1824.]

MURDER-DREAMS.

415

some morning stretched along your lobby with your eyes starting out of their sockets, the blue marks of finger-nails indented into your wizen, and your os frontis driven in upon your brain, apparently by the blow of a sledge-hammer.

Shepherd. Haud your tongues, haud your tongues, ye twa; you're making me a' grew.

Tickler. A beautiful variety of disposition and genius serves to divest of sameness the simple act of slaughter; and the benevolent reader never tires of details, in which knives, daggers, pistols, clubs, mallets, hatchets, and apothecaries' phials, "dance through all the mazes of rhetorical confusion." Nothing can be " more refreshing" than a few hours' sleep after the perusal of a bloody murder. Your dreams are such as Coleridge might envy. Clubs batter out your brains ;-your throat is filled with mud, as three strong Irishmen (their accent betrays them) tread you down seven fathoms into a quagmire. "You had better lie quiet, sir," quoth Levi Hyams, a Jew, while he applies a pig-butcher's knife to the jugular vein; you start up like Priam at the dead of night, and an old hag of a housekeeper chops your nose off with a cleaver. "Oh! what a pain methinks it is to die," as a jolly young waterman flings you out of his wherry into the Thames, immediately below Wellington Bridge. "Spare-spare my life, and take all I have!" has no effect upon two men in crape, who bury you, half dead, in a ditch. "He still breathes," growls a square thickset ruffian in a fustian jacket, as he gives you the coup-de-grace with a hedge-stake.

Shepherd. Haud your tongues, I say. You'll turn my stomach at this dish o' tripe. The moniplies and the lady's hood are just excellent. Change the conversation.

Tickler. You are huddled out of a garret-window by a gang of thieves, and feel yourself impaled on the area spikes; or the scoundrels have set the house on fire, that none may know they have murdered you; you are gagged with a floor-brush till your mouth yawns like a barn-door, yet told, if you open your lips, you are a dead man; outlandish devils put you into a hot oven; you try to escape from the murderer of the Marrs, and other households, through a common-sewer, and all egress is denied by a catacomb of cats, and the offal of twenty dissecting-tables. "Hoize him into the boiler, and be d--d to him;" and no sooner said than done. "Leave off haggling at his windpipe, Jack, and scoop out his bloody eyes."

North. How do you like to be buried in quick-lime in your backcourt, heaving all the while like a mole-hill, above your gashes, and puddled with your slow-oozing heart-blood? Is it a luxury to be pressed down, neck and crop, scarified like bacon, into a barrel below a water-spout, among dirty towels, sheets, and other napery, to be discovered, six weeks hence, in a state of putrefaction? What think you

of being fairly cut up like a swine, and pickled, salted, barrelled, and shipped off at fourpence a pound, for the use of a blockading squadron? Or would you rather, in the shape of hams, circumnavigate the globe with Cook or Vancouver? Dreams-dreams-dreams. "I wake in

horror, and dare sleep no more!"

Tickler. Could it have been believed, that in a country where murder has thus been carried to so high a pitch of cultivation, its fourteen million inhabitants would have been set agape and aghast by such a pitiful knave as Jack Thurtell killing and bagging one single miserable sharper? Monstrous !

North. There was Sarah Malcolm, a sprightly young charwoman of - the Temple, that murdered, with her own hand, a whole household. Few spinsters, we think, have been known to murder three of their own sex; and Sarah Malcolm must ever stand in the first class of assassins. She had no accomplice; her own hand held down the gray heads of the poor old women, and strangled them with unflinching fingers. As for the young girl of seventeen, she cut her throat from ear to ear, while she was perhaps dreaming of her sweetheart. She silenced all the breath in the house, and shut by the dead bodies; went about her ordinary business, as sprightly as ever, and lighted a young Irish gentleman's fire at the usual hour.

