"The cranial bones were perfect in every respect, if we except a little erosion of their external table, and firmly held together by their sutures, &c., &c. Having completed our intention [i. e., of taking a plaster cast of the skull, washed from every particle of sand, &c.], the skull securely closed in a leaden case, was again committed to the earth, precisely where we found it."
[10] On February 5th, 1881, in the tranquil exhaustion of a ripe old age, this true Sage of modern times passed away at his home in Cheyne Row, Chelsea, where he had lived for fifty years: and,—as the Times remarked,—the world seemed duller, colder, and darker, in that this one grey old man had left it.
No time was lost in collecting funds to provide for a public monument of the philosopher. The work was entrusted to Mr. J. E. Boehm, R.A., with the result of a most admirable statue in bronze, life-size, representing Carlyle as he was in his latter days, in an attitude of thought, seated in an arm-chair, and wearing his well-known dressing-gown. "For this noble piece of portraiture," Mr. Ruskin wrote of it, "I cannot trust myself to express my personal gratitude, or to speak at all of the high and harmonious measure in which it seems to me to express the mind and features of my dear master." It is appropriately placed in the little public garden, at the end of Great Cheyne Row, Chelsea, where Carlyle had spent the last forty years of his life. There, on October 26th, 1882, in presence of many of those who were his attached friends in life, it was unveiled by Professor Tyndall, who delivered an eloquent address on the occasion. Among those who assisted were Lord Houghton, Mrs. Oliphant, Miss Swanwick, Moncure D. Conway, Robert Browning, Dr. Martineau, Mr. W. E. H. Lecky, and others. A simple inscription on the massive pedestal, of Aberdeen granite, records the dates of the birth and death of the remarkable man in whose honour it is erected.—William Bates.
[11] I mention the discovery of the body of Charles I. when George IV. was Prince Regent. It has been asserted, and is, I believe, true, that the nation wished the body of him whom they always called "the saint and martyr" to be removed from Windsor and buried in Westminster Abbey: and that a sum of no less than £70,000 was entrusted by Parliament to Charles II. to erect a tomb over the remains of his father. If the story be true, the entire sum disappeared and was not put to the intended purpose. It was, however, supposed that the "White King's" coffin, at any rate, had been transferred to the Abbey. It was in order to settle a doubt on this point that George IV., then Prince Regent, went down into the vaults of Windsor with the famous physician, Sir Henry Halford. There they found the coffins of Henry VIII. and of his wife, Lady Jane Seymour; and between them lay a coffin on which were rudely scratched the letters "C. I." In order to be sure that this was indeed the coffin of the executed king, they opened it—and there lay before them the handsome face, just as Vandyke depicted it; though (as always happens in such cases) the nose fell in immediately that the corpse was exposed to the open air. Then—I simply tell the tale as it was told to me; for, though there must be some printed account of the event, I have never seen it—Sir Henry Halford took up by the hair the decapitated head, and placed it on the palm of his hand, which was covered by his silk handkerchief. When he replaced the head in the coffin the vertebra of the neck, which had been smoothly severed by the axe of the executioner, was lying on his handkerchief; and the Prince Regent remarked to Sir Henry that this would be an interesting relic for him. He took it; and had it set in gold with the inscription, "Os Caroli Primi, heu intercisum." I believe that, by the wish and right-feeling of H. R. H. the Prince of Wales, this relic of the hapless king has been replaced in the coffin. Everyone will recall the sanguinary epigram of Lord Byron upon the incident which I have narrated.—Farrar.
[12] In his History of the Stage, Curll states that Nell first captivated the king by her manner of delivering the epilogue to Dryden's Tyrannic Love: or, The Royal Martyr. The tragedy was founded upon the story of the martyrdom of St. Catherine, by way of compliment to Catherine of Braganza. She personated Valeria, the daughter of Maximin, tyrant of Rome.
[13] The massacre of St. Bartholomew lasted seven days, during which more than 5,000 persons were slain in Paris, and about 50,000 in the country. During all this season of murder, the king betrayed neither pity nor remorse, but fired with his long gun at the poor fugitives across the river; and on viewing the body of Coligni on a gibbet, he exulted with a fiendish malignity. In early life this monster had been noted for his cruelty: nothing gave him greater pleasure than cutting off the heads of asses or pigs with a single blow from his couteau de chasse. After the massacre, he is said to have contracted a singularly wild expression of feature, and to have slept little and waked in agonies. He attributed his thirst for human blood to the circumstance of his mother having at an early period of his life familiarized his mind with the brutal sport of hunting bullocks, and with all kinds of cruelty.—Winslow's Anatomy of Suicide, p. 52, note.
[14] It is a tradition in Corsica that when St. Pantaleon was beheaded, the caput mortuum, as it might have been thought, rose from the block and sang.
A reliable gentleman who witnessed an execution, wrote as follows: "It appears to be the best of all modes of inflicting the punishment of death, combining the greatest impression on the spectator with the least possible suffering to the victim. It is so rapid that I should doubt whether there was any suffering; but from the expression of the countenance, when the executioner held up the head, I am inclined to believe that sense and consciousness may remain for a few seconds after the head is off. The eyes seemed to retain speculation for a moment or two, and there was a look in the ghastly stare with which they stared upon the crowd, which implied that the head was aware of its ignominious situation."
[15] Upon the 14th of February, in the 30th year of Queen Mary, was Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, brought to the stake, where he first thrust his right hand into the fire (with which he had before subscribed a recantation) till it first, and then his whole body was consumed; but what was most remarkable, his heart remained whole, and was not once touched by the fire.—Baker's Chron. p. 463.
We have the same story about the heart of Zuinglius. Three days after it had been cast into the fire to be burned to ashes some friends found it untouched by the flames.—Melch. Adam. Vit. p. 37.