come!

and so on through a number of stanzas.

{67}

But though there was a light side, out of which the humorists of the
period made a market, the Napoleonic scare was no laughing matter for
the poor people, who had nothing to gain and everything to lose, by
even the possibility of the thing. We, who, in these peaceful times,
are apt to swagger about Britannia ruling the waves, cannot perhaps
realize what it meant to have this great military genius sitting down
with his legions of three hundred thousand opposite our shores, keenly
watching for and calculating our weakest point of defence! What should
we think if, in every cottage home in this district, it was necessary,
on going to bed at night, to be prepared for a sudden alarm and
departure from all that was dear to us in old associations; if our
little children, before retiring to rest at night, took a last look in
fear and trembling to the hills above Royston Heath, where the beacon
was ready to flash out the portentious news to all the country round,
and asked "is it alight?"--if each little one had to be taught as
regularly as, if not more regularly than, saying its prayers, to pack
up its little bundle of clothes in readiness for the dread news that
Boney had indeed come! Yet all this is only what really happened to
our great-grandfathers in that terrible time of 1803!

It may be of interest to glance at the means taken for repelling the
invader should he make his appearance. This was no mere machinery of
conscription, such as under other circumstances might have been
necessary, for a spirit of intense patriotism was suddenly aroused,
fanned into flame by stirring ballads, such as the following, to the
tune of "Hearts of Oak"----

Shall French men rule o'er us? King Edward said No!
And No said King Harry, and Queen Bess she said No!
And No said old England--and No she says still!
They will never rule o'er Us--let them try if they will!

In all parts of the country, where Volunteers and Loyal Associations
had not already been formed, these sprung up with one common purpose so
finely expressed by Wordsworth--

No parleying now! in Britain is one breath,
We all are with you now from shore to shore.
Ye men of Kent, 'tis Victory or death!

Even little boys in the streets, as Cruikshank has told us, formed
regiments, with their drums and colours "presented by their mammas and
sisters," and made gun stocks with polished broom-sticks f