once, only hanging by a bit of skin, and was received in a scarlet cloth by four of the undertaker's men, kneeling, who wrapped it up and put it into the coffin with the body; orders having been given not to expose the heads, as used to be the custom.

The scaffold was immediately new strewn with saw-dust, the block new covered, the executioner new dressed, and a new axe brought. Then came old Balmerino, treading with the air of a general. As he mounted the scaffold, he read the inscription on his coffin, as he did again afterwards: he then surveyed the spectators, who were in amazing numbers, even upon masts of ships in the river, and, pulling out his spectacles, read a speech, which is variously reported. He said, if he had not taken the sacrament the day before, he would have knocked down Williamson, the Lieutenant of the Tower, for his ill-usage of him. He took the axe and felt it, and asked the headsman how many blows he had given Lord Kilmarnock; and gave him three guineas. Two clergymen, who attended him, coming up, he said, "No, gentlemen, I believe you have already done me all the service you can." Then he went to the corner of the scaffold, and called very loud for the warder to give him his periwig, which he took off, and put on a nightcap of Scotch plaid, and then pulled off his coat and waistcoat and lay down; but being told he was on the wrong side, vaulted round, and immediately gave the sign by tossing up his arm, as if he were giving the signal for battle. He received three blows, but the first certainly took away all sensation. He was not a quarter of an hour on the scaffold; Lord Kilmarnock above half a one. Balmerino certainly died with the intrepidity of a hero, but with the insensibility of one too. As he walked from his prison to execution, seeing every window and top of house filled with spectators, he cried out, "Look, look, how they are all piled up like rotten oranges."

EXECUTION OF SIMON LORD LOVAT.

Of this cunning old creature, whose character seems a mixture of tyranny and pride in his villany, Walpole relates some strange extravagances. In his own Highland domain, he governed despotically, either burning or plundering the lands or houses of his open enemies, or taking off his secret ones by the assistance of his cook, who was his poisoner in chief. He had two servants who married each other without his consent; he said "You shall have enough of each other," and stowed them in a dungeon that had been a well, for three weeks. When he came to the Tower, he told them, that if he were not so old and infirm, they would find it difficult to keep him there. They told him they had kept much younger, "Yes,"

said he, "but they were inexperienced: they had not broke so many gaols as I have." At his own house, he used to say, that for thirty years of his life he never saw a gallows but it made his neck ache. His last act was to shift his treason upon his eldest son, whom he forced into the rebellion. He told Williamson, the Lieutenant of the Tower, "We will hang my eldest son, and then my second shall marry your niece." One day, that Williamson complained that he could not sleep, he was so haunted with rats-he replied, do you say, that you are so haunted with Ratcliffes?"

"What

The first day, as he was brought to his trial, a woman, looked into the coach and said, "You ugly old dog, don't you think you'll have that frightful head cut off?" he replied, "You ugly old I believe I shall !" The last two days he behaved ridiculously, joking, and making everybody laugh, even at the sentence. When he withdrew, he said "Adieu, my lords, we shall never meet again in the same place." He said he would be hanged; for that his neck was so short and bended, that he should be struck in the shoulders. "I did not think it possible," says Walpole, "to feel so little as I did at so melancholy a spectacle, but tyranny and villany, wound up by buffoonery, took off all edge of concern." The foreigners were much struck: Nicolini seemed a great deal shocked, but he comforts himself with the knowledge he thinks he has gained of the English constitution."

In the next letter Walpole sends some account of Lovat's death: he was beheaded, and died extremely well, without passion, affectation, buffoonery, or timidity: his behaviour was natural and intrepid. He professed himself a Jansenist; made no speech, but sat down a little while in a chair on the scaffold, and talked to the people about him. He lay down quietly, and gave the sign soon, and was despatched at a blow.

Lord Lovat was not only the last person beheaded on Tower-hill, but was the last person beheaded in this country, April 9, 1747. During the day, a scaffolding built near Barking-alley fell, with nearly 1,000 persons on it, and twelve were killed.

Hogarth painted Lovat's portrait: he met him at St. Albans (Nichols says Barnet), on his road to London. Hogarth says: "I took this likeness when Simon Fraser was relating on his fingers the number of the rebel forces-such a chieftain had so many men, &c. He received me with much cordiality-embraced me when I entered, and kissed me, though he was under the hands of the barber. The muscles of his neck appeared of unusual strength— more so than I had ever seen."

Hogarth also etched Lovat's portrait; when the plate was finished,

a printseller offered its weight in gold for it. The impressions could not be taken off fast enough to meet the demand, which produced about twelve pounds per day for several weeks.

ŞIR ROBERT WALPOLE'S BRIBERY.

During Sir Robert Walpole's administration, he wanted to carry a question in the House of Commons, to which he knew there would be great opposition, and which was disliked by some of his own dependents. As he was passing through the Court of Requests, he met a member of the Opposition, whose avarice he imagined would not reject a large bribe. He took him aside, and said, "Such a question comes on this day; give me your vote, and here is a bank-bill of 2,000l.," which he put into his hands. The member made him this answer: "Sir Robert, you have lately served some of my particular friends; and when my wife was last at Court, the King was very gracious to her, which must have happened at your instance. I should, therefore, think myself very ungrateful (putting the bank-bill into his pocket) if I were to refuse the favour you are now pleased to ask me.'

