extinct he let himself down to the ground by the bodies. Execution by hanging was, however, graciously abolished by Ferdinand VII., the beloved; this father of his people determined that the future death for civil offences should be strangulation,--a mode of removing to a better world those of his children who deserved it, which is certainly more in accordance with the Oriental bow-string. [Sidenote: EXECUTION OF A ROBBER.] Veneno was placed, as is usual, the day before his execution, “_en capilla_” in a chapel or cell set apart for the condemned, where the last comforts of religion are administered. This was a small room in the prison, and the most melancholy in that dwelling of woe, for such indeed, as Cervantes from sad experience knew, and described a Spanish prison to be, it still is. An iron grating formed the partition of the corridor, which led to the chamber. This passage was crowded with members of a charitable brotherhood, who were collecting alms from the visitors, to be expended in masses for the eternal repose of the soul of the criminal. There were groups of officers, and of portly Franciscan friars smoking their cigars and looking carefully from time to time into the amount of the contributions, which were to benefit their bodies, quite as much as the soul of the condemned. The levity of those assembled without formed, meantime, a heartless contrast with the gloom and horror of the melancholy interior. A small door opened into the cell, over which might well be inscribed the awful words of Dante-- “Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate!” [Sidenote: EXECUTION OF A ROBBER.]