To be publicly put to death, for whatever reason, must ever be a serious matter.  It is always bitter, but there are degrees in its bitterness.  It is easy to die like Stephen with an opened heaven above you, crowded with angel faces.  It is easy to die like Balmerino with a chivalrous sigh for the White Rose, and an audible “God bless King James.”  Such men die for a cause in which they glory, and are supported thereby; they are conducted to the portals of the next world by the angels, Faith, Pity, Admiration.  But it is not easy to die in expiation of a crime like murder, which engirdles you with trembling and horror even in the loneliest places, which cuts you off from the sympathies of your kind, which reduces the universe to two elements—­a sense of personal identity, and a memory of guilt.  In so dying, there must be inconceivable bitterness; a man can have no other support than what strength he may pluck from despair, or from the iron with which nature may have originally braced heart and nerve.  Yet, taken as a whole, criminals on the scaffold comport themselves creditably.  They look Death in the face when he wears his cruelest aspect, and if they flinch somewhat, they can at least bear to look.  I believe that, for the criminal, execution within the prison walls, with no witnesses save some half-dozen official persons, would be infinitely more terrible than execution in the presence of a curious, glaring mob.  The daylight and the publicity are alien elements, which wean the man a little from himself.  He steadies his dizzy brain on the crowd beneath and around him.  He has his last part to play, and his manhood rallies to play it well.  Nay, so subtly is vanity intertwined with our motives, the noblest and the most ignoble, that I can fancy a poor wretch with the noose dangling at his ear, and with barely five minutes to live, soothed somewhat with the idea that his firmness and composure will earn him the approbation, perhaps the pity, of the spectators.  He would take with him, if he could, the good opinion of his fellows.  This composure of criminals puzzles one.  Have they looked at death so long and closely, that familiarity has robbed it of terror?  Has life treated them so harshly, that they are tolerably well pleased to be quit of it on any terms?  Or is the whole thing mere blind stupor and delirium, in which thought is paralysed, and the man an automaton?  Speculation is useless.  The fact remains that criminals for the most part die well and bravely.  It is said that the championship of England was to be decided at some little distance from London on the morning of the day on which Thurtell was executed, and that, when he came out on the scaffold, he inquired privily of the executioner if the result had yet become known.  Jack Ketch was not aware, and Thurtell expressed his regret that the ceremony in which he was chief actor should take place so inconveniently early in the day.  Think of a poor Thurtell forced to take his long journey an hour, perhaps, before the arrival of intelligence so important!