THE SCENE IN THE JEWEL TOWER—THE ARMOURY—THE BOWYER TOWER—LADY JANE GREY'S APARTMENT—THE TROPHIES.

The Queen's loving subjects are divided into two parties—those who have, and those who have not, visited the Tower. The former have their recollections of the visit—the latter have their regrets for its postponement. And let this be a lesson to all procrastinative sight-seers, to see things while they are to be seen; for the Great—or, as it was somewhat oddly designated—the Small Armoury, is no longer among the visibles or the visitables.

Association first conducts us to the Jewel House, the scene of Col. Blood's and of Mr. Swifte's doings. It is curious, that after 170 years the burglary (we were near saying the treason) should be repeated; and that Blood, the crown-stealer, should have been succeeded by Swifte, the crown-keeper. The soldier was favoured by King Charles, the civilian by Queen Victoria—the merry Master pardoned, the august Mistress approved. The stealer was rewarded with a pension, the keeper's recompense is—to come.

Having the benefit of Mr. Swifte's acquaintance, we were indulged with a view of the Jewel-room. It is really a curious contrast! Light, security, and splendour, changed into darkness, desolation, and vacancy—the regal treasury become an empty sepulchre! The tokens and the instruments of the violence used—broken railings, hatchets, and crow-bars—scattered about, as if "the gallant Colonel" had but just absconded! It was a comfort to think that the imperial crown, instead of being battered to bits in his bag, was safe and whole in the Governor's cellar.

We have endeavoured, in our plate, to give light and life to the Jewel-room, now so desolate. Not the light of six Argands, flashing down on diadem and sceptre, and—brightest of all—on the crown of our liege lady's yet brighter brow, irradiating the matchless sapphire, blue as an Italian sky—the mound of diamonds, numerous as its stars—and the priceless ruby of Edward and of Henry, multiplying their thousand prisms:—but, alas! the blink of one or two ten-to-the-pound tallows—sheepish-looking members of the "Kitchiner" tribe—glimmering on them, ghastly as dead men's eyes out of a plundered coffin.

And for the life of the scene? There stood the keeper himself, his wife at his side, partaking the peril; and the warders, whom he had summoned to the rescue. We cannot, however, portray the stifling heat and smoke; the clamour of the soldiers outside the closed portal, which the fires of the Armoury were striving to reach; nor the roar of the still-excluded flames, the clang of the pumps, the hissing of the water-pipes, the gathering feet and voices of the multitude. These are beyond the pencil.

"The pressure from without" increased. Again the clamour rose high, and the furnace heat rose higher. But the keeper abided his time—the crow-bars were raised in a dozen hands awaiting his word. It was given! The first blow since the days of King Charles descended on the iron fence; and Queen Victoria's crown, safely deposited in its case, and sheltered therein from smoke and flame and the common gaze, was removed to the Governor's house. Orbs, diadems, and sceptres—dishes, flagons, and chalices—the services of court and of church, of altar and of banquet, were sent forth in the care of many a sturdy warder, gallant John Lund being their leader. The huge baptismal font, soon to be called into use for the Prince of Wales, was last removed. The Jewel-room was as bare as if Blood the First had left nought behind him for Blood the Second. How must the spectators have gazed on the bright procession, as from window, and roof, and turret, the Armoury blazed out upon it! And how must the Colonel's ghost have wondered to behold his own meditated prey borne through that fiery midnight!

The Jewel-room was now emptied. The agents of its emptification quitted the peril—glad enough were they, we'll be sworn—and all was again solitude and silence.

The Armoury, with its three burning floors, each 345 feet in length—their trophies of past, and provisions of future victory, wrapped in one flame, and flanked at either end by the Chapel and the Crown Jewel House—(Church and State in equal danger!)—deserve our description. That memorable night—so memorable, that, as the keeper's ancestor, Dean Swift, says of O'Rourke's feast, it will be remembered

is described in two words, Fusion and Confusion. They tell their story.

