Various
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction / Volume 20, No. 559, July 28, 1832
OPORTO
Lieutenant H was an officer of the line on half pay. His brother was one of the solicitors to the Crowna quiet, tremulous, vino deditus sort of man, and a leading Orangeman;his widow who afterwards married and survived a learned doctor, was a clever, positive, good-looking Englishwoman, and, I think, fixed the doctor's avowed creed: as to his genuine faith, that was of little consequence.
Lieutenant H was about six feet two inches high;strong, and broad in proportion. His strength was great, but of the dead kind unaccompanied by activity. He could lift a ton, but could not leap a rivulet; he looked mild, and his address was civilneither assuming nor at all ferocious. I knew him well, and from his countenance should never have suspected him of cruelty; but so cold-blooded and so eccentric an executioner of the human race I believe never yet existed, save among the American Indians.6
His inducement to the strange barbarity he practised I can scarcely conceive; unless it proceeded from that natural taint of cruelty which so often distinguishes man above all other animals when his power becomes uncontrolled. The propensity was probably strengthened in him from the indemnities of martial law, and by those visions of promotion whereby violent partizans are perpetually urged, and so frequently disappointed.