re, nevertheless, recruits from all
classes, and in the excitement and peril of the hour odd men rubbed
shoulders. Lord Shaftesbury, for instance, was on duty in Mount Street,
Grosvenor Square, with a sallow young foreigner for companion, who was
afterwards to create a more serious disturbance on his own account, and
to spring to power as Napoleon III. Thomas Carlyle preferred to play the
part of the untrammelled man in the street, and sallied forth in search
of food for reflection. He wanted to see the 'revolution' for himself,
and strode towards Hyde Park, determined, he tells us, to walk himself
into a glow of heat in spite of the 'venomous cold wind' which called
forth his anathemas. The Chelsea moralist found London, westward at
least, safe and quiet, in spite of 'empty rumours and a hundred and
fifty thousand oaths of special constables.' He noticed as he passed
Apsley House that even the Duke had taken the affair seriously, in his
private as well as his public capacity, for all the iron blinds were
down. The Green Park was closed. Mounted Guardsmen stood ready on
Constitution Hill. The fashionable carriage had vanished from
Piccadilly. Business everywhere was at a standstill, for London knew not
what that day might bring forth. Presently the rain began to fall, and
then came down in drenching showers. In spite of their patriotic
fervour, the special constables grew both damp and depressed. Suddenly a
rumour ran along the streets that the great demonstration at Kennington
Common had ended in smoke, and by noon the crowd was streaming over
Westminster Bridge and along Whitehall, bearing the tidings that the
march to the House of Commons had been abandoned. Feargus O'Connor had,
in fact, taken fright, and presently the petition rattled ingloriously
to Westminster in the safe but modest keeping of a hackney cab. The
shower swept the angry and noisy rabble homewards, or into neighbouring
public-houses, and ridicule--as the evening filled the town with
complacent special constables and their admiring wives and
sweethearts--did even more than the rain to quench the Chartist
agitation. It had been boldly announced that one hundred and fifty
thousand people would meet at Kennington. Less than a third of that
number assembled, and a considerable part of the crowd had evidently
been attracted by curiosity. Afterwards, when the monster petition with
its signatures was examined, it was found to fall short of the boasted
'five