ormed that he had gone down with Alderman Duke Saddlebank to dine at
one of the great City Companies' halls. I could hardly believe it. 'Ah!
my dear Mr. Harry,' said Lady Sampleman, 'old friends know one another
best, believe that, now. I treated him as if he was as well as ever he
was, gave him his turtle and madeira lunch; and Alderman Saddlebank, who
lunched here--your father used to say, he looks like a robin hopping out
of a larderquite jumped to dine him in the City like old times; and he
will see a great spread of plate!'

She thought my father only moderately unwell, wanting novelty. Captain
Bulsted agreed with me that it would be prudent to go and fetch him. At
the door of the City hall stood Andrew Saddlebank, grown to be simply
a larger edition of Rippenger's head boy, and he imparted to us that
my father was 'on his legs' delivering a speech: It alarmed me. With
Saddlebank's assistance I pushed in.

'A prince! a treacherous lover! an unfatherly man!'

Those were the words I caught: a reproduction of many of my phrases
employed in our arguments on this very subject.

He bade his audience to beware of princes, beware of idle princes; and
letting his florid fancy loose on these eminent persons, they were at
one moment silver lamps, at another poising hawks, and again sprawling
pumpkins; anything except useful citizens. How could they be? They had
the attraction of the lamp, the appetite of the hawk, the occupation
of the pumpkin: nothing was given them to do but to shine, destroy,
and fatten. Their hands were kept empty: a trifle in their heads
would topple them over; they were monuments of the English system of
compromise. Happy for mankind if they were monuments only! Happy for
them! But they had the passions of men. The adulation of the multitude
was raised to inflate them, whose self-respect had not one prop to rest
on, unless it were contempt for the flatterers and prophetic foresight
of their perfidy. They were the monuments of a compromise between the
past and terror of the future; puppets as princes, mannikins as men, the
snares of frail women, stop-gaps of the State, feathered nonentities!

So far (but not in epigram) he marshalled the things he had heard to
his sound of drum and trumpet, like one repeating a lesson off-hand.
Steering on a sudden completely round, he gave his audience an outline
of the changes he would have effected had he but triumphed in his cause;
and now came the lashing of arm