Did they ever cut a state prisoner’s head off in Westminster Hall, I wonder, as they did Mary Stuart’s in the hall at Fotheringay? The place is large enough. * * * * * [Illustration: TEN O’CLOCK A.M.: INTERIOR OF THE QUEEN’S BENCH PRISON.] Once again I stand within the precincts of the Queen’s Bench; but where is my Lord Owlett, where the bewigged barristers and the jury-box with the “twelve honest men” within wiping their semperperspiring foreheads? I am standing in the centre of a vast gravelled area, bounded on the south side by a brick wall of tremendous height, and crowned by those curious arrangements of geometrical spikes known as _chevaux de frise_. To the north there is a range of ordinary-looking houses, the numbers of which are painted very conspicuously in white characters on a black ellipse above the doors, about which, moreover, there is this peculiarity, that they are always open. If you peep through the yawning portals, you will see that the staircases are of stone, and that the roofs of the rooms on the ground-floor are vaulted. There are no barred windows, no bolts, bars, or grim chains apparent, though from the back windows of these houses there is a pleasant prospect of another high wall, equally surmounted with _chevaux de frise_. When the spider has got the fly comfortably into his web, and has satisfied himself that he can’t get out, I daresay that he does not take the trouble to handcuff him. In the midst of this gravelled area stands a pump, known as the “Dolphin;” to the right of this institution, and somewhat in the back-ground, is a great square building, called the “State House.” The rooms here are double the size to those in the houses I have alluded to, and are accorded by the governor of the place as a matter of favour to those inmates of the—well, the college—who can afford to fill them with a sufficient quantity of furniture. Close to the State House is a strong iron gateway, through which the guardians of the college have a strong disinclination to allow the under-graduates to pass, unless they be furnished with a certain mysterious document called “a discharge.” The guardians themselves are ruddy men with very big keys; but they seem on the very best terms with the gentlemen whose intended exercise outside the walls they feel compelled (doubtless through solicitude for their precious health) to debar, and are continually bidding them “good morning” in the most affable manner; it being also one of their idiosyncrasies to rub their noses with the handles of the big keys while going through the salutation. In days not very remote there were certain succursals, or chapels of ease, to the college, in the shape of dingy tenements in the borough of Southwark, extending as far as the Elephant and Castle; and in these tenements, which were called the “Rules,” such collegians as were in a position to offer a fantastic guarantee entitled