Southey relates this touching anecdote of Thistlewood’s last hours:—
“When the desperate and atrocious traitor Thistlewood was on the scaffold, his demeanour was that of a man who was resolved boldly to meet the fate he had deserved; in the few words which were exchanged between him and his fellow-criminals, he observed, that the grand question whether or not the soul was immortal would soon be solved for them. No expression of hope escaped him; no breathing of repentance, no spark of grace, appeared. Yet (it is a fact which, whether it be more consolatory or awful, ought to be known), on the night after the sentence, and preceding his execution, while he supposed that the person who was appointed to watch him in his cell was asleep, this miserable man was seen by that person repeatedly to rise upon his knees, and heard repeatedly calling upon Christ his Saviour to have mercy upon him, and to forgive him his sins.”—The Doctor, chap. lxxi.
The selection of Cato-street for the conspirators’ meeting was accidental; and the street itself is associated but indirectly in name with the Roman patriot and philosopher. To efface recollection of the conspiracy of the low and desperate politicians of 1820, Cato-street has been changed to Homer-street.
Money Panic of 1832.
When, in May, 1832, the Duke of Wellington was very unpopular as a minister, and it was believed that he had formed a Cabinet which, it was thought, would add to his unpopularity, a few agitators got up “a run upon the Bank of England,” by means of placarding the streets of London with the emphatic words:—
TO STOP
THE DUKE,
GO FOR GOLD.
advice which was followed to a prodigious extent. On Monday, May 14, (the bills having been profusely posted on Sunday!) the run upon the Bank for coin was so incessant, that in a few hours upwards of half a million was carried off: we remember a tradesman in the Strand bringing home, in a hackney-coach, 2000 sovereigns. Mr. Doubleday, in his Life of Sir Robert Peel, states the placards to have been “the device of four gentlemen, two of whom were elected members of the Reformed Parliament. Each put down 20l.; and the sum was expended in printing thousands of these terrible missives, which were eagerly circulated, and were speedily seen upon every wall in London. The effect is hardly to be described. It was electric.” The agent was a tradesman of kindred politics, in business towards the east end of Oxford-street; and it must be admitted that he executed the order completely.
A Great Sufferer by Revolutions.
King Louis of Bavaria, who abdicated after an insurrection in 1848, has seen his family extensively affected by the dynastic changes which have taken place since 1859. His second son is Otho, the ex-King of Greece, born on the 1st of June, 1815; his third, Luitpold, is married to the daughter of the Grand Duke of Tuscany; one of his daughters to the Duke of Modena; and one of his grandsons, or his youngest son Adalbert, was to have succeeded Otho on the throne of Greece. Lastly, the Queen of Naples and her sister, the Countess de Trani, belong to a collateral branch of the Royal family, that of Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria. The House of Wittelsbach has therefore suffered most materially from the revolutions of Germany, Italy, and Greece, and its members might give a second representation of the famous dinner at Venice mentioned in Voltaire’s Candide.—Le Temps.