Mr. Wallace sees, at a glance, that he may as well try to find a lost shell on a sea-shore, or a needle in a haystack, as attempt to discover what he is desirous of picking out of this documentary chaos. He looks round in mute grief; his archaic heart is heavy; he understands, exactly, how Rienzi felt amidst the Ruins of Rome, or the daughters of Jerusalem when they wept. Wherever he turns his eyes, he sees black, barbarous Ruin. In one corner, he observes decayed boxes filled with rotten wills; in another, stands a basket, containing several lumps of mediæval mortar, and a few brick-bats of the early pointed style--the edges, possibly, of some hole in the wall too large for even poor seven thousand a-year to shirk the stopping of. Despite the hints of the clerk that his time is valuable, Mr. Wallace is contemplating these relics with the eager gaze of an F.S.A., when he descries, hanging over the edge of the basket, something like an ancient seal. He scrutinizes it intensely--there is a document attached to it. He rescues it from the rubbish. "What can this be?" asks Mr. Wallace with glistening eye. "Oh!" answers the clerk, with listless indifference, "nothing of any consequence, _I'm_ sure." By this time, Mr. Wallace has found out that this "nothing of any consequence," is a Charter of King William the Conqueror; _the identical instrument by which the See of Dorchester was transferred to Lincoln_--that's all! The broken seal is not of "much consequence" either. Oh, no! Now it happens that there is only one impression of the great seal of the Great Norman extant, and that is in the British Museum, broken in half; this, being a counterpart, supplies the entire seal! Such is the priceless historical relic found in the year 1850, by chance, in a lime-basket, in the very place where it ought to have been as zealously preserved as if it had been the jewel of a diadem! But, other treasures--equally of "no consequence," and about to be carried off by bricklayers' laborers, to where rubbish may be shot--are dug out by Mr. William Wallace:--Item, a bundle of pardons from King John to certain barons and bishops: Item, a Confession of the Protestant Faith made on his death-bed by Archbishop Toby Matthew, hitherto supposed by his biographers to have died a Catholic: Item, a contemporary poem on the Battle of Bosworth. The Registrar's clerk is of opinion, when these are shown to him, that "they an't worth much," but growlingly saves them, on remonstrance, and bundles them into his desk; where we trust they still remain; and whence we hope they may be rescued by the proper authorities.