After my friend's indignation against the anti-hanging principles of Reform had subsided a little, he invited me to examine his curiosities, which he had arranged in an adjoining room. "I have not," said he, as we were proceeding thither, "confined my collection to objects connected with capital offenders only; it comprehends relics of every grade of crime, from murder to petty larceny. In that respect I am liberal, sir." We had now reached the door of the apartment, when my conductor, seizing my arm suddenly, pointed to the door-mat upon which I had just set my foot, and said, "Observe that mat, sir; it is composed of oakum picked by the fair fingers of the late Lady Barrymore, while confined in the Penitentiary." I cast a glance at this humble memorial of her late ladyship's industry, and passed into the museum. In doing so, I happened to stumble over a stable-bucket, which my friend affirmed was the one from which Thurtell watered his horse on his way to Probert's cottage. Opening a drawer, he produced a pair of dirty-looking slippers, the authentic property of the celebrated Ikey Solomons; and along with them a pair of cotton hose, which he assured me he had mangled with his own hands in Sarah Gale's mangle. In another drawer he directed my attention to a short clay pipe, once in the possession of Burke; and a tobacco-stopper belonging to Hare, the notorious murderer. He had also preserved with great care Corder's advertisement for a wife, written in his own hand, as it appeared in the weekly papers, and a small fragment of a tile from the Red Barn, where Maria Martin was murdered by the same Corder. He also possessed the fork belonging to the knife with which some German, whose name I forget, cut his wife's and children's throats; and a pewter half-quartern measure, used at the Black Lion, in Wych-street, by Sixteen-string Jack. There were, likewise, in the collection several interesting relics of humorous felony; such as the snuff-box of the Cock-lane ghost--the stone thrown by Collins at William the Fourth's head--a copy of Sir Francis Burden's speech, for which he was committed to the Tower--an odd black silk glove, worn by Mr. Cotton, the late ordinary of Newgate--Barrington's silver tooth-pick--and a stay-lace of Miss Julia Newman. These were but a small portion of the contents of the museum; but I had seen enough to make me sick of the exhibition, and I withdrew with the firm resolution never again, during my life, to enter the house of a _Criminal Curiosity Hunter_. X. * * * * * ECCENTRICITIES OF THE MINOR DRAMA.