London in the last century, and even in this, was full of retreats for criminals. The demolition of West Street, formerly Chick Lane, and of Field Lane, so recent as to be still fresh in the memory of living persons, brought many of them to light. The Dog, a low public-house in Drury Lane, was known as the ’Robbers’ Den’; in fact, the whole street had a bad reputation, and is even now a disgrace to London. But beside these private retreats, the rogues and villains of the past had their public refuges, where even the officers of the law had to leave them unmolested—the sanctuaries at Westminster, St. John of Jerusalem, St. Martin’s-le-Grand, Whitefriars and the Mint, and Montague Close in Southwark, some of which retained their privileges to the middle of the last century. The name Sanctuary, still given to a certain spot near Westminster Abbey, commemorates the actual sanctuary formerly existing in that locality, and the narrow street called Thieving Lane, now demolished, received that name because thieves, on their way to Gate House Prison, were taken through it, to prevent their escape into the sanctuary. It is said that when rogues fall out honest men come to their own again. Yes, when their ’own’ is still come-atable, but as a rule it is not; rogues seldom keep what they gain by trickery—lightly earned, lightly spent is the rule with them. Rogues are as great fools as are the fools they cheat, and the fools at heart are rogues too, without the wit of the rogues. The fool who is done out of his money or other property by trusting a perfect stranger is so done because he fancies himself more clever than the cheat, and hopes to beat him. The victim scarcely deserves any pity, for it is only a case of diamond cut diamond. And unfortunately, as we intimated above, honest men do not come to their own again, when rogues fall out, or are detected. The rogue who has cheated a commercial firm out of goods to the value of thousands of pounds, which he immediately pawns for half they are worth, rushes off to a turf tipster or bookie, and though his betting turns out lucky, he cannot get his winnings from the said bookie, who resists payment on the plea that the transaction was illegal. The rogues fall out, a lawsuit is the result, the speculator loses his case, but the firm do not get their money; that is irretrievably gone. Plenty of such cases happened hundreds of years ago, and continue to happen to the present day, and there are various resorts in the City and West End of London where it might truthfully be written up, _Si sceleratos quœris, circumspice_! *XVII.* *BARS AND BARRISTERS.*