One or two other newspapers occasionally published engravings during the few years immediately preceding the _Illustrated London News_, and of them I will speak in the proper place. The most prominent, however, were the _Observer_, _Bell's Life in London_, and the _Weekly Chronicle_, and to these three I propose first to direct attention as being the main supporters of the pictorial spirit until it culminated in the _Illustrated London News_. It was during the ten years preceding 1842 that the founder of that journal noticed the growing inclination of the people for illustrated news, and it was chiefly in the pages of the _Observer_ and the _Weekly Chronicle_ that he thought he saw the growth of a hitherto uncultivated germ. In 1820 all England was startled by the discovery of a mysterious plot of some political desperadoes who planned the assassination of the Ministers of the Crown and the overthrow of the Government. This came to be known as the Cato Street Conspiracy, the place of meeting of the conspirators being in Cato Street, Marylebone. The extravagance of the Prince Regent, the high price of bread, and the heavy taxation, had brought about a feeling of discontent among the lower orders which, unhappily, was greatly increased by the Spa Fields riots, and the collision between the soldiers and the people in Lancashire, at what was called the massacre of Peterloo. Thistlewood, the leader of the conspirators, had already been tried for treasonable practices, but acquitted. He had also been in trouble for his connexion with the Spa Fields riots. The sanguinary plan of the conspirators was to murder the Cabinet Ministers while they were all assembled at dinner at Lord Harrowby's house in Grosvenor Square. They were to seize certain pieces of cannon, take the Bank of England, destroy the telegraph to Woolwich, set fire to different parts of London, and then establish a provisional government at the Mansion House, sending emissaries to the outports to prevent the escape of obnoxious persons. They reckoned on large numbers of the discontented joining them as soon as they had destroyed the tyrants and oppressors of the people, as they termed the Ministers. They had provided pikes, pistols, sabres, knives, blunderbusses, and hand-grenades; and one of the gang, a butcher, had furnished himself with a heavy butcher's knife, to cut off the heads of 'Castlereagh and the rest as he came at them.' Adams, one of their number, turned informer, and the conspirators were surprised by the police at their meeting-place in Cato Street. After a conflict in which one of the police-officers was killed, several of the gang were secured, and others were taken soon afterwards. Thistlewood, the leader, escaped in the first rush, but was captured next day.