38 . Tales of the Dead. [JuLY, 



ing upon the traveller in the valley beneath. Fancy this rival of mighty 

 monarchs this Alexander on a minor scale this hardy robber terminat- 

 ing his career of pillage by the rope gallantly swinging on a gibbet, and 

 yet at this very moment still numbered with the living ! Such was the hero 

 of my promised tale. I thought myself in high luck to have spoken to 

 a patient fresh from the hands of Jack Ketch, to have gathered from his 

 own lips the recital of his last earthly sensations ; in short, to have lived, 

 moved, and breathed in the same atmosphere with one that had hovered 

 on the confines of another world. I fancied myself in possession of an 

 irresistible argument in favour of the penal law so loudly combated, and 

 now or never was the moment to introduce my anecdote. The bare 

 mention of it produced, as I had expected, something like excitement, 

 and lighted up a ray of expectation on many a fair face. The chairs of the 

 company were gradually compressed into a narrow semicircle ; and the 

 lady of the house, an elderly maiden aunt, with a look directed towards a 

 tall hoydenish niece of sixteen just emancipated from a boarding-school, 

 ventured, in a paroxysm of hospitality, to hint something about a fire. 

 Blessings on the good old lady ! though the day was Sunday, and though 

 she had hallowed the Sabbath by her customary attendance at church, 

 she could endure the profanity of a little heretic mirth in the evening. 

 When I think of her, I really feel disposed to relax in my antipathy to 

 old maids and sanctified evergreen aunts ; for, to speak generally of that 

 class of bipeds, I aver from experience, as well as upon the high authority 

 of Tony Lumpkin, that " aunts are d d bad things," though, thank 

 God, I am seldom regaled with the odour of their sanctity : 



<( Why I thank God for that is no great matter." 



To return the proposition relative to a fire was not thrown away. In 

 the twinkling of an eye a few lighted embers had already kindled the 

 faggots now no longer destined merely for show ; and the blaze, fanned by 

 the breath, in plain English, of a pair of bellows, soon communicated its 

 enlivening glow to a set of as eager faces as ever circled round an autumn 

 fire. Would English belle have contaminated her taper fingers with the 

 contact of such a vulgar utensil as was now most lustily plied by the 

 somewhat ruddy hands of the hoydenish niece above-mentioned ? Would 

 English belle have stooped to any thing so despicably useful ? Reader, 

 " they manage these things better in France." And now for my tale, 

 which I related nearly in the following terms : 



I had undertaken a pedestrian excursion through the most romantic 

 and untra veiled part of Italy, induced chiefly by the circumstance that 

 no octavo guide that I could lay hold of had lavished its trite com- 

 mendation on the beauties of scenery unexplored by the generality of 

 cockney post-chaise travellers. That love of vagabondizing and change, 

 which is the very essence of my animal existence, had urged me speedily to 

 return to France, from the gay metropolis of which I was now not many 

 leagues distant. In the middle of the road, and a few paces in advance 

 of me, a solitary traveller walked leisurely along. On coming up with 

 him, curiosity induced me to observe his physiognomy, which a feeble 

 acquaintance with the science of Lavater enabled me to pronounce that 

 of a boon companion, a decided amateur of good eating and drinking, 

 when those blessings were to be obtained without too much trouble. He 

 seemed to be one of those enviable mortals who travel recklessly along 

 the road of life, without knowing or caring whither they are bound, 



