form of a butcher’s cleaver without an edge, the bones of the arms and legs were broke in eight places; at each blow, the sufferer called out, O God! without saying another word, or even uttering a groan.  During all this time, the Confessor called upon him continually to kiss the cross, and to remember Christ, his Redeemer.  Indeed, there was infinite address, as well as piety, in the conduct of the Confessor; for he would not permit this miserable wretch to have one moment’s reflection about his bodily sufferings, while a matter of so much more importance was depending; but even those eight blows seemed nothing to two dreadful after-claps, for the executioner then untied the body, turned his back upwards, and gave him two blows on the small of the back with the same iron weapon; and yet even that did not put an end to the life and sufferings of the malefactor! for the finishing stroke was, after all this, done by the halter, and then the body was thrown into a great fire, and consumed to ashes.  There were two or three executions soon after, but of a more moderate kind.  Yet I hope I need not tell you, that I shall never attend another; and would feign have made my escape from this, but it was impossible.—­Here, too, I saw upwards of fourscore criminals linked together, by one long chain, and so they were to continue till they arrived in the galleys at Marseilles.  Now I am sure you will be, as I was, astonished to think, an old woman, the mother of the executioner, should willingly assist in a business of so horrid a nature; and I dare say, you will be equally astonished that the magistrates of the city permitted it.  Decency, and regard to the sex, alone, one would think, should have put a stop to a practice so repugnant to both; and yet perhaps, not one person in the town considered it in that light.  Indeed, no other person would have assisted, and the executioner must have done all the business himself, if his mother had not been one of that part of the fair sex, which Addison pleasantly mentions, “as rakers of cinders;” for the executioner could not have found a single person to have given him any assistance.  There was a guard of the Marechaussee, to prevent the prisoners’ escape; but none that would have lifted up a little finger towards forwarding the execution; the office is hereditary and infamous, and the officer is shut out of all society.  His perquisites, however, were considerable; near ten pounds, I think, for this single execution; and he had a great deal more business coming on.  I would not have given myself the pain of relating, nor you the reading, the particulars of this horrid affair, but to observe, that it is such examples as these, that render travelling in France, in general, secure.  I say, in general; for there are, nevertheless, murders committed very frequently upon the high roads in France; and were those murders to be made known by news-papers, as ours are in England, perhaps it would greatly intimidate