282 NOTIiS OF THE MONTH, 



Execution of Fieschi. — Fieschi has paid the penalty of the law ; — 

 his head was chopped off on the 20th. He kept his word as to the 

 manner of his dying ; that is to say, he died, according to his own 

 acceptation of the term, a hero ! In other words, he died as he had 



lived a brute. A more melancholy insensibility to the crimes he had 



committed, or to his destiny in a future state, was never exhibited. 

 No mark of contrition for his guilt ever escaped him ; no fear of futurity 

 seems ever to have had a moment's existence in his mind. And yet 

 none of the French journals even hint a word of regret or disapproba- 

 tion at the frightful spectacle of a human being, stained with the mo t 

 atrocious crimes, thus rushing recklessly into the presence of the 

 Supreme Being. There can be no question, that this tacit approval of 

 this brutal indifference to death on a public scaffold, has a most injurious 

 effect on the myriads who witness the spectacle, and the millions who 

 read the account of it. The ignorant multitude are taught to look on a 

 person dying under such circumstances, and having every thing he says 

 and does carefully chronicled, and without a single expression of disgust, 



as if he were the most illustrious man that ever lived ; — they are, in • 



deed, led to look on such a person as a sort of deity. Were public 

 indignation sufficiently expressed through the press, first at the crime 

 itself, and then at the brutal indifference which the criminal evinces 

 both as to what he has done and the futurity which awaits him ; were 

 he, in short, held up as one whose conduct, in such a case, ought only 

 to be re"-arded with mingled feelings of loathing and commiseration, it 

 would, in the first instance, operate as a preventative to such atrocities ; 

 and, in the second, it would, if any earthly consideration could, induce 

 those who had been hurried into crimes by the force of their depravity, 

 to be ashamed of their guilt, both in the sight of their Maker and 

 their fellow men 



An Episode. — Our readers will probably recollect the story of the 

 French Roman Catholic General, who, in the midst of his devotions, 

 used to turn about his head to his attendants and order heretics to be 

 executed by the dozen. The thing was done, if we may so speak, by 

 way of parenthesis. The French correspondent of The Times seems to 

 have a somewhat similar, though happily more harmless taste for episode, 

 or parenthesis. In the midst of a most inflated and pathetic account of 

 the execution of Fieschi and his accomplices, the writer turns aside from 

 the main subject, in the midst of the most important part of it, to 

 bestow an episodical paragraph on the Duke of Brunswick : — 



" On the outside of the gate, at a tavern, the Duke of Brunswick was seen at a 

 window of the first floor, looking over the gate on thescaffold wiih a spying-glass. 

 The Noble Duke wore a fashionable great-coat of an olive green, and frequently 

 waved about a beautiful Indian silk handkerchief. There was with him an 

 Englishman, who was said to be a person of distinction — he was accompanied by 

 an interpreter. They botii gave sixty francs for their places.'' 



The minuteness of the description cannot fail to strike every one. 

 The Noble Duke was on " the outside of the gate," — he was on " the 

 first-floor," and at a " window," — he looked through " a spying- 

 "•lass," — he " wore a fashionable great-coat," which was of " an 

 olive green," and, to crown all, he waved " a beautiful Indian silk 

 handkerchief.' VVe have seldom seen, in the same limited compass, so 



