The spectacle which was now exhibited to the gaze of the inhabitants of the metropolis of England, was such as perhaps has never before been presented to the populace of any land. The _LAST FREEMAN_ of an ANCIENT PEOPLE, not less renowned for their bravery, than for their love of independence, stood a calm and unshrinking victim, ready to be immolated at the shrine of despotism. That powerful arm which had long contended for liberty was now to be unstrung beneath the knife of the executioner; and that heart, replete with every ennobling virtue, which never quailed in the sternest hour of danger, was doomed to quiver in the purifying flames of martyrdom. During the pause which preceded the unhallowed operations, Wallace turned to Lord Clifford, and requested that a Psalter,[74] which had been taken from his person, might be returned. His desire being complied with, he asked a priest to hold it open before him. This book had been his constant companion from his early years, and was perhaps the gift of his mother or his uncle, the parson of Dunipace. After hanging for a certain time, the sufferer was taken down, while yet in an evident state of sensibility. He was then disembowelled; and the heart, wrung from its place, was committed to the flames in his presence. During this dreadful process, his eyes still continued to linger on the Psalter, till, overpowered by his sufferings, he expired among their hands with all that passive heroism which may be supposed to belong to so elevated a character. The body was afterwards dismembered; the head fixed on London bridge, the right arm on the bridge of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the left at Berwick, the right leg at Perth, and the left at Aberdeen. Thus fell this great and exemplary patriot, a martyr to the rights and independence of his country, than whom, if we consider his extraordinary personal and mental endowments,--joined to his inextinguishable and disinterested love of liberty, a greater hero is not to be found in the annals of any people. Born to a slender inheritance, and unconnected by birth with the opulent families of his country, he derived no advantage from those circumstances which often assisted other distinguished characters in attaining that place in the temple of fame to which their ambition was directed. To his own genius he was indebted for a system of tactics eminently calculated for the contest he had in view; and with his own arm he gave the first impulse to the cause of freedom, which afterwards, on the field of Bannockburn, was crowned with such glorious and decisive success under a kindred spirit--on whom the inspiring mantle of our patriot descended, as he winged his flight to the regions of immortality.