Sir Robert was called the Grand Corrupter in the libels of his time he is said to have thought all mankind rogues, and to have remarked that every one had his price. Pope refers to this:

:

"Would he oblige me, let me only find

He does not think me what he thinks mankind."

Or as he at first printed it:

"He thinks one poet of no venal kind."

That Walpole said something very much like the saying attributed to him is what even his son does not deny; but there is reason to believe that he said it with a qualification- all those men have their price," not "all men have their price."

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The saying as recorded by Richardson, the painter, who had ample means of being well-informed, was in these words: "There was not one, how patriot soever he might seem, of whom he did not know the price." (Richardsoniana, 8vo. 1776, p. 178.) Dr. King, whose means of information were as good as Richardson's, records a remark made during a debate in Parliament by Walpole to Mr. W. Leveson, the brother of the Jacobite Lord Gower. "You see," said Sir Robert, "with what zeal and vehemence these gentlemen oppose; and yet I know the price of every man in this house except three, and your brother is one of them." Dr. King adds, that Sir Robert lived long enough to know that my

Lord Gower had his price as well as the rest. (King's Anecdotes, p. 44.) His son modifies the saying: "Some are corrupt," Sir Robert Walpole said; "but I will tell you of one who is not: Shippen is not.” (Walpoliana, i. 38.) And Sir Robert said, that "it was fortunate so few men could be prime ministers, as it was best that few should thoroughly know the shocking wickedness of mankind. I never heard him say that all men had their prices; and I believe no such expression ever came from his mouth."

Lord Brougham, also, doubts whether the above words were ever used by Walpole; or, if used, whether they are properly interpreted. "His famous saying, that all men have their price, "" said Lord Brougham, "can prove nothing unless 'price' be defined; and if a large and liberal sense is given to the word, the proposition more resembles a truism than a sneer or an ebullition of official philanthropy. But it has been positively affirmed that the remark was never made; for it is said that an important word is omitted, which wholly changes the sense; and that Walpole only said, in reference to certain actions or profligate adversaries, and their adherents resembling themselves, all these men have their price."-(Coxe's Life of Walpole, vol. i. p. 757.) His general tone of sarcasm, when speaking of patriotism and political gratitude, and others of the more fleeting virtues, is well known. "Patriots," he said, "are easily raised; I have myself made many a one. "Tis but to refuse an unreasonable demand, and up springs a patriot!" So the gratitude of political men he defined to be "a lively sense of favours to come."

Some notion of the free use made in Shippen's days of the current coin as a political agent, may be gathered from the fact which Shippen himself related to the celebrated Dr. Middleton. The Prince of Wales, to justify his satisfaction with a speech which the sturdy old Jacobite had made, sent him 1000l. by General Churchill, Groom to his Bedchamber. Shippen refused it. That Sir Robert Walpole himself had known of similar attempts made on Shippen's virtue by the Hanoverian party, is pretty evident from his well-known saying respecting that honest man, quoted above.

A VISIT FROM THE PRETENDER.

Dr. King, in his volume of Political and Literary Anecdotes of his own Times, relates some interesting particulars of the short visit of the Pretender to England, in 1750, when he only stayed in London five days. Dr. King had some long conversations with him here, and for some years after held a constant correspondence with him,

not, indeed, by letters, but by messengers, not couriers, but "gentlemen of fortune, honour, and veracity." The Doctor describes the Pretender as tall and well-made, but stooping a little. "He has an handsome face and good eyes; I think his busts, which about this time were commonly sold in London, are more like him than any of his pictures which I have yet seen." Dr. King then relates, in a note, the following corroboration of the striking resemblance of the bust:" He (the Pretender) came one evening to my lodgings and drank tea with me; my servant, after he was gone, said to me, that he thought my new visitor very like Prince Charles. Why,' said I, 'have you ever seen Prince Charles?' 'No, sir,' replied the fellow, but this gentleman, whoever he may be, exactly resembles the busts which are sold in Redlion-street, and are said to be the busts of Prince Charles.' The truth is, these busts were taken in plaster of Paris from his face."

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Dr. King relates that as to Prince Charles's religion, “He is certainly free from all bigotry and superstition, and he would readily conform to the religion of the country. With the Catholics he is a Catholic; with the Protestants he is a Protestant; and to convince the latter of his sincerity he often carried an English Common Prayerbook in his pocket." He also once selected a nonjuring minister to christen one of his illegitimate children. The Prince was very avaricious. Dr. King knew him, with 2000 loui d'ors in his strong box, pretend he was in great distress, and borrow money from a lady in Paris, who was not in affluent circumstances.

THE PRETENDER'S HEALTH.

When Lord Mansfield (then Mr. Murray) was examined before the Privy Council, about the year 1747, for drinking the Pretender's health on his knees (which he certainly did), it was urged against him, among other things, to show how strong a well-wisher he was to the cause of the exiled family, that, when he was employed as solicitor-general against the rebels who were tried in 1746, he had never used that term, but always called them unfortunate gentlemen. When he came to his defence, he said the fact was true; and he should only say that "he pitied that man's loyalty who thought that epithets could add to the guilt of treason!"—an admirable instance of a dexterous and subtle evasion.

CONFERRING THE GARTER.

Two of our sovereigns appear to have shown ill manners and temper in conferring the insignia and decorations of this noble order. George the Second, who strongly disliked Lord Temple, "Squire Gawkey," as he was nicknamed, was compelled by political arrange