f his long room, surrounded by his
friends; glasses are filled, and a song is the cry, and a song is sung
well suited to the place; it finds an echo in every heart--fists are
clenched, arms are waved, and the portraits of the mighty fighting men of
yore, Broughton, and Slack, and Ben, which adorn the walls, appear to
smile grim approbation, whilst many a manly voice joins in the bold
chorus:

Here's a health to old honest John Bull,
When he's gone we shan't find such another,
And with hearts and with glasses brim full,
We will drink to old England, his mother.

But the fight! with respect to the fight, what shall I say? Little can
be said about it--it was soon over; some said that the brave from town,
who was reputed the best man of the two, and whose form was a perfect
model of athletic beauty, allowed himself, for lucre vile, to be
vanquished by the massive champion with the flattened nose. One thing is
certain, that the former was suddenly seen to sink to the earth before a
blow of by no means extraordinary power. Time, time! was called; but
there he lay upon the ground apparently senseless, and from thence he did
not lift his head till several seconds after the umpires had declared his
adversary victor.

There were shouts; indeed there's never a lack of shouts to celebrate a
victory, however acquired; but there was also much grinding of teeth,
especially amongst the fighting men from town. 'Tom has sold us,' said
they, 'sold us to the yokels; who would have thought it?' Then there was
fresh grinding of teeth, and scowling brows were turned to the heaven;
but what is this? is it possible, does the heaven scowl too? why, only a
quarter of an hour ago . . . but what may not happen in a quarter of an
hour? For many weeks the weather had been of the most glorious
description, the eventful day, too, had dawned gloriously, and so it had
continued till some two hours after noon; the fight was then over; and
about that time I looked up--what a glorious sky of deep blue, and what a
big fierce sun swimming high above in the midst of that blue; not a
cloud--there had not been one for weeks--not a cloud to be seen, only in
the far west, just on the horizon, something like the extremity of a
black wing; that was only a quarter of an hour ago, and now the whole
northern side of the heaven is occupied by a huge black cloud, and the
sun is only occasionally seen amidst masses of driving vapour; what a
change! b