engagement between the ghosts of Miss Blandy and her father, which continued so violent, that some bold persons, to prevent further bloodshed broke in, and found it was two jackasses which had got into the kitchen." [Illustration: Miss Mary Blandy in Oxford Castle Gaol (_From an Engraving in the British Museum_.)] Walpole barely exaggerates the wholesale legal butcheries by which the streets of London were then disgraced. "Many cartloads of our fellow-creatures are once in six weeks carried to slaughter," says Henry Fielding, in his _Enquiry_ (1751); and well has Mr. Whibley described the period as "Newgate's golden age." As for Tyburn Tree, we read in its _Annals_, for example, "1752. July 13. Eleven executed at Tyburn." We can only glance at one or two further instances of the diffusion of "Blandy's fatal fame." None of the varied forms of the _Newgate Calendar_--that criminous _Who's Who?_--fails to accord her suitable if inaccurate notice. With other letter-writers of the time than the genial Horace the case forms a topical subject. James Granger reports to a reverend correspondent that "the principal subject of conversation in these parts is the tragical affair transacted at Henley.... It is supposed, as there is no direct and absolute proof that she was guilty, and her friends are rich and have great interest, that she will escape punishment." To Mrs. Delany, writing the day after the execution, the popular heroine "appeared very guilty by her trial," but we learn that Lady Huntingdon had written a letter to Miss Blandy after her conviction. On 22nd April, 1752, Miss Talbot writes to Mrs. Carter, who thought Mary had been "too severely judged," that "her hardiness in guilt" was shocking to think of. "Let me tell you one fact that young Goosetree, the lawyer, told to the Bishop of Gloucester," she writes, with reference to Miss Blandy's repeated statement that she never believed her father a rich man. "This Goosetree visited her in jail as an old acquaintance. She expressed to him great amazement at her father's being no richer, and said she had no notion but he must have been worth £10,000. Mr. Goosetree prudently told her the less she said about that the better, and she never said it afterwards, but the contrary." Miss Talbot adds that certain letters in Lord Macclesfield's hands "falsify others of her affirmations." By 5th May, 1753, Mrs. Delany writes, "We are now very full of talk about Eliza Canning."