PLATE XI.
THE IDLE 'PRENTICE EXECUTED AT TYBURN.
"When fear cometh as desolation, and their destruction cometh as a whirlwind: when distress cometh upon them, then they shall call upon God, but He will not answer."—Proverbs i. 27, 28.
INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS, PLATE XI.
After a life of sloth, wretchedness, and vice, the career of our degraded character terminates at Tyburn. His pale and ghastly look denotes the remorse and horror of his mind; and it must embitter his last moments to hear a Grub Street orator proclaim his dying speech. The ordinary of Newgate leads the procession, but the criminal's spiritual concerns are left to an enthusiastic follower of John Wesley, who zealously exhorts him to repentance.[167] On the right side of the print we see his afflicted mother: her coming to view this dreadful spectacle does not seem consonant to strict propriety, but there have been similar examples. In a cart above her is a curious trio of females; an old beldam, who might have been Sam. Foote's model for Mother Cole, breathing out a pious ejaculation, and swallowing a bumper of spirits at the same moment; a young woman taking a glass from beneath, and a third dissuading a fellow from ascending the vehicle. While a vendor of gingerbread[168] expatiates on the excellence of his delicious cakes, a minor pickpocket purloins his handkerchief. A female grimalkin, enraged at a man oversetting her orange-barrow, is literally tearing his eyes out. To show the reverence which an English mob have for anything that bears the appearance of religion, and the effects which this exhibition has upon their minds, an inmate of St. Giles' seizes a dog by the tail, and is on the point of throwing it at the Methodist parson. A female pugilist, near the centre of the print, is so earnest in punishing a fellow who has offended her, that she neglects her child, which, lying on the ground, is probably destined to be crushed to death. A tall butcher has suspended an old legal periwig on the end of his cudgel: in this, the artist might intend to display an emblem of the sanguinary complexion which marks our courts of justice.[169] The porter, with his pipe; a cripple; the soldier sunk knee-deep in a bog, and two boys laughing at him, are well imagined. Among the figures in the background, we must not overlook a gentleman emphatically called the "Finisher of the law," who sedately smokes his best Virginia upon the gallows.
A carrier pigeon is despatched at the time the criminal arrives at Tyburn.[170] Two initials on the coffin, not having been reversed from the original drawing, are wrong in the print; I. T. instead of T. I.
In the background we have a view of Highgate and Hampstead hills.