When will the French nation be able to afford a Thurtell--a man who
could turn his pistol round in his _friend's_ brains; not in any insane
paroxysm of jealousy, or hatred, or revenge, but merely to ascertain
_satisfactorily_ that he had completely effected his business--who could
then walk in to his supper of pork chops, with the same composure as if
he had come from giving a feed of oats to his horse--a clever and acute
man, too, without any stupid insensibility of mind--a man who, when
seized and put on his trial, gets off by heart a long and eloquent
speech, full of the most solemn and false asseverations of his
innocence; not that he clung with desperate eagerness to the hope of
escaping, but that, as there was a chance, it was prudent not to throw
it away--who, when condemned displayed neither terror nor indifference,
neither exquisite sensibility nor sullen brutality, and at the last
swung out of life from the gallows with the settled air of a man who
feels he has lost the game at which he played, and that he may as well
pay the stake calmly? There was a true British composure about the
unutterable atrocity of this villain--murderer he was, and a most
detestable murderer too--but his character belongs to our country as
fully as that of our heroes. Hunt and Probert were pitiful wretches,
fit for the Bicêtre. Doubtless the agony of Hunt's feelings until his
reprieve came, would, if properly divided into chapters, make a good
romance.--_Blackwood's Mag._
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