above gunpowder!

Now the rich and poor are fairly pitted, we shall see who can hang or
burn fastest. It is not always revenge that stimulates these kindlings.
There is a love of exerting mischief. Think of a disrespected clod that
was trod into earth, that was nothing, on a sudden by damned arts
refined into an exterminating angel, devouring the fruits of the earth
and their growers in a mass of fire! What a new existence; what a
temptation above Lucifer's! Would clod be anything but a clod if he
could resist it? Why, here was a spectacle last night for a whole
country,--a bonfire visible to London, alarming her guilty towers, and
shaking the Monument with an ague fit: all done by a little vial of
phosphor in a clown's fob! How he must grin, and shake his empty noddle
in clouds, the Vulcanian epicure! Can we ring the bells backward? Can we
unlearn the arts that pretend to civilize, and then burn the world?
There is a march of Science; but who shall beat the drums for its
retreat? Who shall persuade the boor that phosphor will not ignite?

Seven goodly stacks of hay, with corn-barns proportionable, lie smoking
ashes and chaff, which man and beast would sputter out and reject like
those apples of asphaltes and bitumen. The food for the inhabitants of
earth will quickly disappear. Hot rolls may say, "Fuimus panes, fuit
quartem-loaf, et ingens gloria Apple-pasty-orum." That the good old
munching system may last thy time and mine, good un-incendiary George,
is the devout prayer of thine, to the last crust,

CH. LAMB.