persuaded to both.  When the rope was put round his neck, he turned pale, but recovered his countenance instantly, and was but seven minutes from leaving the coach, to the signal given for striking the stage.  As the machine was new, they were not ready at it:  his toes touched it, and he suffered a little, having had time, by their bungling, to raise his cap; but the executioner pulled it down again, and they pulled his legs, so that he was soon out of pain, and quite dead in four minutes.  He desired not to be stripped and exposed, and Vaillant promised him, though his clothes must be taken off, that his shirt should not.  This decency ended with him:  the sheriffs fell to eating and drinking on the scaffold, ran and helped up one of their friends to drink with them, as he was still hanging, which he did for above an hour, and then was conveyed back with the same pomp to Surgeons’ Hall, to be dissected.  The executioners fought for the rope, and the one who lost it cried.  The mob tore off the black cloth as relics; but the universal crowd behaved with great decency and admiration, as they well might; for sure no exit was ever made with more sensible resolution and with less ostentation.

If I have tired you by this long narrative, you feel differently from me.  The man, the manners of the country, the justice of so great and curious a nation, all to me seem striking, and must, I believe, do more so to you, who have been absent long enough to read of your own country as history.

I have run into so much paper, that I am ashamed at going on, but having a bit left, I must say a few more words.  The other prisoner, from whom the mob had promised themselves more entertainment, is gone into the country, having been forbid the court, with some barbarous additions to the sentence, as you Will see in the papers.  It was notified, too, to the second court,(59) who have had the prudence to countenance him no longer.  The third prisoner, and second madman, Lord Charles Hay, is luckily dead, and has saved much trouble.

Have you seen the works of the philosopher of Sans Souci, or rather of the man who is no philosopher, and who had more Souci than any man now in Europe?  How contemptible they are!  Miserable poetry; not a new thought, nor an old one newly expressed.(60) I say nothing of the folly of publishing his aversion to the English, at the very time they are ruining themselves for him; nor of the greater folly of his irreligion.  The epistle to Keith is puerile and shocking.  He is not so sensible as Lord Ferrers, who did not think such sentiments ought to be published.  His Majesty could not resist the vanity of showing how disengaged he can be even at this time.

I am going to give a letter for you to Strange, the engraver, who is going to visit Italy.  He is a very first-rate artist, and by far our best.  Pray countenance him, though you will not approve his politics.(61) I believe Albano(62)) is his Loretto.