How valiantly we met that crew Of infants, men and women too Upon the plain of Peterloo: And gloriously did hack and hew The d——d reforming gang. Our swords were sharp, you may suppose: Some lost their ears—some lost a nose; Our horses trod upon their toes Ere they could run t’ escape our blows: With shouts the welkin rang. =_Andante._= So keen were we to rout these swine, Whole shoals of constables in line We galloped o’er in style so fine, By orders of the SAPIENT NINE— First friends, then foes, laid flat. By Richardson’s best grinding skill Our blades were set with right good will, That we these rogues might bleed or kill, And “give them of Reform their fill!” And what d’ye think of that? And so on the satire ran, in mock-bravura style, through the whole course of _piano_, _sotto voce_, _pianissima-mento_, and _con baldanza_, with foot-notes to strengthen or elucidate the text. And that the writer remained undiscovered and unprosecuted spoke loudly for the re-action which had taken place in men’s minds. CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FIRST. WOUNDED. At the extreme end of Mr. Mabbott’s long double-countered shop was an expansive archway, closed in general by folding doors, through which entrance was afforded to a narrow sitting-room, the length of which was just by so much less than the width of the shop as was required for a passage and staircase. Once a year the open archway revealed a shimmering mass of snowy sugar-work, the towers and turrets of a castle on a rock, or the illuminated windows of a magnificent palace, fit for any princess of fairyland, with pleasure-gardens and lake, or fountain and pond, wherein stately swans floated, and were overlooked by dames and cavaliers created by the confectioner and his satellites. For the fifty other weeks it was simply a snug parlour, comfortably furnished according to the fashion of the time. And it was in this room we left Jabez, whilst good-natured Ben Travis, leaving his more patriotic comrades to “hack and hew” at their pleasure, galloped hither and thither in search of a surgeon to dress the wounded arm.