ey will appear to all in
bristles and fury, like a nest of porcupines.

The old squire, like his father, is a sincere lover and a most hearty
hater. What does he love? Oh, he loves the country--'tis the only
country on the earth that is worth calling a country; and he loves the
constitution. But don't ask him what it is, unless you want to test the
hardness of his walking-stick; it is the constitution, the finest thing
in the world, and all the better for being, like the Athanasian creed, a
mystery. Of what use is it that the mob should understand it? It is our
glorious constitution--that is enough. Are you not contented to feel how
good it is, without going to peer into its very entrails, and perhaps
ruin it, like an ignorant fellow putting his hand into the works of a
clock? Are you not contented to let the sun shine on you? Do you want to
go up and see what it is made of? Well, then, it is the
constitution--the finest thing in the world; and, good as the country
is, it would be good for nothing without it, no more than a hare would
without stuffing, or a lantern without a candle, or the church without
the steeple or the ring of bells. Well, he loves the constitution, as he
ought to do; for has it not done well for him and his forefathers? And
has it not kept the mob in their places, spite of the French Revolution?
And taken care of the National Debt? And has it not taught us all to
"fear God and honor the king;" and given the family estate to him, the
church to his brother Ned, and put Fred and George into the army and
navy? Could there possibly be a better constitution, if the Whigs could
but let it alone with their Reform Bills? And, therefore, as he most
reasonably loves the dear, old, mysterious, and benevolent constitution
to distraction, and places it in the region of his veneration somewhere
in the seventh heaven itself, so he hates every body and thing that
hates it.

He hates Frenchmen because he loves his country, and thinks we are
dreadfully degenerated that we do not nowadays find some cause, as the
wisdom of our ancestors did, to pick a quarrel with them, and give them
a good drubbing. Is not all our glory made up of beating the French and
the Dutch? And what is to become of history, and the army and the fleet,
if we go on this way? He does not stop to consider that the army, at
least, thrives as well with peace as war; that it continues to increase;
that it eats, drinks, and sleeps as well, and dresses