there the virtue of a quack medicine, some sovran remedy for colic, gout, toothache, “The Itch or any Itching Humour.” Again, you have “The works of Petronius Arbiter, with Cuts and a Key,” or “Apuleius’s Golden Ass,” or some lewd publication of the day. Even if the advertisements were Paul’s publishers’, how strange the man and the time that suffered so incongruous a mixture! Our Ordinary petitioned parliament that his precious broadsheets might go free of the paper tax, by reason of their edifying nature! Turn we now to the Hangman. No rare figure _his_ in Old England! Only in later years was he individualised. In James I.’s time a certain Derrick filled the office. The playwrights keep his memory green, and the crane so called is said to take its name from him. Then there came Gregory Brandon, who had “a fair coat of arms,” and the title of esquire in virtue of his office. This was through a mad practical joke of York Herald, who, perceiving a solemn ass in Garter King-at-Arms, sent him in the papers somewhat ambiguously worded, and got the grant in due form. York and Garter were presently laid by the heels in the Marshalsea, “one for foolery, the other for knavery.” Gregory was succeeded by his son, also called Gregory, though his real name was Richard. His infantile amusement was the heading of cats and dogs, his baby fingers seemed ever adjusting imaginary halters on invisible necks; he was “the destined heir, From his soft cradle, to his father’s chair”--or rather cart and ladder. The younger Brandon was, it seems quite certain, the executioner of Charles I. Then followed Edward, commonly known as Esquire Dun, and then the renowned Jack Ketch, who went to his ghastly work with so callous a disregard for human suffering, or, as some fancied, with such monstrous glee, that his name, becoming the very synonym for hangman, clave to all his successors. He “flourished” 1663-1686. Dryden calls him an “excellent physician,” and commemorates him more than once in his full-resounding line. Some held Catch his true patronymic and Ketch a corruption of Jacquet, the family name of those who held the Manor of Tyburn during a great part of the seventeenth century, but this, however ingenious, seems too far-fetched. The original Jack was ungracious and surly even beyond the manner of his kind. In January 1686, for insolence to the sheriffs, “he was deposed and committed to Bridewell.” Pascha Rose, a butcher, succeeded but getting himself hanged in May Ketch was reinstated. It is recorded that he struck for higher pay--and got it too. You might fancy that any one could adjust the “Tyburn Tippet,” or “the riding knot an inch below the ear.” But the business called for its own special knack. In the _History of the Press-yard_ the Hangman is represented, after the suppression of the 1715 Rising, as cheerfully expectant, “provided the king does not unseasonably spoil my market by reprieves and pardons.” He will receive ample douceurs