What a power to effect good, by leading the young and awakening spirit of the age into paths of peace, do the aristocracy of this country possess, if they would but use it! Standing on the vantage ground of fashion, wealth and station, they might infuse fresh moral and intellectual vigour into the nation, and stem, by all that is liberal, ennobling, and refining, the somewhat sordid and mediocre influences of mere commercial wealth. “Truth,” from them, would prevail with “double sway;” whilst philanthropists in “seedy coats” may plead in vain with the fervour of a Paul and the eloquence of a Demosthenes. “What’s in a name?” says Shakespeare—“a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” There the immortal bard utterly belied his usual accuracy. CHAPTER XXIV. A military execution must be, under all circumstances and to all persons, an awful and striking exhibition; but seen for the first time, it makes on the young mind a peculiarly deep and painful impression. An European soldier of one of the regiments at the station had, in a fit of passion and disappointment, attempted the life of his officer, and, agreeably to the necessarily stern provisions of military law, was sentenced to be shot. I witnessed the execution;[53] a solemn scene it was, and one which will never be effaced from my memory. The troops of various arms, European and native, were drawn up when I reached the parade, and formed in three sides of an immense square, facing inwards. The arms were “ordered,” and a portentous silence prevailed, broken only occasionally by the clank of a mounted officer’s sword, and the tramp of his horses hoofs as he rode slowly down the ranks. The morning mists were beginning to disperse, and the bright sun was darting his long and almost level rays across the parade ground, and gleaming brightly on a forest of steel and dazzling accoutrements—the last sunrise the unhappy criminal was ever destined to behold. The roll of the dram now announced his arrival, and soon the procession, in which he occupied a conspicuous position, rounded the flank of one of the sides of the square. First marched, at a slow pace, a party bearing the coffin of the condemned, followed by the execution-party; then the band, playing the _Dead March_ in Saul: it was a frightful scene, and sent a damp to my heart—what must have been its effects on the unhappy man himself? Last in the melancholy procession came a litter (doolie), borne on the shoulders of men; and in it, with a white cap on his head, and a face calm and resigned, but deadly pale, sat the unfortunate soldier, for whom, I confess, I felt most deeply. By his side, arrayed in full canonicals, walked the chaplain, his book open in his hand, reading those prayers and promises—speaking of pardon and hope—which are calculated to cheer the parting hour, and to soften the bitterness of death.