either do not reappear, or else come back so
altered as to be unrecognisable. Ancient
observations, giving " transits of Mercury" at
dates when Mercury could not possibly have
crossed the sun's disc, are pressed into their
service by the theorists. It is assumed that the
supposed Mercury was one of the intra-Mercurial
asteroids. Lescarbault, in 1860, "discovered"
a new planet, which he called Vulcan, between
Mercury and the sun; but Lianis, observing at
the same time in Brazil, found the sun's disc
perfectly clear. The whole matter is as yet in
a state of uncertainty; and yet the perturbations
of Mercury are a fact, and are only to be
explained by supposing that we do not yet know
all the members of our solar system.

OLD STORIES RE-TOLD.

THE CATO-STREET CONSPIRACY (1820).

ON the accession of George the Fourth to
the throne, January 29, 1820, Lord Harrowby,
President of the Privy Council, issued invitations
to the cabinet ministers to dine with
him on February 23rd, according to prescribed
custom, at his house, No. 39, Grosvenor-square.
The death and funeral of the old king in
January, had, it may be mentioned, led to the
suspension of cabinet dinners. The following
well-known persons were the guests invited:
the Earl of Liverpool, Lord Chancellor Eldon,
Mr. Vansittart, Earl Bathurst, Lord Castlereagh,
Lord Sidmouth, the Earl of Westmoreland,
Lord Melville, the Duke of Wellington,
Mr. Canning, Mr. Robinson, Mr. Bathurst, Mr.
Wellesley Pole, and the Earl of Mulgrave.

The year 1819 had been a troublous one.
The dissipation and reckless extravagance of
the Regent, the dearness of bread, the oppressive
taxation, the Spafields riots, and, lastly,
the unnecessary brutality of the Lancashire
yeomen and the soldiers at the Peterloo meeting,
had combined to irritate the poorer people
and render them disaffected to the government.
Reform and education had become subjects of
discussion with all enlightened men; the
desperate and the fanatical brooded over
revolution, conspiracy, and violence.

Spies had been at work fomenting and
urging forward plots, and the ministers, for
many weeks, had had inklings of some impending
danger. There had been apprehensions of a
rising the night of the old king's funeral, but
the conspirators, it was ascertained, had then
altered their plans and projected a more cruel
and wholesale massacre, urged on by the
government spies, who had pretended to enlist
themselves in their cause only the better to
drag them to the scaffold.

The day before the cabinet dinner, as Lord
Harrowby was riding in the Park, unattended,
and preparatory to attending a council at Carlton
Palace, a milkman, named Hiden, approached
him at Grosvenor-gate, and handed him a letter
directed to Lord Castlereagh—a letter which,
he said, was of considerable importance to both
their lordships. The man wishing a second
interview, Lord Harrowby met him next morning
by appointment among the young plantations
in the ring at Hyde Park.

Hiden then revealed the plots of a knot of
conspirators who held meetings in a loft over
a stable in Cato-street (now Homer-street),
Edgeware-road, their leader a gentleman named
Thistlewood, who had been formerly in the
Marines, and afterwards a subaltern in a West
India regiment. Their plan was to seize two
pieces of cannon that were in Gray's Inn-lane,
at the stables of the City Light Horse Volunteers,
and six pieces from the Finsbury Artillery
Ground, to take the Bank of England, set fire
to New Furnival's Inn, the Portman-street
barracks, and also buildings in other parts of
London, to destroy the telegraph to Woolwich,
and, establishing a provisional government at
the Mansion House, send emissaries to Dover,
Brighton, Ramsgate, and Margate, to prevent
obnoxious persons escaping.

But the preliminary blow contemplated by
these ferocious assassins was even more
terrible.

Four-and-twenty men, armed with pistols,
sabres, knives, pikes, hand-grenades, and
blunderbusses, were going to proceed to Lord
Harrowby's house when the company was
assembled. Thistlewood was to knock at the
door, and hand a letter to the footman.
Directly the door opened, the band would rush
in and seize the servants, threatening them
with instant death if they resisted or gave
the alarm. The stairs were next to be seized
and guarded by men with fire-arms and
grenades. If any one attempted to escape from
above or below, hand-grenades were to be
dashed in among them. Two men were also
to be placed at the same time at the area, and
also armed with grenades and blunderbusses,
to stop all fugitives with showers of shot and
fire. Two swordsmen (old soldiers), told off
for the higher class of murder, followed by the
rest, were then to rush into the dining-room and
kill every one—the bad for their oppression, the
good for keeping such bad company. Ings, a
pork-butcher, the most savage of the crew, was
going to arm himself with a brace of pistols, a
cutlass, and a specially prepared knife of great
strength, weight, and keenness, and, cutting
off the heads of Lord Castlereagh and Lord
Sidmouth, carry them off (for some undefined
purpose) in two bags bought for the horrible
occasion. Ings's cry, as they tore into Lord
Harrowby's dining-room, was to be:

"Well, my lords, I have got as good men
here as the Manchester yeomanry. Citizens, do
your duty."

These words are significant. The citizens
evidently meant to renew the horrors of the
French Revolution, believing the popular
disaffection to be general; and the allusion to
Peterloo showed how deeply the cruelties of
that day had struck into the hearts of the
poorer classes.

In the mean time, other persons besides