The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 307: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

278 REYNOLDS’ WORKS affrighted wretch, his mind suffering excruciations as terrific as if he were actually in the jaws of the stupendous reptile. But when he again looked around, he perceived that he was safe from pursuit, and he sank exhausted and in despair upon some masses of granite rock. Tears coursed their way down the face of the unhappy man. He who had never known what compunction was when about to perpetrate a crime, he who had even done murder’s work without remorse, now wept at the fearful position in which he found himself. Whichever way he turned, spectacles of horror or of danger — indeed, of both combined — presented themselves. The erass under his feet, the trees above his head, the brakes on one hand, the thickets on the other, the very streams with whose waters he sought to slake his thirst, were all teeming with living beings threatening him with a horrible death. Little had the miscreant ever thought of a future state or of punishments in a world to come, but now it seemed to him as if there were veritably a hell upon earth, affording a frightful foretaste of the one that was to be experienced hereafter. The Burker put on his shoes, and wiping away the tears which had flowed down his cheeks, he applied himself to the contents of the gourd in order to acquire the reckless courage of desperation. He now looked about him to ascer- tain the nature of the spot where he had sunk down ex- hausted. We have already said that he had thrown himself upon some granite blocks, and a closer inspection showed him that they belonged to the ruins of an edifice. These ruins occupied about a quarter of an acre, and the wanderer walked slowly around them. Whatever the edifice might have been, it had almost completely yielded to the effects of time or else to some convulsion of nature, for it had fallen into a destruction that well-nigh rendered it a heap of shapeless, meaningless ruins. But presently the Burker discovered the remnant of a gateway, the upright pillars of which still remained. He looked in, and the burning beams of the vertical sun fell fully upon a figure of hideous appear- ance and colossal dimensions, which appeared to be seated upon an elevation such as a throne or an altar. Despite the potent alcohol which he had imbibed from the gourd, the wanderer’s mind was still so attenuated as to be keenly susceptible of the most startling impressions, and his first Gomicdoc cS (E()