[1] The word mezzo-tinto is derived from the Italian, meaning half
        painted.

P. T. W.

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RETROSPECTIVE GLEANINGS.

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    [For the following succinct account of the Gunpowder Conspiracy,
    our acknowledgments are due to the proprietors of an elegant and
    interesting Annual, entitled “THE AMULET” for 1828.]

A BRIEF HISTORY OF “THE GUNPOWDER PLOT.”

(Compiled from original and unpublished documents.)

Of all the plots and conspiracies that ever entered into the mind of man, the Gunpowder plot stands pre-eminent in horror and wickedness.

The singular perseverance of the conspirators is shown by the fact, that so early as in Lent of the year 1603, Robert Catesby, who appears to have been the prime mover of the plot, in a conversation with Thomas Wintour and John Wright, first broke with them about a design for delivering England from her bondage, and to replant the Catholic religion.  Wintour expressed himself doubtful whether so grand a scheme could be accomplished, when Catesby informed him that he had projected a plan for that purpose, which was no less than to blow up the Parliament House with gunpowder.

Wintour consented to join in the scheme, and, at the suggestion of Catesby, went over to Flanders to arrange some preliminary affairs there, and to communicate the design to Mr. Fawkes, who was personally known to Catesby.  At Ostend, Wintour was introduced to Mr. Fawkes by Sir Wm. Stanley.  Guy Fawkes was a man of desperate character.  In his person he was tall and athletic, his countenance was manly, and the determined expression of his features was not a little heightened by a profusion of brown hair, and an auburn-coloured beard.  He was descended from a respectable family in Yorkshire, and having soon squandered the property he inherited at the decease of his father, his restless spirit associated itself with the discontented and factious of his age.  Wintour and Fawkes came over to England together, and shortly after met Catesby, Thomas Percy, and John Wright, in a house behind St. Clement’s; where, in a chamber with no other person present, each administered an oath of secresy to the other, and then went into another room to hear mass, and to receive the sacrament.  Percy was then sent to hire a house fit for their purpose, and found one belonging to Mr. Whinniard, Yeoman to the King’s Wardrobe of the Beds, then in the occupation of one Henry Ferrers; of which, after some negociation, he succeeded in obtaining possession, at the rent of twelve pounds per annum, and the key was delivered to Guy Fawkes, who acted as Mr. Percy’s man, and assumed the name of John Johnson.  Their object in hiring this house was to obtain an easy communication with the upper Parliament House, and