head in the pail under his great coat, went down stairs with Wood to dispose thereof, as had been before agreed upon.'

The head was found, and exhibited in St. Margaret's Church Yard upon a pole ;-some friend of poor Mr. Hayes knew it, and recognized the murdered man.

Mrs. Hayes was tried and condemned to be burnt.

"After sentence, Mrs. Hayes behaved herself with more indifference than might have been expected from one under her circumstances; she frequently expressed herself to be under no concern at her approaching death, only the manner of it appeared to carry some terror with it; she shewed more concern for Billings than for herself, and also a surprising fondness for him in all her actions: when in the chapel, she would sit with her hand in his, and lean upon his breast and shoulder, and he on her's; for this she was reprimanded, as being offensive to the spectators, both in regard to the indecency of the action, and as it shewed her esteem for the murderer of her husband; notwithstanding which reason she would not desist, but continued the same until the minute of her death; one of her last expressions to the executioner, as she was going from the sledge to the stake, being an enquiry if he had hanged her dear child.”

The following account of her execution is painfully vivid.

"About twelve the prisoners were severally carried away for execution; Billings, with eight others, for various crimes, were put into three carts, and Catharine Hayes was drawn upon a sledge to the place of execution, where being arrived, Billings, with the other eight, after having had some time for their private devotions, were turned off: after which, Catharine Hayes being brought to the stake, was chained thereto with an iron chain, running round her waist, and under her arms, and a rope round her neck, which was drawn through a hole in the post; then the faggots, intermixed with light brush-wood and straw, being piled all round her, the executioner put fire thereto in several places, which immediately blazing out, as soon as the same reached her, she with her arms pushed down those which were before her, when she appeared in the middle of the flames as low as the waist; upon which the executioner got hold of the end of the cord which was round her neck, and pulled it tight, in order to strangle her, but the fire soon reached his hand, and burned it, so that he was obliged to let it go again; more faggots were immediately thrown upon her, and in about three or four hours she was reduced to ashes: in the mean time Billings's irons were put upon him as he was hanging on the gallows; after which, being cut down, he was carried to the gibbet, about a hundred yards distance, and there hung up in chains."

Swift wrote the following ballad on Mr. Hayes' murder, which the Ordinary describes as the work of "an anonymous writer, who imagined this execrable murder was a fit subject for drollery."

"A SONG ON THE MURDER OF MR. HAYES,

And all agreed there must have been
Some body to this head.

But since no body could be found,
High mounted on a shelf,
They e'en set up the head to be
A witness for itself.

Next, that it no self-murder was,
The case itself explains,

For no man could cut off his head,
And throw it in the Thames.

Ere many days had gone and past,
The deed at length was known,
And Cath'rine she confess'd, at last,
The fact to be her own.

God prosper long our noble king,
Our lives and safeties all,

And grant that we may warning take

By Cath'rine Hayes's fall."

The second volume begins with the trial of that ruffianpoet, Richard Savage-whose gross barbarities of nature Doctor Johnson endeavoured to adorn and obscure with the cumbrous flowers of his biography. Savage's crime is too well known to need notice here. Colonel Charteris, whose name Pope has damned to everlasting fame, soon follows. His epitaph is the only good thing he ever lived for. At page 152 Sarah Malcombe, for murders, holds out five and thirty tempting and desperate pages-but we cannot heed her.

The trial of Charles Macklin, for insinuating a cane into the left eye (which, of course, became the left eye no longer) of Thomas Hallam, occurs at page 234. The accident, for such it really was, arose about a wig::-Hallam was a brother actor. Quin and others vouched for the peaceable disposition of Macklin, and he was acquitted of the murder.

In Richard Coyle's trial for the barbarous murder of Captain Hartley, the letter, written by the prisoner the night before he suffered, is well worth reading. It is at once devout, sly, simple, and pathetic.

The second volume concludes with an account of George Price, for the murder of his wife, which is too frightfully cruel for our pages. It is singular, that this work teems with accounts of men murdering their wives, while there are not more than one or two instances of uncourteous retorts on the part of the women.

The third volume commences with that "black prince" of highwaymen, the desperate and cruel Dick Turpin. He was notorious in the shires of York and Lincoln. Turpin, after innumerable minor offences, was tried for horse-stealing, and he immediately wrote to his father for a character, as though it could be sent by post. He behaved in York Castle with great impudence.

His villanies were heavy and manifold. His behaviour at the place of execution (for he suffered for horse-stealing) is

curious.

