But Guy Fawkes grows with us from boyhood to youth. He gets flesh and blood with every November; he is no longer the stuffed plaything of a schoolboy or the grotesque excuse for begging vagabonds, but the veritable Guy Fawkes, “gentleman.” We see him, “Thomas Percy’s alleged man,” at the door of the vault, “booted and spurred”; we behold that “very tall and desperate fellow,” lurking in the deep of night, with looks of deadly resolution, pounced upon by that vigilant gentleman of the privy-chamber, Sir Thomas Knevit! We go with Guido, “the new Mutius Scævola, born in England,” before the council, where “he often smiles in scornful manner, not only avowing the fact, but repenting only, with the said Scævola, his failing in the execution thereof.” We think of him “answering quickly to every man’s objection, scoffing at any idle questions which were propounded to him, and jesting with such as he thought had no authority to examine him.” And then we think of the thanksgiving of the great James, who gave praise that, had the intent of the wicked prevailed, he should not have “died ingloriously in an ale-house, a stew, or such vile place,” but with “the best and most honourable company.”[7] Footnote 7: See “His Majesty’s Speech concerning the Gunpowder Plot,” etc., in the _Harleian Miscellany_. Guy Fawkes is, in our baby thoughts, a mysterious vision, one of the shadows of evil advancing on the path of childhood. We grow older, and the substances of evil come close upon us—we see their dark lantern, and snuff the brimstone. [Illustration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration] ELIZABETH AND VICTORIA.