Upon Robertson’s escape, Wilson was immediately taken back to prison, and put in close custody. He was executed, under the dreadful circumstances so well known, on the 14th of April. The story of a “young fellow, with a sailor’s cap slouched over his face,” having cut him down from the gibbet, on the rising of the mob, is perfectly unfounded. The executioner was at the top of the ladder, performing that part of his office, at the time Porteous fired. Though the author of the Tale has chosen George Robertson for his hero, and invested him with many attributes worthy of that high character, historical accuracy obliges us to record that he was merely a stabler; and, what must at once destroy all romantic feelings concerning him in the light of a hero, tradition informs us that he was a married man at the time of his imprisonment. He kept an inn in Bristo Street, and was a man of rather dissipated habits, though the exculpatory evidence produced upon his trial represents him as in the habit of being much intrusted by the carriers who lodged at his house. After his escape, he was known to have gone to Holland, and to have resided there many years. The most flagrant aberration from the truth committed by the novelist, is in the opening of the Tale, where the crowd is represented as awaiting the execution of Captain Porteous, in the Grassmarket, on the 7th of September. The whole scene is described in the most admirable manner; and the interesting objects of the gallows, the filled windows, and the crowd upon the street, form, I have no doubt, the faithful outline of what the scene would have been, had it existed.[29] But however ably the Author of “Waverley” has delineated this imaginary scene, it is unfortunate that his account does not agree either with truth, or, what was to him ten times more important, _vraisemblance_. He has no doubt handled the fictitious incident of the abortive preparations for the execution, and the expressions of the disappointed multitude on the occasion, in his usual masterly manner, and heightened the _effect_ of his own story not a little by the use he has made of history; but it must at the same time strike every reader that the whole affair is extremely improbable. It seems scarcely possible that a conspiracy of such a deep and well-planned nature as the Porteous mob could have been laid and brought to issue in a single afternoon. Not even the most romantic reader of novels, supposing him to understand the case to its full extent, would deceive himself with so incredible an absurdity; but would think with us that, according to the natural course of things, it would take _all the time it did take_, (five days,) before so well-laid and eventually so successful a scheme could be projected, organized, and accomplished. The plain statement of the facts is to the following effect.