256 LEAVES FROM THE 



space, and if it feels even for a moment or two, who shall 

 say that in those moments it may not suffer an eternity 

 of agony and shame. It has been hinted, that during 

 that diabolical French carnival, when terror reigned 

 supreme, and fraternity — the fraternity of Cain and his 

 brother — had reached its culminating point, observations 

 were made on the newly-severed heads that gave evi- 

 dence of action, if not of feeling, after their separation 

 from the bodies of the victims of the revolutionary tri- 

 bunal. Some of our readers may have heard of another 

 horror of that accursed time. At first, when the execu- 

 tions were few and far between, the body was thrown 

 into quick lime ; but as the thirst for blood advanced, 

 when the guillotine was en permanence, and though it 

 rested not, could not do the work of extermination fast 

 enough ; when the cord, and the pike, and the sabre, 

 and the musket, and the cannon, were all brought into 

 action, and the noyades were added to the fusillades, 

 the utilitarians began to think that the quick-lime 023e- 

 ration was destructive of much good animal matter. So 

 the muscle of the slaughtered was converted into adij)ocere 

 for the candle manufactory, and their skins furnished 

 no small quantity of exquisite leather. Little did the 

 beauty of that age, as she charmed all eyes at the ball, 

 think whence came the light in which she shone, or 

 that the delicate glove which set off her more delicate 

 arm was not the spoil of the kid.* 



More than enough of these horrors — may they never 

 rise again to shock humanity in our time !— and ' return 

 we ' — as a most excellent judge was wont to say when 

 leading back the jury from a digression into which he 

 had seduced them, but always with the effect of arrest- 

 ing their attention more strongly to the issue which they 



* The skin of a human being, properly prepared, is very like 

 fine kid leather. 



