3-043-763 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"A Jacobite's Farewell", by T. Green, in the exhibition of the Royal Academy, 1872. Engraving of a painting. 'In the catalogue, the artist gives the following quotation from Paul Hentzner's "Journey into England, 1757": "London Bridge is covered on each side with houses, so disposed as to have the appearance of a continued street. Upon this is built a tower, on whose top the heads of such as have been executed for high treason are placed upon iron spikes." A Jacobite with his family is seeking to escape the fate of his former companions in rebellion, whose spiked heads he salutes as he steps into the boat that, we may suppose, is engaged to row him to some ship lying below bridge, which he hopes will convey him and his to an asylum on the Continent. That the peril is imminent seems to be indicated by the choice of earliest dawn for embarking...Yet the danger does not shake his fidelity to the lost cause he espoused...he cannot refrain from making a gesture, that might well betray him, towards the remains of the martyrs to that cause...The conception altogether conveys a thrilling impression of the savage nature of the old political passions the cruelty, dangers, and hardships they entailed on the innocent, often, as well as on the guilty'. From "Illustrated London News", 1872.