 guillotine among the terrorists
of France. It was, in short, the platform of the pillory; and above it rose the
framework of that instrument of discipline, so fashioned as to confine the human
head in its tight grasp, and thus hold it up to the public gaze. The very ideal
of ignominy was embodied and made manifest in this contrivance of wood and iron.
There can be no outrage, methinks, against our common nature, - whatever be the
delinquencies of the individual, - no outrage more flagrant than to forbid the
culprit to hide his face for shame; as it was the essence of this punishment to
do. In Hester Prynne's instance, however, as not unfrequently in other cases,
her sentence bore, that she should stand a certain time upon the platform, but
without undergoing that gripe about the neck and confinement of the head, the
proneness to which was the most devilish characteristic of this ugly engine.
Knowing well her part, she ascended a flight of wooden steps, and was thus
displayed to the surrounding multitude, at about the height of a man's shoulders
above the street.
    Had there been a Papist among the crowd of Puritans, he might have seen in
this beautiful woman, so picturesque in her attire and mien, and with the infant
at her bosom, an object to remind him of the image of Divine Maternity, which so
many illustrious painters have vied with one another to represent; something
which should remind him, indeed, but only by contrast, of that sacred image of
sinless motherhood, whose infant was to redeem the world. Here, there was the
taint of deepest sin in the most sacred quality of human life, working such
effect, that the world was only the darker for this woman's beauty, and the more
lost for the infant that she had borne.
    The scene was not without a mixture of awe, such as must always invest the
spectacle of guilt and shame in a fellow-creature, before society shall have
grown corrupt enough to smile, instead of shuddering, at it. The witnesses of
Hester Prynne's disgrace had not yet passed beyond their simplicity. They were
stern enough to look upon her death, had that been the sentence, without a
murmur at its severity, but had none of the heartlessness of another social
state, which would find only a theme for jest in an exhibition like the present.
Even had there been a disposition to turn the matter into ridicule, it must have
been repressed and overpowered by the solemn presence of men no less dignified
than the Governor, and several of
