descended into the building by ladders, and rescued the prisoners. Two eye-witnesses, the poet Crabbe and Dr. Johnson, have left their impressions of this extraordinary scene: "I stood and saw," says the former of these writers, "about twelve women and eight men ascend from their confinement to the open air, and conducted through the streets in their chains. Three of them were to be hanged on Friday. You have no conception of the frenzy of the multitude. Newgate was at this time open to all; anyone might get in, and what was never the case before, anyone might get out." "On Wednesday," says Dr. Johnson, "I walked with Dr. Scott, (lord Stowell,) to look at Newgate, and found it in ruins, with the fire yet glowing. As I went by, the Protestants were plundering the sessions-house at the Old Bailey. There were not, I believe, a hundred, but they did their work at leisure, in full security, without sentinels, without trepidation, as men lawfully employed in full day." Besides Newgate, lord Mansfield's house in Bloomsbury-square was pulled down, and his valuable library burned. The Fleet, King's Bench, the Marshalsea, Wood-street Compter, and Clerkenwell Bridewell, were all opened, and such a jail delivery effected as the citizens had never witnessed before. A stop was put to business on the Wednesday; shops were closed; pieces of blue, the symbol of Protestant truth and zeal, were required to be hung out of the windows, and "No Popery" chalked on the doors. Before night, even the Bank was assailed, but not without a dreadful and destructive repulse from the military who garrisoned it, and were ordered to act. It is stated that the king, alarmed at the danger of his capital, and indignant at the inaction of the magistrates, took upon himself to command the services of the military for putting down the riot. While thirty fires were blazing in the streets, and the inhabitants passed a sleepless night, full of anguish, a large body of soldiers was engaged in the terrible, though necessary work of suppressing the riot by force. This was accomplished at the expense of not less than five hundred lives. By Friday, quietude was restored. Lord George Gordon was apprehended, but was acquitted upon trial, his conduct not coming within the limits of the statute of treason. Sixty of the deluded creatures, who at first were excited by his mischievous agitation however, had to pay the extreme penalty of the law. A happy contrast to this brutal kind of excitement has been recently (1850-51) displayed in the calm, deep, and, for the most part, intelligent resistance made to a far different measure--the papal aggression, in the creation of territorial bishoprics; one really calculated to excite far greater opposition. The years 1780 and 1850, stand out at the extremes of a period which has witnessed, in London and elsewhere, a change in public thought and habit of the most gratifying kind; and to what can this be so fairly ascribed, under the