If loving thee still more and more,
And still so willing to be blind,
I should the bitter knowledge find,
That Time Lad eaten out the core
Of love, and left the empty rind ;

If the poor lifeless words, at last,
The soul gone, that was once so sweet,
Should cease my eager heart to cheat,
And crumble back into the past,
And show the whole a vain deceit;

If I should see thee turn away,
And know that prayer, and time, and pain,
Could no more thy lost love regain,
Than bid the hours of dying day
Gleam in their mid-day noon again.

If I should loose thy hand, and know
That henceforth we must dwell apart,
Since I had seen thy love depart,
And only count the hours flow
By the dull throbbing of my heart.

If I should gaze and gaze in vain
Into thy eyes so deep and clear,
And read the truth of all my fear
Half-mixed with pity for my pain,
And sorrow for the vanished year.

If not to grieve thee overmuch,
I strove to counterfeit disdain,
And weave me a new life again,
Which thy life could not mar, or touch,
And so smile down my bitter pain.

The ghost of my dead Past would rise
And mock me, and I could not dare
Look to a future of despair,
Or even to the eternal skies,
For I should still be lonely there.

All Truth, all Honour, then would seem
Vain clouds, which the first wind blew by;
All Trust, a folly doomed to die;
All Life, a useless empty dream ;
All Love,— since thine had failed— a lie.

But see, thy tender smile has cast
My fear away : this thought of mine
Is treason to my Love and thine ;
For Love is Life, and Death at last
Crowns it eternal and divine !

BLOWN AWAY!

THE manner in which capital punishments
are inflicted, is almost as varied as the
manners and customs of the various nations of the
globe. In England criminals are hanged,
in France they are guillotined, in Spain they
are garotted, in Italy and Austria they are
shot or beheaded, in Russia they are broken
on the wheel, in Turkey they are bow-strung,
in China they are disposed of in many ways,
amongst the American Indians they are
tomahawked, and in certain remote lands they
are said to be sometimes baked and eaten!
but in no country, save India, has the
punishment of death from the cannon's mouth
ever been carried into effect. It is one of the
institutions of Hindustan ; and, like most
others of the land, is barbarous and
horrible.

Until the middle of last year, this extreme
penalty was regarded, rather as a tradition
than a fact, although men with white beards
sometimes alluded to it as one of the
spectacles which they had witnessed in their
younger days. The massacres of May and
June, however, at length restored this
terrible Nemesian instrument of punishment.,
and it soon became familiar over the length
and breadth of India. As far as the shortening
of physical agony is concerned, to be
blown away from the cannon's mouth must
be regarded as one of the easiest methods of
passing into eternity. Pain can have no
duration; and as the criminals who meet their
death in this form are mostly indifferent
to their fate, its abolition even upon grounds
opposed to humanity might be safely
recommended. To men of keen sensibilities the
few minutes preceding the execution must
appear like cycles of torture; but to brutes
— like the savages of Cawupore and Delhi—
they can have few terrors.

I had for a long time believed that Bombay
would have been spared the horrors of
such a spectacle; but about noon on the
fifteenth of October, it became known in the
Government offices, that there would be a
military execution that evening, and long
before four o'clock the following Garrison
Order was in circulation all over the
island:—

The troops in garrison will parade this afternoon on
the general parade ground, when the sentence of a
general court-martial will be explained and carried
into effect.

The parade to be formed by a quarter before five-
o'clock.

Markers to be on ground at half-past four o'clock.
Extract from the proceedings of a European
general court-martial.

At a European general court-martial, assembled
at Fort George, Bombay, on Tuesday the 13th day of
October, 1857, under the provisions of Act No. 8 of
the Legislative Council of India, drill havildar Syed
Hoossein, of the Marine Battalion N. I., and private
Mungul Guddrea, of the 10th Regiment N. I., were
tried on the following charge:—

For having, on or about the night of the 3rd October,
1857, attended a seditious meeting held in a
house in part of the town of Bombay, called Sonapore,
and at that meeting, they, the said drill havildar Syed
Hoossein and private Mungul Guddrea, made use of
highly mutinous and seditious language, evincing a
traitorous disposition towards the Government, tending
to promote rebellion against the State, and to subvert
the authority of the British Government.

The above being in breach of the Articles of War.
    By order of Brigadier J. M. SHORT,
       Commanding the garrison of Bombay.
           (Signed) M. BATTYE, Captain,
                                           Fort-Adjutant.
Bombay, 15th October, 1857.

Upon which charge, the Court came to the following
decision:—