When we entered, the Coroner was holding a friendly conversation with some of the jury, the beadle, and the gentlemen of the press, respecting the inferiority of the accommodation; and, considering the number of persons present, and the accessions expected from more jurymen, parochial officers, and witnesses, the subject was suggested naturally enough: for the private apartment of the landlord was of exceedingly moderate dimensions; and that had been appropriated as the temporary Court. Here then, to a back parlour of the Old Drury Tavern, Vinegar Yard, Drury Lane, London, the Queen’s representative was consigned—by no fault of his own, but from that of a system of which he is rather a victim than a promoter—to institute one of the most important inquiries which the law of England prescribes. A human being had been prematurely sent into eternity, and the coroner was called upon—amidst several implements of conviviality, the odour of gin and the smell of tobacco-smoke—‘to inquire in this manner: that is, to wit, if they [the witnesses] know where the person was slain, whether it were in any house, field, bed, tavern, or company, and who were there; who are culpable, either of the act, or of the force; and who were present, either men or women, and of what age soever they be, if they can speak or have any discretion; and how many soever be found culpable they shall be taken and delivered to the sheriff, and shall be committed to the gaol.’ So runs the clause of the act of parliament, still in force by which the coroner and jury were now assembled. It is the second statute of the fourth year of Edward I., and is the identical law which is discussed by the grave-diggers in Hamlet. The pleasant colloquy about the size of the room ended in a resolution to adjourn the Court to the ‘Two Spies,’ in a neighbouring alley. Time appeared, throughout the proceedings, to be as valuable as space, and the rest of the jurors having dropped in, the coroner—with a bible supplied from the bar,—at once delivered the oath to the foreman. The other jurors were rapidly sworn in batches, upon the Old Drury Bible, under an abridged dispensation administered, if our memory be correct, by the beadle. ‘Now, then, gentlemen,’ said the coroner, ‘we’ll view the body.’