up-stairs, and to christen and denominate
this house in future as the Sign o' the Jolly
Burglars!"

Need we add—knowing how usefully the
one horse patrol of the highway, and the
remotely dwelling constable, were employed, at
this time—need we add, that these unmitigated
rascals got safely off with their plunder?

THE DOOM OF ENGLISH WILLS.

CATHEDRAL NUMBER FOUR.

AN antiquary cannot approach the city of
Chester from London, even in an express railway
train, without emotions more lively than
that class of observers generally have credit
for. Despite a sensation akin to that of being
fired off in a rocket, and a pardonable fancy
that the hedges are endless bands of green
ribbon in eternal motion, that the houses, and
cottages, and churches, and trees, and villages,
as they dart past the confines of the carriage
window, are huge missiles shot across fields
which are subjected to a rapid dispensation of
distorted perspective; yet these mighty
evidences of the Present do not dull his mind to
the Past. He remembers, with wonder, that
two thousand years ago, it was over this
identical line of country that the legions of
Suetonius lagged along after they had blunted
the scythes of Boadicea, routed her hordes,
and driven her to suicide. Nor, when his
propulsion per steam is ended at a station to
which five iron "lines" converge, does he fail
to recal the curious coincidence that he stands
on the ancient meeting-place of the five great
Mercian roads, cut by those Stephensons and
Brunels of old—Suetonius and Agricola.
Though he is not slow to recognise the utter
modernness of the booking-offices, the refreshment-
rooms, the omnibuses, the mackintoshes,
and of every other object that meets his gaze;
yet the awful retrospection possesses him that
he moves within the precincts of the most
important fortified camp in Britain, and he
almost feels himself a Roman in spite of his
hat.

We will not say that our own fellow of the
Society of Antiquaries, Mr. William Wallace,
retrojected his imagination so far into the
past while crossing the Chester platform with
his carpet-bag, because we are led to believe,
from his report to us, that his views were
immediately directed to the more modern
times of St. Werburgh, who founded the Abbey
of Chester (once the most splendid in England);
seeing that it is in the still-standing gateway
of that obsolete establishment, that the objects
of Mr. Wallace's especial solicitude are now,
and always have been deposited, since Henry
the Eighth erected Chester into a diocese.

His hopes of success in seeking out
certain facts from the testamentary records
of this see, were more slender than they
had been while entering upon his errand
at the other three cathedrals. He had
written to the bishop for that permission to
search which had been by other prelates so
readily granted, but which had been rendered
by the respective Registrars so utterly
nugatory, and had received no answer.
Awkward reminiscences of the state of this
Registry, as disclosed before the last
Parliamentary Committee on the Ecclesiastical
Courts, fell like a dark shadow over his
hopes. Up to the year 1832, the gateway
where the wills are kept was, upon the
Deputy Registrar's own showing, neither
"fire-proof, sufficiently large, nor absolutely
free from plunder." The searching-office was
a part of the gateway; and was as inadequate
as other searching offices. The Chief
Registrar in 1837 was a sinecurist in the
seventieth year of office, and was verging
towards the hundredth of his age; having
received, in his time, not less than three
hundred and fifty thousand pounds of the
public money for doing nothing. The fees
for searches and extracts were heavy, and
nobody was allowed, as in most other Registries,
to see how the wills were kept.

Such were the gloomy prepossessions of
Mr. William Wallace, as he approached the
archway which held the testamentary
treasures of Diocese Number Four. He sought
the searching office in vain, and at length was
fain to address himself to the first passenger
—a burly blacksmith—who, at once, in
answer to his inquiry, pointed to a handsome
new stone building, that stood within the
Abbey Square. Was the blacksmith sure
that that spacious edifice, which looked like
a substantial Bank or a commodious Sessions
House, was the Will Office?—Quite sure.

Mr. William Wallace ascended the steps
doubtingly; and when he found himself in
the wide passage of an evidently well-planned
public office—so contrary was the whole
aspect of the place to his preconceptions of it,
and to his previous experience of other
ecclesiastical Registries—that he would have
retired, had not the words, "Searching
Office," as plain as paint and capitals could
make them, stared him full in the face from a
door on his right. This he boldly opened, and
beheld a handsome apartment, so mounted
with desks, counters, and every appurtenance
for public convenience, as to put him in mind
of the interior of a flourishing assurance
office. "The room," says Mr. William
Wallace, in his report to us, "is furnished with a
counter of ample size, extending round it, on
which you examine the indexes. On calling
for one or two modern wills, the clerks
brought me a substantial, well-bound book,
in which he informed me all modern wills
have been, since the appointment of the
present Registrar, enrolled at length, in a round
text, so distinct and plain, that illiterate
persons might read them; and not engrossed, so
as to become a source of revenue, as at
Doctor's Commons, where the unlearned, in what
is called 'court-hand,' are obliged to call in
the aid of a clerk, and disburse a fee for the