See! the whole crowd turns
pale and shrinks within itself, as the virtuous emerge from yonder
street. Keeping pace with that devoted company, I described them one by
one; here tottered a woman in her dotage, knowing neither the crime
imputed her, nor its punishment; there another, distracted by the
universal madness, till feverish dreams were remembered as realities, and
she almost believed her guilt. One, a proud man once, was so broken down
by the intolerable hatred heaped upon him, that he seemed to hasten his
steps, eager to hide himself in the grave hastily dug at the foot of the
gallows. As they went slowly on, a mother looked behind, and beheld her
peaceful dwelling; she cast her eyes elsewhere, and groaned inwardly yet
with bitterest anguish, for there was her little son among the accusers.
I watched the face of an ordained pastor, who walked onward to the same
death; his lips moved in prayer; no narrow petition for himself alone,
but embracing all his fellow-sufferers and the frenzied multitude; he
looked to Heaven and trod lightly up the hill.
Behind their victims came the afflicted, a guilty and miserable band;
villains who had thus avenged themselves on their enemies, and viler
wretches, whose cowardice had destroyed their friends; lunatics, whose
ravings had chimed in with the madness of the land; and children, who had
played a game that the imps of darkness might have envied them, since it
disgraced an age, and dipped a people's hands in blood.
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