each of which, as appeared from the ticket attached to it, had been used as an instrument of destruction.  On this side was a razor with which a son had murdered his father; the blade notched, the haft crusted with blood:  on that, a bar of iron, bent, and partly broken, with which a husband had beaten out his wife’s brains.  As it is not, however, our intention to furnish a complete catalogue of these curiosities, we shall merely mention that in front of them lay a large and sharp knife, once the property of the public executioner, and used by him to dissever the limbs of those condemned to death for high-treason; together with an immense two-pronged flesh-fork, likewise employed by the same terrible functionary to plunge the quarters of his victims in the caldrons of boiling tar and oil.  Every gibbet at Tyburn and Hounslow appeared to have been plundered of its charnel spoil to enrich the adjoining cabinet, so well was it stored with skulls and bones, all purporting to be the relics of highwaymen famous in their day.  Halters, each of which had fulfilled its destiny, formed the attraction of the next compartment; while a fourth was occupied by an array of implements of housebreaking almost innumerable, and utterly indescribable.  All these interesting objects were carefully arranged, classed, and, as we have said, labelled by the thief-taker.  From this singular collection Trenchard turned to regard its possessor, who was standing at a little distance from him, still engaged in earnest discourse with his attendant, and, as he contemplated his ruthless countenance, on which duplicity and malignity had set their strongest seals, he could not help calling to mind all he had heard of Jonathan’s perfidiousness to his employers, and deeply regretting that he had placed himself in the power of so unscrupulous a miscreant.

Jonathan Wild, at this time, was on the high-road to the greatness which he subsequently, and not long afterwards, obtained.  He was fast rising to an eminence that no one of his nefarious profession ever reached before him, nor, it is to be hoped, will ever reach again.  He was the Napoleon of knavery, and established an uncontrolled empire over all the practitioners of crime.  This was no light conquest; nor was it a government easily maintained.  Resolution, severity, subtlety, were required for it; and these were qualities which Jonathan possessed in an extraordinary degree.  The danger or difficulty of an exploit never appalled him.  What his head conceived his hand executed.  Professing to stand between the robber and the robbed, he himself plundered both.  He it was who formed the grand design of a robber corporation, of which he should be the sole head and director, with the right of delivering those who concealed their booty, or refused to share it with him, to the gallows.  He divided London into districts; appointed a gang to each district; and a leader to each gang, whom he held responsible to himself.  The country