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which adorn the front, representing Justice, Wealth, and Strength, and which are of an enormous size : on the other side is a collossal bronze statue of Atlas supporting the world, executed in a masterly manner. The tower contains a vast number of bells, the largest of which weighs between six and seven thousand pounds; the carillons in this dome are remarkably sweet, they play every quarter of an hour an agreeable air, which is executed to admiration. An excellent carilloneur is engaged to entertain the citizens of Amsterdam three times a week; the perfection to which he has brought his performance can only be appreciated by those who have heard it. The brass barrel by which he plays is seven feet and a half in diameter, and weighs four thousand four hundred and seventy-four pounds. The clocks strike the full hour at the half hour, and upon the expiration of the full hour, repeat it upon a bell of a deeper tone.

CHAPTER XV.

DUNGEONS IN THE STADT-HOUSE-TREATMENT OF THE PRISONERSHALL OF JUSTICE THE TORTURE-CRIMINAL TRIALS—CAPITAL PUNISHMENT ANECDOTE OF A MALEFACTOR—THE BANK—ITS FORMER AND PRESENT STATE-POPULAR TUMULT-EFFECTS OF DIFFUSIVE EDUCATION-PUBLIC FETE AT AMSTERDAM-DANCING DUTCHMEN THE BEGUINES-LADIES OF HOLLAND-HOUSE RENT—THE WATER OF AMSTERDAM.

BY considerable interest, and with much difficulty, I was admitted to see the prison which occupies one of the courts of the Stadt-house, on two sides of which, below ground, are the dungeons, to which the gaoler conducted us by a lamp: as a place of confinement nothing can be more secure, and as a place of punishment more horrible. After descending a dreary flight of steps, and passing through a long narrow passage, midway yast double doors, thickly plated with iron, were opened, through which we entered, and at the end were stopped by two other massy doors which, upon being unbolted, led to a row of subterranean dungeons. In the first, by the faint light of a rush candle, I discerned the emaciated figure of a man who had been con

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victed of robbery, attentively reading: he just turned from his book to look at us a moment, and then returned to it: he was condemned to inhabit this cell alone for life!-In the next were two young men who, in the forms of Dutchmen, seemed to carry the elastic souls of Frenchmen, that bend to and carol under every human misery; for in this gloomy abode, in which one would suppose resignation would turn to despair, they were whistling and waltzing in the dark; whilst in the third were several women and a young girl, the latter about fifteen, confined for having displayed an early, and rather too violent a fondness for the laws of nature. These miserable beings were also in darkness, except when they closely approached the vast double bars which crossed the windows of their cells, when they were enabled to behold a little light, which faintly reached them through some low oblong apertures on the opposite side of the passage, thickly guarded by similar massy bars, just raised above the level of the court, into which these poor wretches, are never permitted to walk; for, deplorable to relate, from the first minute of their commitment till their fate is finally fixed, they are never suffered to quit their gloomy abodes but to appear before their judges in the adjoining hall, where they undergo private examinations, and at length a close trial. The crimes with which these latter unhappy prisoners stood charged were not of a very malignant nature, yet

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were they, even before the guilt of some of them was established, cut off from light and air, and immured in regions fit only to be a receptacle for the dead. I need scarcely inform the reader that their appearance when they pressed towards the grating, when alone they were distinguishable, was in a high degree squalid and sickly.

None of these miserable wretches were loaded with irons; they would, indeed, have been a very unnecessary augmentation of cruelty, for nothing but the miraculous interference of an angel could have burst their prison-doors, which were doubly cased with iron, and fastened with enormous bolts and locks, whilst the walls of the cells were cased with ponderous masonry, through which, if a prisoner had the means to penetrate, he would afterwards have to encounter all the earth upon which the rest of the Stadt-house stood. The gaoler shewed us some irons of a particular construction, and a board which fastened round the neck and one hand, for refractory criminals, but he assured me they had not been used for many years.

The principal secretary of the magistracy shewed me the hall of justice, which was also formerly the torturechamber. Here the miserable sufferer, who refused to confess his guilt, at the pleasure of his barbarous judge,

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underwent a variety of torments; amongst others, it was usual to fasten his hands behind his neck, with a cord which passed through pullies fastened to a vaulted ceiling, by means of which he was jerked up and down, with leaden weights of fifty pounds each lashed to his feet, until anguish overpowered his senses, and a confession of guilt was heard to quiver on his lips. Some of the iron-work by which this infamous process was effected was still adhering to the walls. This ferocious and stupid practice was only abolished in the year 1798. This room is entirely of stone, low, and vaulted; the windows are small, and guarded by vast double bars of iron, and the whole is very little better than a large dungeon. A bar for the prisoner to appear at, a seat for the witness, for only one is most judiciously admitted at a time; a table and raised seats for the judges, and lower ones for the officers attached to the tribunal, form all the arrangements of this gloomy seat of justice. The prisoner is permitted to have a counsellor to plead his cause, and no strangers are admitted on any account. Three days are suffered to elapse between the sentence and its execution in capital cases; during which the prisoner is allowed whatever refreshment he may choose; an indulgence which, from the state of the appetite at such a period, seldom runs the state into much expence. Public punishments are inflicted four times in the course of the year. On these occasions a vast scaffold is

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