from another. These factors in his favor he did not know,
could not know, could hardly be expected even to guess.

[Sidenote: 1745--How London felt]

That the news of the rising produced very varied emotions in London we
may learn from the letters of Horace Walpole. In one of September 6th
to Sir Horace Mann, mixed with much important information concerning
"My Lady O" and the Walpole promise of marriage "to young {219}
Churchill," comes news of the Pretender's march past General Cope, and
very gloomy forebodings for the result. Another letter, which talks of
the Pretender as "the Boy," and of King George "as the _person_ most
concerned," presents the Hanoverian Elector as making very little of
the invasion, answering all the alarms of his ministers by "Pho, don't
talk to me of that stuff." Walpole's spirits has risen within the
week, for he is much amused by the story that "every now and then a
Scotchman comes and pulls the Boy by the sleeve, 'Preence, here is
another mon taken,' then, with all the dignity in the world, the Boy
hopes nobody was killed in the action."

London at large vacillated very much as Horace Walpole vacillated.
While on the one side Jacobites began to come out of the corners in
which they had long lain concealed, and to air their opinions in the
free sunlight, rejoicing over the coming downfall of the House of
Hanover, authority, on the other hand, busied itself in ordering all
known Papists to leave the capital, in calling out the Train Bands, in
frequently and foolishly shutting the gates of Temple Bar, and, which
was better and wiser, in making use of Mr. Henry Fielding to write
stinging satires upon the Pretender and his party, and hint at the
sufferings which were likely to fall upon London when the Highlanders
imported their national complaint into the capital. A statesman is
reported to have said that this disagreeable jest about the itch was
worth two regiments of horse to the cause of the Government.

Yet, if London was excited, there was a tranquil London as well. Mr.
George Augustus Sala, in that brilliant novel of his, "The Adventures
of Captain Dangerous," draws a vivid picture of this London with the
true artist touch. "Although from day to day we people in London knew
not whether before the sunset the dreaded pibrochs of the Highland
clans might not be heard at Charing Cross--although, for aught men
knew, another month, nay, another week, might see King George the
Second