The “best authorities” furnish us, next, with an interior; that of “the Mug, a chocolate house and tavern,” where a new plot is hatched against the crown and dignity of the late respected George the First, by a party of Jacobites.  These consist of a half-dozen of Hanoverian Whigs, who enter, duly decorated with an equal number of hats of every variety of cock and cockade.  The heroine seems to have engaged herself here as waitress, on purpose to meet her persecutor, Sir Gregory, and her late lover, Jack Ketch.  What comes of this rencontre it is impossible to make out, for a general melee ensues, caused by a discovery of the plot; which is by no means a gunpowder plot; for although a file of soldiers present their arms for several minutes full at the conspirators, not a single musket goes off.  Perhaps gunpowder was expensive in the reign of George the First. Jack Ketch ends the act with a dream—­an apropos finale, for we caught several of our neighbours napping.  The scene in which this vision takes place is the crowning result of the painter’s researches amongst the “best authorities;” it being no less than “a garret in Grub-street, in which the great Daniel De Foe composed his romance of Robinson Crusoe!!”

A fishing-party—­whose dulness is relieved by a suicide—­opens the last act:  one of the anglers having finished a comic song—­which from its extreme gravity forms an appropriate dirge to the forthcoming felo-de-se—­goes off with his companion to leave the water clear for Barbara Allen, who enters, takes an affecting leave of her laird lover, and straightway drowns herself. Jack Ketch is now, by a rapid change of scene, discovered in limbo, and condemned to death; why, we were too stupid to make out.  The fatal cart—­very likely modelled after “the best authorities”—­next occupies the stage, drawn by a real horse, and filled with Sir Gregory Gash (who it seems is going to be hanged) and Jack Ketch not as a prisoner, but as an officer of the crown; for we are to suppose that Mr. Barabbas, having retired from the public scaffold to private life, has seceded in favour of Jack Ketch, who is saved from the rope himself, on condition of his using it upon the person of Sir Gregory and every succeeding criminal.  All the characters come on with the cart, and a denouement evidently impends.  The distracted lover demands of somebody to restore his mistress, which Gipsy George is really so polite as to do; for although the bills expressly inform us she has committed “suicide,” and we have actually seen her jump into the river Lea; yet there she is safe and sound!—­carefully preserved in an envelope formed partly by the Gipsy himself, and partly by his cloak.  She, of course, embraces her lover, and leaves Jack Ketch to embrace his profession with what appetite he may; all, in fact, ends happily, and Sir Gregory goes off to be hanged.