Next in sublimity to the spectacle of the blazing pile, was the scene afterwards presented, when, as the fire lessened, and the smoke cleared off, the whole space within the walls of the enormous Armoury was opened to the straining eye—a sight of awe and wonder. Above was the "sky" of a November morn; and below, covering the immense sweep of the floor, heaps of fused metal, of dimensions scarcely to be credited, with bayonet-points bristling up everywhere, close-set and countless, like long blades of grass. Innumerable as the stand of small-arms had appeared, they now seemed, starting from the crushed mass, still more multitudinous; the space appeared larger; the scene of destruction more gigantic; and we thought of the moralizing fox walking beside the tree which had been thrown down by a tempest:—"This is truly a noble tree; I never thought it so great while standing."

After a day or two there was something ridiculous blended with the terror of the spectacle. The Waterloo guns uninjured—(those guns which had played upon the guards at Waterloo with shot, and which the guards in return had played upon with water in loo of shot)—the enormous pieces of artillery; the mighty anchor; the myriad bayonet-points; the masses of metal, dull or shining; the broken columns; the smouldering rubbish; were strangely contrasted with the forms of gaily-attired ladies, courageously clambering over hot heaps, creeping through apparently unapproachable avenues, and raking among the ashes for relics—gun-flints, green, blue, or white, and picturesque bits of metal.

Outside this building, in various directions, the most terrific visible symptom of the intense burning that had made night hideous, were the streams of molten lead from surrounding roofs; the liquid metal, as it fell upon the flagstones, having splashed up and sprinkled the walls to the height of two or three feet.

Order has at length succeeded to the Confusion, and orders on a large scale have followed the Fusion. The Armoury will be rebuilt and refurnished. The edifice, it is to be hoped, will be more in harmony with the antique character of the surrounding scene, and the new arms not less susceptible of beautiful arrangement for being better adapted to practical uses than the old. Thus far the nation will gain by its misfortune; nor will the loss, even in a pecuniary sense, be equal to a fourth of the first estimate. Every evil has been exaggerated—except the danger. That scarcely admitted of exaggeration.

Our fellow antiquaries, and not less (though for other reasons) our country-cousins everywhere, will join with us, not in lamenting the Loss, but in rejoicing at the Escape. The plan which heads this article, will enable them to understand it. Of the antiquities of the Tower, little or nothing has suffered. All that has stood for centuries, in fact, still stands there. That of which the memory is imperishable has not perished. The buildings which are destroyed, are—the Armoury, which was modern; the upper part of the Bowyer or Clarence Tower, which was also modern. The antique remains are figured on the preceding page. This tower was three stories high. The large square window below, next the ladder, is that of the chamber in which Clarence is supposed to have been murdered. In the apartment immediately over this the fire commenced. Above the belt, in the centre, all was modern. It will be seen by the Plan that this tower is exactly in the centre of the Small Armoury, at the back. The Brick Tower is of considerable antiquity, and the interior of this has been wofully damaged, so that the apartment in which the gentle Lady Jane Grey was confined, wears now a more forlorn and ruinous aspect than the slow hand of Time would have invested it with in additional centuries. Still, even here, what is gone is but the wood-work, the outward coating, the modern accessories or accumulations of the scene; the Destroyer has neither eaten through the old walls, nor undermined the deep and enduring foundations of any portion of the Old Fortress.

As for the Trophies that are gone, they are things which this nation, more perhaps than any other, can afford to surrender without a sigh. If "Britannia needs no bulwarks, no towers along her steep," neither does she need tokens of her triumphant march over the mountain-wave in days gone by. Besides, as schoolboys say of birds'-eggs taken prisoners, or apples captured in orchards, "there's plenty more where these came from." It would have been something, to be sure, to have saved from the Consumer a thing so simple as the old wheel of the "Victory;" because it was no part of the vulgar spoil of war, no commonplace implement of devastation wrested from an enemy, but a precious relic associated with the dying-hour of England's favourite hero, and a symbol, in its very form, of the eternity of his fame. It is gone; but the list of losses is not half so long as fear made it; and among the trophies yet remaining, are numbers as indestructible as the great anchor taken at Camperdown, which, the day after the fire, was seen rearing its giant bulk amidst the multitude of bristling points, and masses of fused metal.

THE BLAZING ARMOURY—THE RAMPARTS—A CONTRAST.