execute it. The Senate was in consternation, for this assertion of hereditary right was unanswerable; and while they courteously declined the offer of the chivalrous mother, they felt constrained to accept the services of her son.
The fatal morning came; the scaffold stood erected; and pressing closely around the wooden barriers, stood the anxious crowd awaiting the execution. The culprit knelt with head erect, his neck and shoulders bared for the stroke, while the young headsman stood by his side armed with the double-handed sword, the weapon of his office. At a sign given, he swung the tremendous blade in the air, and aimed a fearful blow at the neck of the condemned; but his skilless hand sloped the broad blade as it fell, and it struck deeply into the victim’s breast. Amid a cry of terror he raised his sword again; again it whirled through the air, and again it failed to do its deadly work. The miserable wretch still lived; and a third stroke was necessary to complete the task so dreadfully began. Who can wonder that that fearful weapon had for years long rested from its service?
Influenced by this terrible scene, and, let us hope, as well by motives of humanity as by the conviction of the utter uselessness of such a spectacle as a moral lesson, the Senate of Hamburg had commuted the punishment of death into that of a life imprisonment. Yet now they were taunted with their unreadiness to shed blood, and dared to carry the law, as it still stood upon the statute-book, into effect. For a while it seemed that anger would govern the acts of the Senate, for every preparation was made for the execution. The headsman, whose blundering essay has been above related, was still living, but he had long filled the humble office of a messenger, and made no claim to repeat his effort. Among the many competitors who offered their services, a Dane was finally selected, and the inhabitants of Hamburg, excited to the utmost degree by the anticipation of the forthcoming spectacle, awaited the event with a morbid and gloating curiosity. They were, however, disappointed; humanity prevailed, and the guilty wächter was conducted to a life prison.
The Senate of Hamburg has not formally abolished the punishment of death; but the last hereditary headsman is now growing an old man, and the first and only stroke of his weapon was dealt thirty-two years ago.
CHAPTER IV.
workmen in hamburg.
Here amid the implements of labor, in the dingy werkstube in Johannis Strasse; lighted by the single flicker of an oil lamp, with the workboard for a writing-desk, let me endeavour to collect some few scattered details about the German workmen in Hamburg.
German workmen! do not the very words recall to your memory old amber-coloured engravings of sturdy men, with waving locks, grasping the arm of the printing-press, by the side of Faust, Schœffer, and Gottenberg? Or, perhaps, the words of Schiller’s “Song of the Bell” may not be unknown to you, and hum in your ears:
Frisch, gesellen, seyd zur hand!
Von der stirne heiss,
Rinnen muss der schweiss.
Briskly, comrades to your work!
From the flushing brow
Must the sweatdrops flow.