None of these miserable wretches were loaded with irons; they would, indeed, have been a very unnecessary augmentation of cruelty, for nothing but the miraculous interference of an angel could have burst their prison-doors, which were doubly cased with iron, and fastened with enormous bolts and locks, whilst the walls of the cells were cased with ponderous masonry, through which, if a prisoner had the means to penetrate, he would afterwards have to encounter all the earth upon which the rest of the Stadt-house stood. The gaoler showed us some irons of a particular construction, and a board which fastened round the neck and one hand, for refractory criminals, but he assured me they had not been used for many years. The principal secretary of the magistracy showed me the hall of justice, which was also formerly the torture-chamber. Here the miserable sufferer, who refused to confess his guilt, at the pleasure of his barbarous judge, underwent a variety of torments; amongst others, it was usual to fasten his hands behind his neck, with a cord which passed through pullies fastened to a vaulted ceiling, by means of which he was jerked up and down, with leaden weights of fifty pounds each lashed to his feet, until anguish overpowered his senses, and a confession of guilt was heard to quiver on his lips. Some of the iron work by which this infamous process was effected was still adhering to the walls. This ferocious and stupid practice was only abolished in the year 1798. This room is entirely of stone, low, and vaulted; the windows are small, and guarded by vast double bars of iron, and the whole is very little better than a large dungeon. A bar for the prisoner to appear at, a seat for the witness, for only one is most judiciously admitted at a time; a table and raised seats for the judges, and lower ones for the officers attached to the tribunal, form all the arrangements of this gloomy seat of justice. The prisoner is permitted to have a counsellor to plead his cause, and no strangers are admitted on any account. Three days are suffered to elapse between the sentence and its execution in capital cases; during which the prisoner is allowed whatever refreshment he may choose; an indulgence which, from the state of the appetite at such a period, seldom runs the state into much expense. Public punishments are inflicted four times in the course of the year. On these occasions a vast scaffold is erected, as I have mentioned, in the great area between the stadt-house and the weighing or custom-house, upon a level with the first floor of the former building, through which the criminals enter to the spot assigned for them to receive their punishment: those who are to be whipped receive that punishment with considerable severity, and are not permitted to retire till those who are to die have suffered death, which is inflicted by decapitation with the sword or hanging, though the latter is most frequent. On these melancholy occasions, the chief