Probably the dramatist alluded to some well known fact which was at that time of recent occurrence. When the desperate and atrocious traitor Thistlewood was on the scaffold, his demeanour was that of a man who was resolved boldly to meet the fate he had deserved; in the few words which were exchanged between him and his fellow criminals he observed, that the grand question whether or not the soul was immortal would soon be solved for them. No expression of hope escaped him, no breathing of repentance; no spark of grace appeared. Yet (it is a fact, which whether it be more consolatory or awful, ought to be known,) on the night after the sentence, and preceding his execution, while he supposed that the person who was appointed to watch him in his cell, was asleep, this miserable man was seen by that person repeatedly to rise upon his knees, and heard repeatedly calling upon Christ his Saviour, to have mercy upon him, and to forgive him his sins! All men and women are verily, as Shakespear has said of them, merely players,—when we see them upon the stage of the world; that is when they are seen any where except in the freedom and undressed intimacy of private life. There is a wide difference indeed in the performers, as there is at a masquerade between those who assume a character, and those who wear dominos; some play off the agreeable, or the disagreeable for the sake of attracting notice; others retire as it were into themselves; but you can judge as little of the one as of the other. It is even possible to be acquainted with a man long and familiarly, and as we may suppose intimately, and yet not to know him thoroughly or well. There may be parts of his character with which we have never come in contact,—recesses which have never been opened to us,—springs upon which we have never touched. Many there are who can keep their vices secret; would that all bad men had sense and shame enough to do so, or were compelled to it by the fear of public opinion! Shame of a very different nature,—a moral shamefacedness,—which if not itself an instinctive virtue, is near akin to one, makes those who are endowed with the best and highest feelings, conceal them from all common eyes; and for our performance of religious duties,—our manifestations of piety,—we have been warned that what of this kind is done to be seen of men, will not be rewarded openly before men and angels at the last. If I knew my venerable friend better than I ever knew any other man, it was because he was in many respects unlike other men, and in few points more unlike them than in this, that he always appeared what he was,—neither better nor worse. With a discursive intellect and a fantastic imagination, he retained his simplicity of heart. He had kept that heart unspotted from the world; his father's blessing was upon him, and he prized it beyond all that the world could have bestowed. Crowe says of us,