even as, after ten months of money-mongering in smoky London, the citizen
hails the sea-breeze and an immersion in unruly brine, despite the cost,
that breeze and brine may make a man of him, according to the doctor's
prescription: sweet is home, but health is sweeter! Then was there
another curious exhibition of us. Gentlemen, to the exact number of the
Graces, dressed in drab of an ancient cut, made a pilgrimage to the icy
despot, and besought him to give way for Piety's sake. He, courteous,
colossal, and immoveable, waved them homeward. They returned and were
hooted for belying the bellicose by their mission, and interpreting too
well the peaceful. They were the unparalyzed Ministers of the occasion,
but helpless.

And now came war, the purifier and the pestilence.

The cry of the English people for war was pretty general, as far as the
criers went. They put on their Sabbath face concerning the declaration
of war, and told with approval how the Royal hand had trembled in
committing itself to the form of signature to which its action is
limited. If there was money to be paid, there was a bugbear to be slain
for it; and a bugbear is as obnoxious to the repose of commercial
communities as rivals are to kings.

The cry for war was absolutely unanimous, and a supremely national cry,
Everard Romfrey said, for it excluded the cotton-spinners.

He smacked his hands, crowing at the vociferations of disgust of those
negrophiles and sweaters of Christians, whose isolated clamour amid the
popular uproar sounded of gagged mouths.

One of the half-stifled cotton-spinners, a notorious one, a spouter of