At length a gentleman said to my companion, ‘Have you heard the dreadful news? A rascal called Bellingham[155] has shot Mr. Perceval dead in the lobby of the House of Commons!’ It was like a deathblow to me. Poor fellow! It cut me through like a knife. I was indeed a crushed man, clean dissolved, as the psalm says. And from that very hour I have been convinced and persuaded--ay, I do believe it like the Creed--that the very same ball that shot poor Perceval cut away a mitre from my head as clean as a whistle. Yes, I have never swerved from that belief all these years; and up to this day, when I say my prayers, as I do after I am in bed, I always begin with the Confirmation from ‘Defend, etc., this Thy servant.’” FOOTNOTES: [151] Compare Browning’s lines-- “Italy, my Italy! Queen Mary’s saying serves for me-- (When fortune’s malice Lost her--Calais)-- Open my heart and you will see Graved inside of it, ‘Italy.’” [152] The same conceit, humorously applied, occurs in Calverley-- “And the lean and hungry raven, As he picks my bones, will start To observe ‘M.N.’ engraven Neatly on my blighted heart.” [153] See pp. 196, 202. [154] Perceval was Prime Minister from 1809 to 1812, in the time of the Regency and the Peninsular War. [155] The “Dictionary of National Biography” gives the following account of this event: “There was a certain bankrupt named John Bellingham, a man of disordered brain, who had a grievance against the Government originating in the refusal of the English Ambassador at St. Petersburg to interfere with the regular process of Russian law under which he had been arrested. He had applied to Perceval for redress, and the inevitable refusal inflamed his crazy resentment. On Monday, May 11 (1812), the House of Commons went into Committee on the orders in Council, and began to examine witnesses. Brougham complained of Perceval’s absence, and he was sent for. As he passed through the lobby to reach the house, Bellingham placed a pistol to his breast and fired. Perceval was dead before a doctor could be found.... Bellingham was tried at the Old Bailey on May 15, and the plea of insanity being set aside by the court, he was hanged on May 18.” OLD TREVARTEN: A TALE OF THE PIXIES[156] “Mount and follow! stout and cripple! Horse and hattock, ‘but and ben;’[157] Horses for the Pixie people, Hattock for the Brownie men.” R. S. HAWKER.