passed through more formal judicial ordeals, and the result was, that the coroner’s prime witness was hanged for the _murder_ of the old woman. We must have it distinctly understood that not the faintest shade of parallel exists between the two cases. We bring them together solely to illustrate the evils of a system. On passing into the baker’s parlour, dumb witnesses presented themselves, which—properly or improperly—must have had their effect on the promoters of the inquiry. The piano indicated hours formerly spent, and thoughts once indulged, which, when imagined by minds fresh from the appalling reality in the squalid kitchen, must have excited new throes of indignation and pity. One portrait was that of the bruised and crushed corpse when living and young. Then she must have been comely; now no feature could be recognised as ever having been human. Then, she was cleanly and neatly dressed, and, if the pictured smile might be trusted, happy; now, she lay amidst dirt, the victim of long, long ill-usage and lingering misery, ended in premature death. The other, was a likeness of her husband. Had words of love ever passed between the originals of those painted effigies? Had they ever courted? It seemed that one of the jurors was inwardly asking some such question while gazing at the portraits, for he was visibly affected. We all at length made our way to the ‘Two Spies’ in Whitehart Yard, Brydges Street. The accommodation afforded was a little more spacious than those of the Old Drury; but the delegated Majesty of the Crown had no dignity imparted to it from the coroner’s figure being brought out in relief by a clothes-horse and table cloth which were, during the inquiry, placed behind him to serve as a fire-screen. Neither did the case of stuffed birds, the sampler of Moses in the bulrushes, the picture of the licensed victuallers’ school, or the portraits of the rubicund host and of his ‘good lady,’ tend to impress the minds of jury, witnesses, or spectators, with that awe for the supremacy of the Law which a court of justice is expected to inspire.