hand was burnt. He looked and gazed at each wound, and his cries ceased, as soon as the pinching was over. They afterwards poured boiling oil, and melted lead and rosin, into every wound, except those of the breast; which produced in all those circumstances the same effect as the first two tortures.

"The tenor of his articulated expressions at times, was as follows: Strengthen me, Lord God; strengthen me! Lord God! Have pity on me! O Lord my God! what do I not suffer! Lord Godgive me patience!'

"At length they proceeded to the ligatures of his arms, legs, and thighs, in order to dismember him. This preparation was very long and painful; the cords, streightly tied, bearing grievously upon the fresh wounds. This drew new cries from the sufferer, but did not hinder him from viewing and considering himself with a strange and singular curiosity. The horses having been put to the draught, the pulls were repeated for a long time, with frightful cries on the part of the sufferer, the extension of whose members was incredible; and yet nothing gave signs of the dismemberment taking place. In spite of the straining efforts of the horses, which were young and vigorous, and perhaps too much so, being the more restive and unmanageable for drawing in concert, this last torment had now continued for more than an hour, without any prospect of its ending.

"The physician and surgeon certified to the commissaries, that it was almost impossible to accomplish

the dismemberment, if the action of the horses was not aided by cutting the principal sinews, which might indeed suffer a length of extension, but could not be separated without an amputation.

Upon this attestation, the commissaries sent an order to the executioner to make such an amputation, with regard especially to the night coming on; as it seemed to them fitting that the execution should be over before the close of the day. In consequence of this order, the sinews of the sufferer were cut at the joints of the arms and thighs. The horses then drew afresh; and after several pulls, a thigh and arm were seen to sunder from the body.

"Damiens still looked at this painful separation; and seemed to preserve some sense, after both thighs, and one arm, were thus severed from his body: nor was it till the other arm went away, that he expired. As soon as it was certain that there was no life left, the body and scattered limbs were thrown into a fire prepared for that purpose near the scaffold, where they were all reduced to ashes. The next day, after various formalities in consequence of the execution, upon the conclusions of the attorney-general, with regard to the family of Damiens, a sentence was issued, ordering his father, wife, and daughter to quit the kingdom immediately, and for ever, under pain of death if ever they are found in it. As to the brothers and sisters, they were enjoined to change their names; and the demolition of the house in which Damiens was born, was also ordered."

The foregoing seems like an exaggerated description of the torments devised by dæmons, in a state of future punishment, for the reprobate; differing, however, in one essential circumstance. In Hell, we are told, the executioners are fiends-and the sufferers, sinners. But, in the instance of the unhappy Damiens, men, so called by courtesy, contrive the tortures; and a poor, pitiable lunatic is the victim! Instead of slightly scratching the distempered hide of an extenuated and despicable old profligate, such as Louis XV., had all the sovereigns who have reigned since the days of Nimrod, been butchered on their thrones by assassins, the sufferings of Damiens would have been by a thousand degrees too severe for the supposed perpetrators. But he, who was undoubtedly and notoriously mad, should have excited public commiseration, and not been made the subject of agonies, which no crime could merit, and only the vilest of our race could inflict, or allow to be inflicted.

The court which condemned Damiens, or Damien, for the orthography of his name appears not to be fixed, had no excuse for their decision. A number of depositions concurred to form a complete proof of his having been long out of his mind. Among others, Madame de St. Rheuze, a lady whose servant he had been, declared that she had turned him away, from having observed his madness; and to specify one instance, that when he had the choice of several convenient rooms to lodge in, he had chosen a garret

almost wholly uncovered, into which it rained and snowed; that he was constantly talking to himself; that when the deponent wanted to send him on an errand, he would excuse himself on the pretence of vapours; and that he would often stare at himself in the mirrors of the apartment; but that otherwise, she knew no harm in him, whilst he stayed with her. Playoust, another evidence, deposed that Damiens charged him seriously with being a sorcerer, because he had by him a wax taper with seven holes in it, which were the wax-chandler's marks! But all the depositions, and there were many, confirm the fact of his insanity.

I have, it will be perceived, noticed the "Journal of an Officer," with other views than to quote or criticise the composition of our Hanoverian campaigner, and shall therefore add but a word more of remark, suggested by a passage or two in his really amusing little book.

Page 6. He writes-"I settled myself next a smart looking young female, whom I hoped would compensate, by her volubility, for the reserve of my former neighbours." This is an instance of vulgar newspaper and novel-writers' grammar: whom would" is not English. Sir Walter Scott abounds in this, and similar solecisms.

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Page 34. On the subject of walking the streets in London, the author observes, "the foot-passengers, with a kind of natural tact, another the wall is invariably given to the women,'

make way for one

This is egregiously untrue: in London, every one, accustomed to the streets, moves to the right in walking; and thus, and thus only, could confusion in such crowded avenues be avoided.

SIR JOHN TEMPLE'S HISTORY OF THE IRISH REBELLION IN 1641.

For a character, and a just one, of this work of Sir John Temple's, I would refer my reader to a volume already mentioned in these notes; "Vindicia Hibernica," where, page 391, Carey, the author, says, "Temple, of all the writers whom we have quoted, is the only original author. His book is one unvaried tissue of fables, of which he was himself so much and so justly ashamed, that he endeavoured to suppress it; and actually refused permission to the booksellers of London, to print a second edition. But it was in vain: it too much flattered the existing prejudices, too much favoured the views of those who unjustly possessed the estates of which the Irish were plundered, to hope that it would be allowed to sink into oblivion."

No historian has made more, or more iniquitous, use of Temple's pitiful farrago than Hume. Under the date 1641, he, indeed, states his belief that the Irish massacre of the settlers did not extend to two hundred thousand, but possibly to about forty thousand! Now, the writer of "Vindiciæ Hibernica" says, and incontrovertibly shows, that in the