It was called the London Corresponding Society for Constitutional Reform, and it was in secret correspondence with Robespierre, and other monsters of that terrible tribunal which never spared, until it had deluged France with the blood of 1,022,351 of its best citizens. Start not, reader, in doubt, there is no mistake in the figures—ONE MILLION, TWENTY-TWO THOUSAND, THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-ONE victims, male and _female_, adults and _children_, perished under the axe of the accursed guillotine, or other wholesale murders, perpetrated during the Reign of Terror. May its bloody horrors be a lesson and A WARNING to nations, in all future time, to beware or the perils attending MOB LAW! The London Corresponding Society was headed by Hardy, Horne Tooke, Thelwall, and other turbulent spirits of the time. But by the firmness of the Prime Minister, William Pitt, son of the Earl of Chatham, the leaders were apprehended in their own homes, during the night, and tried for high treason. But the society, although with greater privacy, still held its sittings, and in order to defeat the government police, one of its agents hired two houses adjoining each other, where, with extraordinary care and secrecy, a secret passage was constructed between the two, by means of closets, so artfully contrived, that at a moment’s warning the members could escape with their papers from one house to the other, and elude the chance of capture. In the room where the traitors met, the back of the closet was built up of bricks, resting on strong shelves, which were fixed to a door of strong plank. This door, with its shelves and brick back, swung on well oiled pivots. The bricks were whitewashed, and were firmly attached to the shelves, which were furnished with China and crockery, coated with fine dust, to make it appear, on looking into the closet, as if it had not been opened for a long time. The closet in the adjoining house, resembled it exactly, except in the arrangement of its contents. The back or swing door, on that side next to the committee-room, had strong secret bolts, which kept all firm in its place. The two houses had passed into the occupation of different persons, years after the society ceased to exist, without the secret of the “corresponding” closets having been divulged; but at the time when Mr. Crofton occupied his apartment, the servants of the adjoining house had discovered the secret of the bolts and swing door, in consequence of a brick coming loose, in driving a nail, and with that amiable curiosity generally _attributed_ to the fair sex, and probably from envy of her beauty, and of hearing some compliments paid to Marianne’s graceful figure, they determined on the species of pantomime which they so successfully put in practice, being mainly aided in it by a youth of great inventive genius, and a very dare-devil at mischief.