In what is now as near the centre of the Map of London as any house can properly be said to be is an old-fashioned dwelling-house on Great-Ormond Street, which is occupied, and densely occupied, by Frederic Denison Maurice’s “Working-Men’s College.”  The house looks, I suppose, very much as it did in 1784, when Great-Ormond Street bordered on the country,—­when Lord Thurlow, the Chancellor of England, lived in this house,—­when some thieves jumped over his garden-wall, forced two bars from the kitchen-window, entered a room adjoining the Lord Chancellor’s study, and stole the Great Seal of England, “inclosed in two bags, one of leather and one of silk.”  London has grown so much since, that anything that is stolen from the Working-Men’s College will not be stolen by thieves entering from the fields.  I may say, in passing, that this theft “threw London into consternation”; there being an impression, that, for want of the Great Seal, all the functions of the Executive Government must be suspended.  The Privy-Council, however, did not share this impression.  They had a new seal made before night; and though the Government of England has often moved very slowly since, it has never confessedly stopped, as some Governments nearer home have done, from that day to this day.

In view of what is done in Lord Thurlow’s old house now, it is worth while to linger a moment on what it was then and what he was.  He was the Keeper of George III.’s conscience, until he caballed against Mr. Pitt, and was unceremoniously turned out by him.  As Lord High-Chancellor, he was guardian-in-chief of all the wards in Chancery; and I suppose, for instance, without looking up the quotation in Boswell, that he was the particular Lord Chancellor to whom Dr. Johnson said he should like to intrust the making of all the matches in England.  Louis Napoleon has just now undertaken to make all the friction-matches in France,—­but Dr. Johnson’s proposal referred to the matrimonial matches, the denouemens of the comedies and tragedies of domestic life.  To us Americans, Thurlow is notable for the strong and uncompromising language which he used against us all through our Revolution, which excessively delighted the King.  As to his faculty for keeping a conscience, it may be said, that, though he never married, he resided in this Great-Ormond Street house with his own mistress and his illegitimate children.  Lord Campbell, who mentions this fact, informs us, that, as early as his own youth, the British Bench had reached such purity that judges were expected to marry their mistresses when they were appointed to the Bench.  He adds, that it is long since any such condition as that was necessary.  In Thurlow’s time this stage of decency had not been attained even by Lord Chancellors.  His humanity may be indicated by his stiff opposition to every reform ever proposed in the English criminal law, or in the social order of the time.  He battled the bills for suppressing