d not be imagined.

Those who have never seen a mob placed in such a situation as to have
cast off all moral restraint whatever, at the same time that it feels
there is no physical power to cope with it, can form no notion of the
mass of terrible passions which lie slumbering under what, in ordinary
cases, have appeared harmless bosoms, but which now run riot, and
overcame every principle of restraint. It is a melancholy fact, but,
nevertheless, a fact, despite its melancholy, that, even in a civilised
country like this, with a generally well-educated population, nothing
but a well-organised physical force keeps down, from the commission of
the most outrageous offences, hundreds and thousands of persons.

We have said that the mob paused at the iron gates of the churchyard,
but it was more a pause of surprise than one of vacillation, because
they saw that those iron gates were closed, which had not been the case
within the memory of the oldest among them.

At the first building of the church, and the enclosure of its graveyard,
two pairs of these massive gates had been presented by some munificent
patron; but, after a time, they hung idly upon their hinges, ornamental
certainly, but useless, while a couple of turnstiles, to keep cattle
from straying within the sacred precincts, did duty instead, and
established, without trouble, the regular thoroughfare, which long habit
had dictated as necessary, through the place of sepulture.

But now those gates were closed, and for once were doing duty. Heaven
only knows how they had been moved upon their rusty and time-worn
hinges. The mob, however, was checked for the moment, and it was clear
that the ecclesiastical authorities were resolved to attempt something
to prevent the desecration of the tombs.

Those gates were sufficiently strong to resist the first vigorous shake
which was given to them by some of the foremost among the crowd, and
then one fellow started the idea that they might be opened from the
inside, and volunteered to clamber over the wall to do so.

Hoisted up upon the shoulders of several, he grasped the top of the
wall, and raised his head above its level, and then something of a
mysterious nature rose up from the inside, and dealt him such a whack
between the eyes, that down he went sprawling among his coadjutors.

Now, nobody had seen how this injury had been inflicted, and the policy
of those in the garrison should have been certainly to keep up the