epped the bounds of decorum
in his speech was said to have _flared up_; he who had paid visits too
repeated to the gin-shop, and got damaged in consequence, had _flared up_.
To put one's self into a passion; to stroll out on a nocturnal frolic, and
alarm a neighbourhood, or to create a disturbance in any shape, was to
_flare up_. A lovers' quarrel was a _flare up_; so was a boxing-match
between two blackguards in the streets; and the preachers of sedition and
revolution recommended the English nation to _flare up_, like the French.
So great a favourite was the word, that people loved to repeat it for its
very sound. They delighted apparently in hearing their own organs
articulate it; and labouring men, when none who could respond to the call
were within hearing, would often startle the aristocratic echoes of the
West by the well-known slang phrase of the East. Even in the dead hours of
the night, the ears of those who watched late, or who could not sleep,
were saluted with the same sound. The drunkard reeling home shewed that he
was still a man and a citizen, by calling "_flare up!_" in the pauses of
his hiccough. Drink had deprived him of the power of arranging all other
ideas; his intellect was sunk to the level of the brute's; but he clung to
humanity by the one last link of the popular cry. While he could
vociferate that sound, he had rights as an Englishman, and would not sleep
in a gutter, like a dog! Onwards he went, disturbing quiet streets and
comfortable people by his whoop, till exhausted nature could support him
no more, and he rolled powerless into the road. When, in due time
afterwards, the policeman stumbled upon him as he lay, that guardian of
the peace turned the full light of his lantern on his face, and exclaimed,
"Here's a poor devil who has been _flaring up_!" Then came the stretcher,
on which the victim of deep potations was carried to the watch-house, and
pitched into a dirty cell, among a score of wretches about as far gone as
himself, who saluted their new comrade by a loud, long shout of _flare
up_!

So universal was this phrase, and so enduring seemed its popularity, that
a speculator, who knew not the evanescence of slang, established a weekly
newspaper under its name. But he was like the man who built his house upon
the sand; his foundation gave way under him, and the phrase and the
newspaper were washed into the mighty sea of the things that were. The
people grew at last weary of the monoton