Nasby in Exile: or, Six Months of Travel in England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, Switzerland and Belgium, with many things not of travel — John Locke — John Shaqi
Nasby in Exile: or, Six Months of Travel in England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, Switzerland and Belgium, with many things not of travel
John Locke · en
The groups are something wonderful. The Lying-in-State of the Czar, a
recent addition, is a miracle of naturalness and awful beauty, as is the
death of Pope Pius; and they are so natural that one cannot help feeling
that he is in the presence of actual death, and not a counterfeit
presentment.
[Illustration: WAX FIGURES OF AMERICANS.]
The Museum contains, among other curiosities that are of interest, the
identical coach used by Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo, with a vast
number of other relics of the great Corsican. From the number of
Napoleonic relics I fancy that the Madame was at heart a French woman,
though she was making her money from the English.
Great halls are filled with correct statuary in wax of the world's
great, or notorious men, all of which have to be "done," as a matter of
course.
But the great point, and one which no visitor ever fails to visit is the
"Chamber of Horrors." You pay a sixpence extra--there is always sixpence
extra in England--and you are introduced to the most cheerful assemblage
of monsters that the world has ever produced.
If there ever was a murder committed of an especially atrocious
description, one done under peculiarly horrifying and terrible
circumstances, here is a wax figure of the murderer, and, if possible,
of the victim.
There is the original guillotine which made the acquaintance of so many
necks during the various French revolutions. There is the identical
scaffold which was devised by a man condemned to be hung, and on which
he suffered, with forty-eight others afterward, before it was retired,
and there are ropes and delightful articles of that nature with which
criminals have suffered, and in such numbers that we come to the
conclusion that the principal business of the English and French is to
kill somebody and get hung for it.
The two criminals in which I took the liveliest interest were Messrs.
Burke and Hare, of Edinburgh, Scotland. These gentlemen had a contract
with the medical university of Edinburgh, to furnish the students with
corpses for dissection, which they did by resurrecting them from various
church-yards.
Mr. Burke, who was evidently the leader in the enterprise, remarked one
night to Mr. Hare,--that is, I presume he did:
"Why go out this dark and rainy night and dig in the damp earth for
corpses? Digging corpses is all wrong. If the friends of the deceased
should ever discover that a corpse had been abstracted it would occasion
the most profound feeling. We should have more respect for the survivors
than to raise their dead, and then, in the interest of science, we
should give the students fresher bodies for dissection. I am inflexibly
opposed to digging any more."
[Sidenote: THE CONSULTATION.]
"But how shall we get the corpses?" asked the obtuse Mr. Hare.
"It is far easier," replied Mr. Burke, "to knock a man on the head than
it is to dig him up, and, in addition to the other reasons I have
mentioned, a sand-bag or a club is cheaper than a spade."