as he patrolled the streets of his capital, in the spirit of Haroun Al Raschid, somewhat heightened by the spirit of wine. I was not above looking curiously and thoughtfully at the exhibition of Popery, displayed in the relics of the Armada. At the Crystal Palace there was a very bold and enticing parade of the modern instruments of this Protean enthusiasm, in the shape of candlesticks and monstrances, thuribles and pyxes, and all sorts of embroideries, spangles, laces, and millinery. By such things it would convert England now. In Elizabeth’s day, its missionaries were less attractive. Bilboes, collars, thumb-screws, and iron cravats; stocks, fetters, and manacles; a sort of portable Inquisition was, in short, the great reliance of the Pope in those times, for the reduction of the heretic English: and here, no doubt, old Fuller would go on to say, that “if forsooth we should feel closely about the fine things of even modern Poperie, we might, perchance, find a prickly point, or a sharp edge, or a rough chain, if not faggots and gun-powder also, stowed away among all their fancy stuffes and petticoats.” I could not satisfy myself with looking at these antiquarian treasures however, nor shall I attempt to satisfy my reader by detailing them. Let him think how he would feel to touch the very axe that divided the little fair neck of Anne Boleyn, and the stiffer sinews of the Earl of Essex. Even the block on which old Lovat laid his worthless head, loaded with crimes as many as his hoary hairs, gives one a shudder, though no man pitied him when he fell. It is, moreover, a monument of interest, because there the axe stayed, and has never since been lifted on the head of a British subject. He died in 1746, in the cause of the young Pretender; and possibly this fact suggested to me the thought, (by which alone I can convey any just idea of this Armory,) that the whole exhibition seems to be a complete property-room of the Waverley novels. If the characters of those successive tales could have deposited in one room the antiquarian implements and costumes to which they gave a sort of resurrection, they would have furnished us with very much such a collection as that of this Armory of the Tower.