Tickler. What an admirable wife would Sarah have made for Williams, who, some dozen years ago, began work as if he purposed to murder the metropolis! Sarah was sprightly and diligent, good-looking, and fond of admiration. Williams was called "Gentleman Williams," so genteel and amiable a creature did he seem to be; so pleasant with his chit-chat, and vein of trifling, peculiar to himself, and not to be imitated. He was very fond of children, used to dandle them with a truly parental air, and pat their curled heads, with the hand that cut an infant's throat in the cradle. Williams was a sober man, and no brawler; he preferred quiet conversation with the landlady and her family within the bar, to the brutal mirth of the tavern-boxes; and young and old were alike delighted with the suavity of his smile. But in his white great-coat-with his maul-or his ripping-chisel— or his small ivory-handled penknife, at dead of night, stealing upon a doomed family, with long silent strides, while, at the first glare of his eyes, the victims shrieked aloud, "We are all murdered!" Williams was then a different being indeed, and in all his glory. His rippingchisel struck to the heart the person whose cheek he had patted two hours before. Charles Martell himself, or the Pounder, smashed not a skull like Williams, the Midnight Malletteer-and tidily and tenderly did he cover up the baby with its cradle-clothes, when he knew that he had pierced its gullet like a quill. He never allowed such trifles long to ruffle his temper. In the evening, he was seen smiling as before; even more gentle aud insinuating than usual; more tenderly did

1824.]

SURGEON CONOLLY.

417

he kiss little Tommy, as he prepared to toddle to his crib; and, as he touched the bosom of the bar-maid in pleasing violence, he thought how at one blow the blood would spout from her heart.*

North. Sarah Malcolm was just the person to have been his bride. What a honey-moon! How soft would have been their pillow, as they recited a past, or planned a future murder! How would they have fallen asleep in each other's blood-stained arms! with the rippingchisel below their pillow, and the maul upon the hearth!

The Shepherd. I wadna walk by myself through a dark wood the night, gin ony body were to gie me a thousand pounds. I never heard you in sic a key before. It's no right-it's no right!

North. What do the phrenologers say about Thurtell? I have not seen any of their Transactions lately.

Tickler. That he had the organ of Conscientiousness full, a large Benevolence, and also a finely-developed organ of Veneration, just as it might have been expected, they say, from his character. For the phrenologer thinks that Jack would not have cheated an honest man, that he was another Howard in benevolence, and had a deep sense of religion.

The Shepherd. I canna believe they would speak sic desperate havers as that.

Tickler (ringing the bell, enters Ambrose). Bring No. II. of the Phrenological Journal, Mr. Ambrose. You know where to find it. Perhaps the article I allude to may not yet be destroyed.

North. What can the Courier mean by talking such infernal nonsense, Tickler, about that murderous desperado, Surgeon Conolly? Tickler. A puzzle. The Courier is an excellent paper—and I never before knew it, in a question of common sense and common morality, obstinately, singularly, and idiotically in the wrong.

North. Why, the cruel villain would have shot others besides poor Grainger-and after his blood was cooled, he exulted in the murder of that unfortunate man. The gallows was cheated of Conolly, by a quirk of the law.

Tickler. Judge Best saw the thing in its true light; and the country is indebted to him for his stubborn justice. Why, the Courier says, that not one man in a hundred, but would have done as Conolly did.f-Oh monstrous! is murder so very ordinary a transaction?

North. No more, no more. But to be done with it, listen to this: "We are informed that this unfortunate gentleman has directed his friends to supply him with a complete set of surgical instruments, with

There was no actual proof, but the strongest presumption, that Williams really was a wholesale murderer. He died before the time appointed for his trial, and the London populace, solemnly taking his corpse to the places where the murders had been committed, treated it there with unheard of ignominy, and then shot it into a hole dug in a ditch, pouring over it as much quicklime as would have built a moderate-sized house.-M. + I am ignorant of the circumstances here referred to.-M.

418

NOCTES AMBROSIANÆ.

[APRIL,

all the new inventions, and a complete chamber medicine chest. There is no doubt that he will be of the greatest utility to the colony, from the great want of medical men there; but there is less doubt that he will be one of the first in the country, as he is covered with misfortunes, and unpolluted by crime."

Tickler. That cannot be from the Courier.

North. Alas! it is-although quoted from the Medical Adviser. Tickler. I shall row Mudford for this, first time I dine with him in town. Here is another folly, although of a different character, from the same excellent paper of our excellent friend,* an account of the Stot's Introductory Lecture on what is called Political Economy. The Ricardo Lecture !! "Mr. M'Culloch began his lecture by pointing out the importance of the study of Political Economy, and observed, that the accumulation of wealth could alone raise men from that miserable state of society, in which all were occupied in providing for their immediate physical wants, by affording them the means of subsistence when employed in the cultivation of mental powers, or in those pursuits which embellish life."

