I shoot my arrows
at a mark that is pretty certain to return them to me. And as to perfect
success, I should be like the panic-stricken shopkeepers in my alarm at
it; for I should believe that genii of the air fly above our tree-tops
between us and the incognizable spheres, catching those ambitious shafts
they deem it a promise of fun to play pranks with.

Young Mr. Beauchamp at that period of the panic had not the slightest
feeling for the taxpayer. He was therefore unable to penetrate the
mystery of our roundabout way of enlivening him. He pored over the
journals in perplexity, and talked of his indignation nightly to his
pretty partners at balls, who knew not they were lesser Andromedas of his
dear Andromeda country, but danced and chatted and were gay, and said
they were sure he would defend them. The men he addressed were civil.
They listened to him, sometimes with smiles and sometimes with laughter,
but approvingly, liking the lad's quick spirit. They were accustomed to
the machinery employed to give our land a shudder and to soothe it, and
generally remarked that it meant nothing. His uncle Everard, and his
uncle's friend Stukely Culbrett, expounded the nature of Frenchmen to
him, saying that they were uneasy when not periodically thrashed; it
would be cruel to deny them their crow beforehand; and so the pair of
gentlemen pooh-poohed the affair; agreeing with him, however, that we had
no great reason to be proud of our appearance, and the grounds they
assigned for this were the activity and the prevalence of the ignoble
doctrines of Manchester--a power whose very existence was unknown to Mr.
Beauchamp. He would by no means allow the burden of our national disgrace
to be cast on one part of the nation. We were insulted, and all in a
poultry-flutter, yet no one seemed to feel it but himself! Outside the
Press and Parliament, which must necessarily be the face we show to the
foreigner, absolute indifference reigned. Navy men and red-coats were
willing to join him or anybody in sneers at a clipping and paring miserly
Government, but they were insensible to the insult, the panic, the
startled-poultry show, the shame of our exhibition of ourselves in
Europe. It looked as if the blustering French Guard were to have it all
their own way. And what would they, what could they but, think of us! He
sat down to write them a challenge.

He is not the only Englishman who has been impelled by a youthful
chivalry to do that. He