"The morning before Turpin's execution, he gave three pounds ten shillings amongst five men, who were to follow the cart as mourners, with hatbands and gloves to several persons more. He also left a gold ring, and two pair of shoes and clogs, to a married woman at Brough, that he was acquainted with; though he at the same time acknowledged he had a wife and child of his own.

"He was carried in a cart to the place of execution, on Saturday, April 7, 1739, with John Stead, condemned also for horse-stealing; he behaved himself with amazing assurance, and bowed to the spectators as he passed. It was remarkable, that as he mounted the ladder, his right leg trembled, on which he stamped it down with an air, and with undaunted courage, looking round about him; and after speaking near half an hour to the topsman, threw himself off the ladder, and expired directly.

"His corpse was brought back from the gallows about three in the afternoon, and lodged at the Blue-Boar, at Castle-gate, till ten the next morning, when it was buried in a neat coffin in St. George's churchyard, within Fishergate Postern, with this inscription: I. R. 1739, R. T. aged 28. He confessed to the hangman that he was thirty-three years of age. The grave was dug very deep, and the persons whom he appointed his mourners, as above-mentioned, took all possible care to secure the body; notwithstanding which, on Tuesday morning, about three o'clock, some persons were discovered to be moving off the body, which they had taken up, and the mob having got scent where it was carried to, and suspecting it was to be anatomized, went to a garden in which it was deposited, and brought away the body through the streets of the city in a sort of triumph, almost naked, being only laid on a board covered with some straw, and carried on four men's shoulders, and buried in the same grave, having first filled the coffin with slacked lime."

Turpin was, perhaps, as desperate a ruffian as ever pulled trigger in the face of a traveller. He shot people like partridges! Many wild and improbable stories are related of him; such as his rapid ride to York, his horse chewing a beef-steak all the way but setting these aside, he was hardy and cruel enough to shine as a mighty malefactor. His name comes upon the memory, as the fumigating vinegar at the Old Bailey comes upon the senses; and he seems (to quote a Newgate

jest) to have been "booked at his very birth for the Gravesend coach, that leaves at eight in the morning." He had some partners in the course of his exploits; but he quarrelled with many-many of course separated, and suddenly died! for, as the Ordinary on one occasion shrewdly remarks," there is no union so liable to dissolution, as that of felons."

An admirable account of Mary Young, the Jenny Diver of her day, and actually so called by her companions, ensues. It is one long, lively narrative, of clean pocket-picking. We wish we had room for this choice bit of biography, from the top to the toe, as it is really a piece" with nothing but kings!" For all her nimbleness, however, she could not get her neck out of the noose; but death picked her corporeal pocket at Tyburn, of its "invaluable metal," life!—And it's Oh! poor Polly!

There is a grand smuggler murder at page 134. But we go right on. The trial of W. Parsons, for returning from transportation, has some rare romantic letters worth reading, to those who are fond of tender epistles written at a pinch. Captain Lowry's ship murder is well known. Miss Blandy, of York, follows: her murder of her father was sufficiently mysterious to make a million wet eyes for her at the fatal tree. Thomas Twinbrow, a young highwayman of twenty-one years of age, suddenly closes his life, and the third volume.

The fourth and last volume is rich indeed in bold bad men; but our article has already extended to so fearful a length, that we must pass lightly even over such names as the Perreaus, Mrs. Caroline Rudd, Captain Porteous, Mrs. Elizabeth Brownrigg, Cameron, Lord Lovat, Theodore Gardelle, and Eugene Aram. Sir Walter Scott, the great unknown, has deepened the fame of Porteous; and Paley has cast some additional interest over the bone-mystery of Aram. We are desirous of concluding with a few remarks, and must therefore despatch our subject with a Jack Ketch-like ingenuity and rapidity. There are clusters of highwaymen and every-day murderers in this volume. But the Wills and the Toms must lie quiet in Surgeons'-hall. We have not room to embalm all their bones in our literary museum; or to rescue them all from a long and inglorious oblivion. The first trial of any great interest in the fourth volume, is that of William Barnard, charged with sending threatening letters to the Duke of Marlborough. This case is mystery itself, cloaked from foot to forehead. Eugene Aram (some trials intervening) follows: he was, as it is well known, accused of a murder, on the strength of some bones being discovered near certain lime-kilns at Knaresborough. Much circumstantial evidence was adduced on the trial, and Aram was called upon for his defence, which he read to the court. It is a masterly composition, written with consummate art and