impediments opposed to my doing so compelled a pause; and it then struck
me, that however reluctant to witness suffering, there was much in the
scene before me on which a reflecting mind might dwell with interest, if
not with advantage.

The decent gravity of some of the crowd formed a strong contrast to the
jocund vivacity of the majority; and this again with the important swagger
of the constables, who seemed fully to appreciate the consequence which
the modicum of authority dealt out to persons of their standing in society
cannot fail to impart. Then the anxiety to complete their task, which the
workmen who were still employed in preparing the scaffold evinced, gave
another feature perfectly distinct from what had before caught my
attention, while the eagerness of the inhabitant housekeepers to let
"excellent places for seeing," and of certain ambulatory pastrycooks to
accommodate the rapidly increasing multitude with such delicacies as they
had for sale, added to the variety, though not to the solemnity of the
scene.

Some undertaker's men were carrying coffins across the road to the prison,
for the reception of the sufferers after execution. They were much pushed
about, and this caused great mirth. I turned from the general display of
levity with disgust. "On no account," I mentally exclaimed, "will I remain
mixed up with such a herd of heartless beings. But who am I," I retorted
on myself in the next moment, "that I should thus condemn my fellows, and
'bite the chain of nature?'"--for what I saw was nature after all. A mob,
save when depressed by a sense of peril, can never long refrain from some
indications of merriment, however awful the subject of their meeting. The
unfortunate Hackman, in one of his letters to Miss Ray, described himself
to have been shocked by a spectacle of this sort. On the morning of the
day on which Dr. Dodd suffered, Hackman was at Tyburn. While the multitude