iron-coloured and windowless walls an almost unearthly appearance. The very stones seemed to shape themselves into the faces of the dead, as if from the hard granite had started out the grey and eyeless faces of all the children of crime who had suddenly stept from that gloomy scaffold into the grave. Carts rolled by, bearing the produce of quiet fields and tree-sheltered gardens, to the market; the rustic driver turned his head for a moment; then, with eyes bent upon the ground, went musing along his way. The coach moved slowly along, severing in its course the closely-packed crowd; the warm-clad passengers glanced down the wide thoroughfare, with its dark pavement of human heads, upon the black and ominous beam that went spanning across, like the bridge of death, and ever would the same vision rise up before them all day long. They would see it in the arms of the trees which hung over the winding country-roads: it would fall like a blot upon the leaden-coloured sky, wherever a black and naked spray threw out its arm above the rounded horizon. In the rolling of the river they would hear the murmuring of the multitude; and the echo of the bridge over which they passed would send out from the mouths of its wide-spanning arches curses that would come floating deep and singly, as if from above the heads of that dimly-remembered crowd. Hush! the unceasing murmur of the mob now breaks into a loud deep roar--a sound as if the ocean had suddenly broken through some ancient boundary, against which its ever-restless billows had for ages battered; the wide dark sea of heads is all at once in motion; each wave seems trying to overleap the other, as they are drawn onwards towards this outlet. Every link in that great human chain is shaken; along the whole lengthened lines has the motion jarred, and each in turn sees, coiled up on the floor of the scaffold, like a serpent, the hangman's rope! The human hand that placed it there was only seen for a moment, as it lay, white and ghastly, upon the black boards, and then again was as suddenly withdrawn, as if ashamed of the deed it had done. The loud shout of the multitude once more subsided, or only fell upon the abstracted ear like the dreamy murmur of an ocean-shell. Then followed sounds more distinct and audible, in which ginger-beer, pies, fried fish, sandwiches, and fruit, were vended under the names of notorious murderers, highwaymen, and criminals, famous in the annals of Newgate for the hardihood they had displayed in the hour of execution, when they terminated their career of crime at the gallows. Threading his way among these itinerant venders, was seen the meek-faced deliverer of tracts--the man of good intentions--now bonneted, now laughed at, the skirt of his seedy black coat torn across; yet, though pulled right and left, or sent headlong into the crowd by the swing of some brutal and muscular arm, never once from that pale face passed away its benign and patient expression, but