North. Most statistical of Stots! I had quite forgotten the stupid savage-but, look here, Tickler-here is a flaming account of his second display, in the Morning Chronicle. "He showed that objects derive their value from labor alone, and that they are more or less valuable in proportion as labor is expended on them; that the air, and the rays of the sun, however necessary and useful, possess no value; that water, which at a river's side is of no value, acquires a value when required by persons who are at some distance, in proportion to the labor employed in its conveyance."

Shepherd. I aye thocht M'Culloch a dull dour fellow,† but the like o' that beats a'. It's an awfu' truism. The London folk 'ill never thole sic havers frae sic a hallanshaker.

North. On Mr. Canning's appointment to the Secretaryship, the Courier honored us by gracing its chief column with a character of that distinguished person from our pages, but without acknowledgment. He never quotes us, therefore why did he steal?

Tickler. Poo! poo! be not so sensitive. Nothing uncommon in that. It's the way of the world; and I am sure if Odoherty were here, he would laud Mudford for knowing a good thing. Here's that gentleman's health—I respect and esteem him highly.-James, you are a most admirable carver. That leg will do.

Shepherd. No offence, sir, but this leg's no for you, but for mysel. I thought I wad never hae gotten't aff. Naething better than the roasted

William Mudford was Editor of the London Courier for many years, and author of a romance called "Five Nights of St. Albans."-M.

+J. R. M'Culloch had been appointed Professor of Political Economy in London University, then just founded.-M.

1824.]

CORNET BATTIER.

419

leg o'a hen. Safe us! she's fu' o' eggs. What for did they thraw the neck o'an eerock when her kame was red, and her just gaen to fa' a-laying? Howsomever, there's no great harm done. Oh! man, this is a grand sooping-house. Rax ower the porter. Here's to you, lads, baith o' you. What's a' this bizziness that I heard them speaking about in Selkirk as I came through, in regard to the tenth company o' Hoozawrs?

Tickler. Why, I cannot think Battier a well-used man. They sent him to Coventry.*

Shepherd. I would just as soon gang to Coventry as to Dublin city. But what was the cause o' the rippet?

North. Why, the Tenth is a crack regiment, and not thinking Mr. Battier any ornament to the corps, they rather forgot their good manners a little or so, and made the mess mighty disagreeable to him; so, after several trifling occurrences too tedious to bore you with, Hogg, why, Mr. Battier made himself scarce, got himself rowed a good deal by the people at the Horse-guards, sold his horses, I presume, and now sports half-pay in the pedestrian service.

The Shepherd. But what for was he nae ornament to the corpse ? Wasna he a gentleman?

North. Perfectly a gentleman; but somehow or another not to the taste of the Tenth; and then, such a rider!

The Shepherd. What! wasna he a gude rider upon horseback? North. The worst since John Gilpin. In a charge, he "grasped fast the flowing mane," gave tongue, and involuntarily deserted. So says his colonel; and Mr. Battier, although he has published a denial of being the son of a merchant, has not, so far as I have observed, avowed himself a Castor.

Shepherd. Na, if that be the case, the ither lads had some excuse. But what garr'd Mr. Battier gang into the Hoozawrs, gin he couldna ride? I hope, now that he has gaen into the Foot, that he may be able to walk. If not, he had better leave the service, and fin' out some genteel sedentary trade. He wadna like to be a tailor?

Tickler. Why, Battier, I am told, is a worthy fellow, and as I said before, he was ill used. But he ought not to have gone into the Tenth, and he ought not to have made use of threatening inuendos after leaving the regiment, and crossing the Channel.

North. Certainly not. No gentleman should challenge a whole regiment, especially through the medium of the public press.

Shepherd. If Mr. Battier were to challenge me, if I were ane o' the

* Mr. Battier obtained a Cornetcy in the 10th Hussars, a dandy regiment, commanded by a gallant soldier, the late Marquis of Londonderry. The officers, on finding that Mr. Battier's father had been in trade, agreed to cut him. Of course, he did not tamely submit to this, but his complaints being useless, he left the regiment, challenging Lord Londondery to the duello, on the plea that he was to be held responsible for, because he could and ought to have checked, the ill conduct of the officers. Shots were exchanged, and this ended the affair.-M.