POPULATION, etc. 269 religious warfare that had been carried on for thirty years, was signed in 1648. The city itself is very ancient; and the houses, the fronts of which are decorated with carvings and figures, generally rest upon arches, beneath these are the shops, and the latter are consequently very gloomy. There are about 18,000 inhabitants, the greater part of whom are Catholics. The walks around the town are pleasant, particularly those on the ramparts, which are planted with lime-trees, and command a prospect, of the river Aa that flows beneath. Although the greater part of the population are Catholics, recent political changes have considerably increased the number of Protestants; and in August, 1818, the Catholic university, which had of late years about 300 students, was broken up; but there is still a seminary for educating priests of that persuasion; also a Catholic gymnasium, which latter has about 250 scholars, and a library containing 25,000 volumes. Horses must be cheap here, if I may judge from a strong one for a cart, which I saw sold in the principal street for one guinea. Execution of a criminal. - Remarks on capital punishments. -Route from Munster. - Dusseldorff.-Picture Gallery. Route from thence to St. Julien. — Punish - Cologne. ON departing from Munster, although at the early hour of six o'clock in the morning, we found the whole town in motion, and crowds proceeding along the great road to witness the execution of a criminal; an event that excited a great sensation, no such punishment having occurred since 1812, when the guillotine was used, as at that time the town was occupied by the French. The spot to which the throngs were repairing, to gratify their morbid curiosity, was about two miles beyond the town; and on hearing that the malefactor was to be broken on the wheel, a mode of punishment we had never witnessed, we also yielded to the same feeling; and on arriving at the place, alighted, and joined the crowd. The multitude here collected formed a dense mass, and all the trees around were occupied by eager spectators. It does not say much for the tenderness of the softer sex, who, at least, are supposed to be more suscepti EXECUTION OF A CRIMINAL. 271 ble of pity, and more averse to sights of pain and horror, that the majority of the assembly were females. Surely, whether phrenologists have yet discovered it or not, there must be some organ of cruelty, the development of which incites the ladies of Spain to take delight in witnessing the tortures of a poor animal, maddened to desperation by its cowardly pursuers, at a bullfight; and which led the dames and beldames of Munster to indulge in the luxury of an exe cution. On the scaffold, which was about twenty feet in width, was a wheel resembling those of a small chaise, with an axletree in the centre, and a piece of sharp iron at the extremity; and beside it stood the executioner, not attired à la Jack Ketch, but in a costume not unlike that once belonging to a profession which, although satirists have compared them to executioners, would feel indignant at the allusion. A suit of black, with a steel-handled sword and steel buckles, a ruffled shirt, and cocked hat, gave to this operator a resemblance to a well-dressed physician of some half century ago, when such a dress was considered as indispensable as a diploma. His assistants, however, were less trimly, perhaps more appropriately attired; for, from their blue frocks and their caps, they had a good deal of the appearance of butchers, and from their sang froid seemed perfectly accustomed to such scenes of blood. |