horrified me so intensely - in connexion with the churchyard, I
suppose, for it smokes a pipe, and has a big hat with each of its
ears sticking out in a horizontal line under the brim, and is not
in itself more oppressive than a mouth from ear to ear, a pair of
goggle eyes, and hands like two bunches of carrots, five in each,
can make it - that it is still vaguely alarming to me to recall (as
I have often done before, lying awake) the running home, the
looking behind, the horror, of its following me; though whether
disconnected from the door, or door and all, I can't say, and
perhaps never could. It lays a disagreeable train. I must resolve
to think of something on the voluntary principle.

The balloon ascents of this last season. They will do to think
about, while I lie awake, as well as anything else. I must hold
them tight though, for I feel them sliding away, and in their stead
are the Mannings, husband and wife, hanging on the top of Horse-
monger Lane Jail. In connexion with which dismal spectacle, I
recall this curious fantasy of the mind. That, having beheld that
execution, and having left those two forms dangling on the top of
the entrance gateway - the man's, a limp, loose suit of clothes as
if the man had gone out of them; the woman's, a fine shape, so
elaborately corseted and artfully dressed, that it was quite
unchanged in its trim appearance as it slowly swung from side to
side - I never could, by my uttermost efforts, for some weeks,
present the outside of that prison to myself (which the terrible
impression I had received continually obliged me to do) without
presenting it with the two figures still hanging in the morning
air. Until, strolling past the gloomy place one night, when the
street was deserted and quiet, and actually seeing that the bodies
were not there, my fancy was persuaded, as it were, to take them