If God could thus forgive him,--why could not Man? Oh! wherefore did that preacher confine his observations to the mercy of the Almighty? why did he not address a terrible lecture to blood-thirsty and avenging mortals? Of what use was the death of that sinner? Surely there is no moral example in a public execution? "There is," says the Legislature. We will see presently. Oh! why could not the life of that man--stained with crime and red with blood though it were--have been spared, and he himself allowed to live to see the horror of his ways, and learn to admire virtue? He might have been locked up for the remainder of his existence: bars and bolts in English gaols are very strong; there was enough air for him to be allowed to breathe it; and there was enough bread to have spared him a morsel at the expense of the state! We cannot give life: we have no right to take it away. On the Sunday afternoon, the murderer's children were taken to see him in the condemned cell. He had not asked for them: but the authorities considered it proper that _they_ should take leave of _him_. The poor little innocents were dressed in the workhouse garb. The boy understood that his father was to be hanged on the following morning; and his grief was heart-rending. The little girl could not understand why her parent was in that gloomy place, nor what horrible fate awaited him:--but she had an undefined and vague sense of peril and misfortune; and she cried also. The murderer kissed them, and told them to be good children;--but he only thus conducted himself because he was _ashamed_ to appear so unfeeling and brutal as he knew himself to be, in the presence of the Ordinary, the Governor, the Sheriffs, and the ladies who were admitted to have a glimpse of him in his dungeon. * * * * * The morning of the second Monday after the Sessions dawned. This was the one fixed by the Sheriffs for the execution of William Bolter, the murderer. At four o'clock on that fatal morning the huge black stage containing the drop, was wheeled out of a shed in the Press Yard, and stationed opposite the debtors' door of Newgate. A carpenter and his assistant then hastily fitted up the two perpendicular spars, and the one horizontal beam, which formed the gibbet. There were already several hundreds of persons collected to witness these preliminary arrangements; and from that hour until eight o'clock multitudes continued pouring from every direction towards that spot--the focus of an all-absorbing interest.