The Pillory was first used for dishonest bakers, brewers, corn-sellers, and the like. Then, its offices were extended to divers kinds of misdemeanants. Later, it was the lot of your scurrile pamphleteer, your libeller, and your publisher of unlicensed volumes. The victim was not always pelted; for feeling might run high against the Government; and when he was acclaimed his shame became his glory. So the thing served as a weather-glass of popular opinion. I turn to some historic instances. Under Henry III., by the Assize of Bread and Ale, it was decreed that knavish bakers, brewers, and butchers be “set on the pyllory.” It was also provided that “The pyllory shal be of a metely strengthe, so that they that be fautye may be thereon without any jeopardye of their lyvys.” (The platform must not seldom have broken down, leaving the “worm of the hour” suspended by the neck--that had been securely fastened--in peril of strangulation, in a case of this sort, under Elizabeth, he sued the town, and recovered damages.) The articles of usage for the City of London, published under Edward I., set forth some evil humours of the time. Rustical simplicity fell, then as now, an easy prey to urban cunning. What rascals these mediæval cits were, to be sure! Thus, your corn dealer would take in grain from harmless necessary bumpkins, to whom he would give an earnest, telling them to come to his house for payment. Here he met them with a long face:--his wife had gone out with the key of the cash-box; would his country friends call again? And when they do, he is “not in.” (Ah! That “call again” and that “not in!” Were they stale so many centuries ago?) If the rogue were discovered, he impudently denied his debt:--he had never seen the gentlemen before; or, raising some dispute about the price, he told him to take back his goods--when the corn was found too wet for removal. “By these means the poor men lose half their pay in expenses before they are settled with;” and the wrong-doer is to be amerced heavily. Being unable to pay, “then he shall be put on the Pillory, and remain there an hour in the day at least; a Serjeant of the City standing by the side of the Pillory with good hue-and-cry as to the reason why he is punished.” The wicked butcher suffered after the same fashion; while the baker, who put off bad bread, was drawn--for the first offence upon a hurdle from the Guildhall to his own house, by “the great streets that are most dirty, with the faulty loaf hanging about his neck,” a spectacle to gods and a cockshy for men. For the second offence he processioned as before; and, to boot, he must stand in the Pillory for an hour. Offending for the third time, he was judged incorrigible: his oven was dismantled, and he might bake within the city bounds no more. Sure, the ancient London loaf, be it _manchet_, or _chete_, or mere _mystelon_, must ever have been of good quality? When, indeed, did the falling off