should have been engendered here, is a question not easily solved. Physiologists are inclined to attribute it to our heavy atmosphere, which induces gloomy thoughts and fancies; while moralists assign as its cause, the sanguinary spirit of our laws, our brutal exhibitions of hanging, drawing and quartering, of gibbettings, whippings, brandings, and torturings, which degrade men’s natures, and give them a relish for scenes of blood and cruelty.

It happened that I had occasion to call on one of those “Criminal Curiosity Hunters” lately. He received me with extreme urbanity, and pointing to an old-fashioned-looking arm-chair, requested me to be seated.—I did so.

“I suppose, sir,” said he, with an air of suppressed triumph, “that you have no idea that you are now sitting in a remarkable chair?”

I assured him I was totally unconscious of the fact.

“I can tell you, then,” he replied, “that it was in that chair Fauntleroy, the banker, who was hanged for forgery, was sitting when he was arrested.”

“Indeed!”

“Fact, sir! I gave ten guineas for it. I thought also to have obtained the night-cap in which he slept the night before his execution, but another collector was beforehand with me, and bribed the turnkey to steal it for him.”

“I had no idea there could be any competition for such an article,” I observed.

“Ah! sir,” said he, with a deep sigh, “you don’t know the value of these interesting relics. I have been for upwards of thirty years a collector of them, and I have now as pretty a museum of Criminal Curiosities as you could desire to see.”

“It seems you have been indefatigable in your pursuit,” said I.

“Yes,” he replied, “when a man devotes himself to a great object, he must go to it heart and soul. I have spared neither time nor money in my pursuit; and since I became a collector, I have attended the execution of every noted malefactor throughout the kingdom.”

Perceiving that my attention was drawn to a common rope, which served as a bell-pull, he said—

“I see you are remarking my bell-cord—that is the identical rope, sir, which hanged Bellingham, who shot Mr. Perceval in the House of Commons. I offered any sum for the one in which Thistlewood ended his life to match it—but I was unfortunately disappointed; and the laws have now become so disgracefully lenient, that I fear I shall never have an opportunity of procuring a respectable companion rope for the other side of my mantel-piece. And ‘tis all owing to the rascally Whigs, sir—they have swept away all our good old English customs, and deprived us of our national recreations. I remember, sir, when Monday was called ‘hanging day’ at the Old Bailey; on that morning a man might he certain of seeing three or four criminals swung off before his breakfast. ‘Tis a curious study, sir, that of hanging—I have seen a great many people suffer in my time: some go off as quiet as lambs, while others die very reluctantly. I have remarked, sir, that ‘tis very difficult to hang a Jew pedlar, or a hackney-coachman—there’s something obstinate in their nature that won’t let them die like other men. But, as I said before, the Whigs and reformers have knocked up the hanging profession; and if it was not for the suicides, which, I am happy to say, are as abundant as ever, I don’t know what we should do.”

After my friend’s indignation against the anti-hanging principles of Reform had subsided a little, he invited me to examine his curiosities, which he had arranged in an adjoining room.

“I have not,” said he, as we were proceeding thither, “confined my collection to objects connected with capital offenders only; it comprehends relics of every grade of crime, from murder to petty larceny. In that respect I am liberal, sir.”

We had now reached the door of the apartment, when my conductor, seizing my arm suddenly, pointed to the door-mat upon which I had just set my foot, and said, “Observe that mat, sir; it is composed of oakum picked by the fair fingers of the late Lady Barrymore, while confined in the Penitentiary.”

I cast a glance at this humble memorial of her late ladyship’s industry, and passed into the museum. In doing so, I happened to stumble over a stable-bucket, which my friend affirmed was the one from which Thurtell watered his horse on his way to Probert’s cottage. Opening a drawer, he produced a pair of dirty-looking slippers, the authentic property of the celebrated Ikey Solomons; and along with them a pair of cotton hose, which he assured me he had mangled with his own hands in Sarah Gale’s mangle. In another drawer he directed my attention to a short clay pipe, once in the possession of Burke; and a tobacco-stopper belonging to Hare, the notorious murderer. He had also preserved with great care Corder’s advertisement for a wife, written in his own hand, as it appeared in the weekly papers, and a small fragment of a tile from the Red Barn, where Maria Martin was murdered by the same Corder. He also possessed the fork belonging to the knife with which some German, whose name I forget, cut his wife’s and children’s throats; and a pewter half-quartern measure, used at the Black Lion, in Wych-street, by Sixteen-string Jack.

There were, likewise, in the collection several interesting relics of humorous felony; such as the snuff-box of the Cock-lane ghost—the stone thrown by Collins at William the Fourth’s head—a copy of Sir Francis Burden’s speech, for which he was committed to the Tower—an odd black silk glove, worn by Mr. Cotton, the late ordinary of Newgate—Barrington’s silver tooth-pick—and a stay-lace of Miss Julia Newman.

These were but a small portion of the contents of the museum; but I had seen enough to make me sick of the exhibition, and I withdrew with the firm resolution never again, during my life, to enter the house of a Criminal Curiosity Hunter.

X.

ECCENTRICITIES OF THE MINOR DRAMA.

We had intended to have arranged, for the use of future syncretics, a system of coincidences, compiled from the plots of those magnificent soul-stirring extravaganzas produced and acted at the modern temples of the drama—the chaste Victoria—the didactic Sadler’s Wells—and the tramontane Pavilion: but we have found the subject too vast for comprehension, and must content ourselves with noting some of the more exorbitant and refined instances of genius and hallucination displayed in those mighty works. Among these the following are pre-eminent:—

It is a remarkable thing that mothers are always buried on the tops of inaccessible mountains, and that, when it occurs to their afflicted daughters to go and pray at their tombs, they generally choose a particularly inclement night as best adapted for that purpose. It is convenient, too, if any murder took place exactly on the spot, exactly twenty years before, because in that case it is something agreeable to reflect upon and allude to.

It is remarkable that people never lie down but to dream, and that they always dream quite to the purpose, and immediately on having done dreaming, they wake and act upon it.

It is remarkable that young men never know definitely whose sons they are, and generally turn out to belong to the wrong father, and find that they have been falling in love with their sisters, and all that sort of thing.

N.B. Wanted, a new catastrophe for these incidents, as suicide is going out of fashion.

It is remarkable that whenever people are in a particular hurry to be off, they make a point of singing a song to put themselves in spirits, and as an effectual method of concealing their presence from their enemies, who are always close at hand with knives.

It is remarkable that things always go wrong until the last scene, and then there is such hurry and bustle to get them right again, that no one would ever believe it could be done in the time; only they know it must be,