petition to the king, and this petition, which, with the names, filled twenty-three sheets of parchment, was actually presented. The Lord Mayor and Common Council went in a body to St. James’s, to solicit mercy for him, but all this availed nothing; government were resolved to make an example of him.” Foremost among those who pleaded for Dodd was Dr. Johnson. There was nothing in common between the shallow flippancy of Dodd, and the great, rough, earnest nature of Johnson; being once asked whether Dodd’s sermons were not addressed to the passions, “They were nothing, Sir,” growled the lexicographer, “be they addressed to what they may.” But to misery Johnson’s heart was more tender than a woman’s; he was agitated when application was made to him on behalf of Dodd; he paced up and down the room, and promised to do what he could. He wrote the speech delivered by Dodd before the passing of the sentence and more than one petition in his behalf. All was in vain: “If I pardon Dodd, I shall have murdered the Perreaus.” So the king is reported to have said—and, indeed, although Dodd’s partisans fell foul of court and jury, it is not easy to see how, if Dodd had been pardoned, the punishment of death for forgery could ever after have been inflicted. There is a pathetic touch in the fact that, many years before his fall, Dodd preached a sermon, afterwards printed, deprecating the frequency of capital punishment. In “Prison Thoughts” he foretold the abolition of the procession to Tyburn, or perhaps of public executions:— “… yes, the day— I joy in the idea—will arrive When Britons philanthropic shall reject The cruel custom, to the sufferer cruel, Useless and baneful to the gaping crowd!” On June 27 the fatal procession set out from Newgate. On this occasion “there was perhaps the greatest concourse of people ever drawn together by a like spectacle.” “Just before the parties were turned off Dr. Dodd whispered to the executioner. What he said cannot be known; but it was observed that the man had no sooner driven away the cart, than he ran immediately under the gibbet, and took hold of the doctor’s legs, as if to steady the body.” Another account says that the executioner, gained over by Dodd’s friends, had arranged the knot in a particular manner, and whispered to him as the cart drew off, “You must not move an inch!” When cut down the body was conveyed to the house of an undertaker in Goodge Street, where a hot bath was in readiness. Under the direction of Pott, a celebrated surgeon of the day, every effort was made to restore animation. But in vain. The crowd was so enormous that there had been great delay in the transport of the body, and this was fatal. Nevertheless, there were not wanting people who believed that Dodd had been resuscitated and carried abroad. =1779.= _April 19._ The Rev. James Hackman executed at Tyburn for the murder of Miss Martha Ray.