quicklime, the thrusting into a hole, and the general obliteration of the morning’s work, suggested to me the advisability of at once restoring my apartment to its normal condition. So with one piece of bread jammed into the window, and another jammed into my mouth, I resumed my breakfast as if perfectly oblivious of the terrible drama that had just taken place. A few hours later we were exercising in the identical yard, and the modest coach-house with its closed doors looked as disused as the portals of a swimming-bath on Christmas Day. The scene just enacted and the _débris_ of my breakfast forcibly recalled to my mind an execution I witnessed many years ago from, as I believe, the identical eating-house that had just supplied me with my breakfast. It was in ’65, as near as I can recollect, that myself and three or four others engaged a room on the first floor with two windows to witness the execution of Müller for the murder of Mr. Briggs. A public hanging has been so often and so graphically described that I hesitate to attempt to add anything that is not already known. On the night before (Sunday) we agreed to rendezvous at 10 o’clock at the Raleigh Club. It was raining in torrents, and it was a question in our minds whether or no we should brave the elements; but an empty four-wheeler standing outside settled the point, and we proceeded on our ghastly journey. As it turned out, the deluge was all in our favour, for had it been fine we should never have got near the place, and would assuredly have shared the fate of a cab-load of young Guardsmen who had preceded us about an hour, and who unluckily arrived between the showers and never got beyond Newgate Lane; at this point they were politely but firmly invited to descend, stripped to their shirts, and then asked where the cabman should drive them to. We, however, were more fortunate. In a sheet of water that even the stoutest burglar found to be irresistible, we alighted in a comparatively deserted street in front of our unpretending coffee-house; and a few minutes found us in a cosy room with a blazing fire, and a servant who had preceded us laying out the contents of a hamper of prog. The scene on the night previous to a public execution afforded a study of the dark side of nature, not to be obtained under any other conditions. The lowest scum of London appeared to be here collected in dense masses, which, as the hour of execution approached, amounted, according to the _Times_, to at least 100,000 people. The front of Newgate was strongly barricaded, huge barriers of stout beams traversing the street in all directions; they were intended as a precaution against the pressure of the crowd; they, however, answered another purpose, not wholly anticipated by the authorities. As the crowd increased, so wholesale highway robberies were of momentary occurrence; and victims in the hands of some two or three desperate ruffians were as far from help as though