[1] A post is about two leagues, or between four and six miles, as the posthouses are not exactly at the same distance from each other.
[2] It is about five square miles, or rather, eight miles in length from two to four miles in breadth.
[3] This was written after I had become familiarized to pikes.
[4] The Rotunda D'Orleans, in this wall, at the back of the gardens of the ci-devant Duke of that name is worthy of observation.
[5] In 1788 the school was suppressed, the scholars were placed in the army, or in country colleges, and the building is intended, when the necessary alterations are completed, to be one of the four hospitals which are to replace that of the Hôtel-Dieu. This hospital is in such a bad situation, being in the midst of Paris, that a quarter of the patients die. It contains only two thousand beds; each of the four new hospitals is to contain twelve hundred beds.
[6] There is to be a new coinage without the king's profile, and it is to be hoped these wings, or rather the whole figure, will be left out.
[7] This article is, "The law has the right of prohibiting only those actions which are hurtful to society."
[8] This and the former echanger, &c. and remboursable, &c. appear to be superfluous.
[9] These Boulevarts were made in 1536, and planted with four rows of trees in 1668; these beautiful walks are too well known to be described here; they are 2400 Toises (4800 yards, or almost three miles) long. The South Boulevarts are planted in the same manner, were finished in 1761, and are 3683 Toises, or fathom (above four miles) in length.
[10] Mr. Pennant, in the second volume of his Tour in Scotland, has given a long account of such a machine, from which the following particulars are taken. "It was confined to the limits of the forest of Hardwick, or the eighteen towns and hamlets within its precincts. The execution was generally at Halifax; Twenty five criminals suffered during the reign of Queen Elizabeth; the records before that time were lost. Twelve more were executed between 1623 and 1650, after which it is supposed the privilege was no more exerted.——This machine is now destroyed, but there is one of the same kind, in a room under the Parliament house, at Edinburgh, where it was introduced by the Regent Morton, who took a model of it as he passed through Halifax, and at length suffered by it himself. It is in form of a painters easel, and about ten feet high: at four feet from the bottom is a cross-bar, on which the felon laid his head, which was kept down by another placed above. In the inner edges of the frame are grooves; in these is placed a sharp axe, with a vast weight of lead, supported at the summit by a peg; to that peg is fastened a cord, which the executioner cutting, the axe falls, and beheads the criminal. If he was condemned for stealing a horse or a cow, the string was tied to the beast, which pulled out the peg and became the executioner."