There a new scene presented itself, which was very impressive to our young minds.  The street was full of soldiers, and the coachman said to my mother, “I cannot go down.”  A soldier addressed my mother:  “No one, ma’am, can go down this street:”  to whom my mother replied, “I live here, and am going to my own home.”  An officer then gave permission for us, and the coachman with our box, to proceed, and we were soon at our own door.  The coachman, ignorant of the passport which the handkerchief and ribbon had proved, said, on setting the box down, “You see, ma’am, we got on without my taking off my hat:  for who would take off his hat to such a set of fellows?  I would rather have sat there all the day long.”

The assembling of the military in this street was to defend the dwellings of Mr. Kitchener and Mr. Heron, both these gentlemen being Roman Catholics.  Mr. Kitchener (who was the father of Dr. Kitchener, the author of the Cook’s Oracle) was an eminent coal merchant, whose wharf was by the river-side southward, behind Beaufort Buildings, then called Worcester Grounds[1], as the lane leading to it was called Worcester Lane:  but Mr. Kitchener, or his successor Mr. Cox, endeavoured to change it by having “Beaufort Wharf” painted on their wagons.  Thus the name “Worcester Grounds” got lost; but the lane which bore the same name got no advantage by the change, for it received the appropriate title of “Dirty Lane,” used only for carts and horses, foot passengers reaching the wharf by the steps at the bottom of Fountain Court and Beaufort Buildings.

But to return to my narrative.  My parents soon removed us out of this scene of public confusion, to the house of a relative residing at St. Pancras:  and well do I remember the painful interest with which, as soon as it got dark, the whole family of my uncle used to go on the roof of the house and count the number of fires, guessing the place of each.  The alarm was so great, though at a distance, that it was always late before the family retired to rest.  I remained at St. Pancras until the riots had been subdued and peace restored; and now, though very many matters crowd my mind, as report after report then reached us, I will leave them to record only what I personally saw and heard.

Before the vacation was ended, the trials of the prisoners had proceeded, and I went to a friend’s house to see some condemned ones pass to execution.  The house from which I had this painful view has been removed; the site is now the road to Waterloo Bridge.  I believe it was because a lad was to be executed that I was allowed to go.  The mournful procession passed up St. Catherine’s Street, and from the distance I was, I could only see that the lad in height did not reach above the shoulders of the two men between whom he sat, who, with him, were to be executed in Russell Street.  Universal and deep was the sympathy expressed towards the youth from the throng of people, which was considerable.  As it was long before