" L'Hôtel du Bourreau," the hangman's hotel.
In front of this curious edifice stood a cross, at
the foot of which bankrupts came to declare
that they made cession of their goods; after
which they received the regulation green cap
from the hands of the executor of justice.
Beside it was a shed, in which the remains of
executed persons were kept until their interment.
The contents of this shed awakened a strange
ambition in Charles Sanson's heart. What if,
after inflicting death, he could succeed in
surprising the secret of life; if, substituting the
scalpel for the sword, he could interrogate the
inanimate corpse, and discover means of
alleviating the sufferings of humanity! He laboured
boldly at the task, undaunted by the night and
by solitude. His researches were not in vain.
He left some curious observations on the play
of the muscles and the joints, and several
recipes to cure affections of those portions of our
organism.

The study of anatomy, and the preparation
of certain remedies, have been perpetuated in
the family. Among other things, they were
in possession of a balm of sovereign efficacy
against the most inveterate pains. Our author
promises to cite the cures of patients who had
been sent to them in despair, by the heads of the
medical profession. Those remedies were sold
at very high prices to the aristocracy and to
wealthy persons; but they were given
gratuitously to the poor, which was only a just
compensation. Perhaps superstitious fancies might
have something to do with the effect of the
medicaments. Charles Sanson, not being obliged
to reside in Pillory House, let it for six hundred
livres a year, and took up his abode in a spot
which now forms part of the Faubourg
Poissonniere, where his family definitely settled.

The last of the Sansons gives an interesting
sketch of the history of punishments, beginning
with degradation, the pillory, and the amende
honorable. Flagellation, he rejoices, is
suppressed in France, although other nations are
far from following the example. Sweden has
abolished the whip, and the Pasha of Egypt no
longer allows his soldiers and sailors to be
bastinadoed. But if the Emperor Nicholas
abolished the knout, he replaced it by the pleite—an
instrument composed of long leather straps,
which tear the flesh—and by the stick—the
application of which for certain military offences is
frequently followed by death. In the Austrian
code of 1853 the punishment of imprisonment
may be aggravated by strokes of the rod or
stick, at the discretion of the judge, up to fifty.
The Hungarians, amongst their ancient
privileges, claim the right of giving as many as a
hundred blows. Finally, Britannia herself
refuses to drop her cat-o'-nine-tails.

Mutilations furnish a frightful chapter. There
is not a part of the human body which has not
been the object of a special punishment.
Compared with many such mutilations, death was
mercy. Over the judicial modes of inflicting
death, we pass, to arrive at that now practised
in France. The French revolution, which made
every citizen equal before the law, made him
also equal, in case of crime, before the punishment
of death; aristocrats were no longer to
be executed in one way and plebeians in
another. In 1790 it was decreed that, "In cases
wherein the law shall pronounce sentence of
death upon an accused person, the punishment
shall be the same, whatever be the nature of the
crime: the criminal shall be decapitated, and
that by means of a machine." This machine
took the name, not of its inventor, but of
Doctor Guillotin, and when the Doctor proposed
this mode of death to the Constituent Assembly,
of which he was a member, it excited considerable
merriment that a medical man should advocate
the use of a machine for killing people.
Nevertheless, they could not do otherwise than adopt
his plan. Louis, a celebrated anatomist, was
ordered to report on it. " Experience and reason
demonstrate," he said, " that the mode of cutting
off a criminal's head hitherto practised, exposes
him to a more frightful torture than the simple
privation of life, which is the formally expressed
will of the law. To accomplish that, the execution
must be performed in an instant, and at
one blow; examples prove how difficult it is to
effect that object."

Formerly, for capital executions, fête days and
frequented places were selected: in many towns,
the instruments of punishment—the pillory, the
gibbet, and the wheel—were permanently
displayed before the eyes of the public. It was
discovered that the severest tortures did not
attain the preventive end proposed. And now
the guillotine does its work at early dawn, or
before full daylight. M. Sanson hopes it will
finally disappear, and cease to usurp a right
which belongs to Divinity alone.

The executioner is the product of struggling
civilisation, and will be abolished by perfect
civilisation. The usage of allowing accusers to
execute the sentence, existed among the Romans;
but afterwards, when the custom was abolished,
in spite of their disdain for human life, they
shared our sentiments of repulsion towards
those who had to fulfil the melancholy task.
Besides being guards and messengers of the
consuls, the lictors executed their decrees. The
very name lictor is derived from the verb ligare,
to bind, because they bound the feet of
criminals. But other persons, as soldiers, were
often employed at executions, not only in camp,
but also in town. The assistance required was
regarded as a public service, and as no more a
cause of dishonour than the death of a
condemned soldier, with us, is thought to dishonour
his comrades who shoot him.

In Germany, before the executioner's function
was raised to the condition of an office, the
youngest member of the community or of the
body corporate was compelled to undertake it;
and as it happened that those so designated
showed disinclination to obey the law, heavy
fines were inflicted on refractory subjects. In
Franconia, a new-married man was obliged to
discharge this terrible duty by way of
payment for the debt he had contracted with