity intertwined with our motives, the
noblest and the most ignoble, that I can fancy a poor wretch with the
noose dangling at his ear, and with barely five minutes to live,
soothed somewhat with the idea that his firmness and composure will
earn him the approbation, perhaps the pity, of the spectators. He
would take with him, if he could, the good opinion of his fello