heart of hearts, a favourite child, and his name is DAVID COPPERFIELD."

At the Strand Theatre, on October 21st, 1850, Almar's adaptation was played under the title of "Born with a Caul." The Surrey Theatre, in the following month, had a much better version; Mr. Thomas Mead as Peggotty, and the renowned Mr. Widdicomb combining the characters of Miss Mowcher and Mr. Micawber. But the most success

ful representation of all was "The Deal Boatman" at Drury Lane theatre, two or three years since, in two acts, by Mr. Burnand.

Mr. Dickens was living at this time at No. 1, Devonshire Terrace, in the New Road. In his "American Notes," in "Martin Chuzzlewit," and elsewhere in his writings, and occasionally in his speeches, he had expressed his disapproval of capital punishment. He now resolved to be a witness at a "hanging match "—as it is frequently called by the lower orders—and afterwards publish his experiences. The trial of the notorious Mannings had recently startled society, and it was thought that the hanging of such notable wretches would at least afford a fair specimen of the riot and demoralization attending a London public execution. For the purpose of seeing the whole ceremony, and giving the institution a fair trial, he left his house with a friend, on the evening previous, determined to make a night of it in the crowd fronting the Southwark scaffold. The following letter to the Times was the result :—

"I was a witness of the execution at Horsemonger Lane this morning. I went there with the intention of observing the crowd gathered to behold it, and I had excellent opportunities of doing so at intervals all through the night, and continuously from daybreak until after the spectacle was over. I do not address you on the subject with any intention of discussing the abstract question of capital punishment, or any of the arguments of its opponents or advocates. I simply wish to turn this dreadful experience to some account for the general good, by taking the readiest and most public means of adverting to an intimation given by Sir G. Grey, in the last session of Parliament, that the Government might be induced to give its support to a measure making the infliction of capital punishment a private solemnity within the prison-walls (with such guarantees for the last sentence of the law being inexorably and surely administered as should be satisfactory to the public at large), and of most earnestly beseeching Sir G. Grey, as a solemn duty which he owes to society, and a responsibility which he cannot for ever put away, to originate such a legislative change himself. I believe that a sight so inconceivably awful as the wickedness and levity of the immense crowd collected at that execution this morning, could be imagined by no man, and could be presented in no heathen land under the sun. The horrors of the crime which brought the wretched murderers to it, faded in my mind before the atrocious bearing, looks, and language of

the assembled spectators. When I came upon the scene at midnight, the shrillness of the cries and howls that were raised from time to time, denoting that they came from a concourse of boys and girls assembled in the best places, made my blood run cold. As the night went on, screeching and laughing, and yelling in strong chorus of parodies on negro melodies, with substitutions of Mrs. Manning' for Susannah,' and the like, were added to these. When the day dawned, thieves, low prostitutes, ruffians, and vagabonds of every kind, flocked on to the ground, with every variety of offensive and foul behaviour. Fightings, faintings, whistlings, imitations of Punch, brutal jokes, tumultuous demonstrations of indecent delight, when swooning women were dragged out of the crowd by the police with their dresses disordered, gave a new zest to the general entertainment. When the sun rose brightly-as it didit gilded thousands upon thousands of upturned faces, so inexpressibly odious in their brutal mirth or callousness, that a man had cause to feel ashamed of the shape he wore, and to shrink from himself, as fashioned in the image of the Devil. When the two miserable creatures who attracted all this ghastly sight about them were turned quivering into the air, there was no more emotion, no more pity, no more thought that two immortal souls had gone to judgment, no more restraint in any of the previous obscenities, than if the name of Christ had never been heard in this world, and there were no

belief among men but that they perished like the beasts. I have seen, habitually, some of the worst sources of general contamination and corruption in this country, and I think there are not many phases of London life that could surprise me. I am solemnly convinced that nothing that ingenuity could devise to be done in this city, in the same compass of time, could work such ruin as one public execution, and I stand astounded and appalled by the wickedness it exhibits. I do not believe that any community can prosper where such a scene of horror and demoralization as was enacted this morning outside Horsemonger Lane Gaol, is presented at the very doors of good citizens, and is passed by, unknown or forgotten. And when, in our prayers and thanksgivings for the season, we are humbly expressing before God our desire to remove the moral evils of the land, I would ask your readers to consider whether it is not a time to think of this one, and to root it out.

"Tuesday, November 13th."

The great question of “public hanging" occupied Dickens's attention for some time after. The horrors of that night and the morning preceding the Manning execution he could not readily forget. Some days after he wrote to the Times, he addressed a long letter to his friend Douglas Jerrold, who was a Conservative on the question of capital punishment, and believed heartily in Tyburn as a public institution. Dickens thus remonstrates with his friend :

N

"In a letter I have received from G. this morning he quotes a recent letter from you, in which you deprecate the mystery' of private hanging.

"Will you consider what punishment there is, except death, to which 'mystery' does not attach? Will you consider whether all the improvements in prisons and punishments that have been made within the last twenty years have or have not been all productive of mystery?' I can remember very well when the silent system was objected to as mysterious, and opposed to the genius of English society. Yet there is no question that it has been a great benefit. The prison vans are mysterious vehicles; but surely they are better than the old system of marching prisoners through the streets chained to a long chain, like the galley-slaves in Don Quixote.' Is there no mystery about transportation, and our manner of sending men away to Norfolk Island, or elsewhere? None in abandoning the use of a man's name, and knowing him only by a number? Is not the whole improved and altered system, from the beginning to end, a mystery? I wish I could induce you to feel justified in leaving that word to the platform people, on the strength of your knowledge of what crime was, and of what its punishments were, in the days when there was no mystery connected with these things, and all was as open as Bridewell when Ned Ward went to see the women whipped.”