ey were mostly in allusion to the Tichborne
claimant, whose release from his dungeon they peremptorily demanded, and
whose cruel fate was taken as a pretext for several sweeping reflections
on the social arrangements of the time and country. These portentous
standards were allowed to sun themselves as freely as if they had been
the manifestoes of the Irish Giant or the Oriental Dwarf at a fair. I
had lately come from Paris, where the police-department _is_ sensitive,
and where revolutionary placards are not observed to adorn the base of
the obelisk in the Place de la Concorde. I was, therefore, the more
struck on both of the occasions I speak of with the admirable English
practice of letting people alone--with the good sense and the good humor
and even the good promise of it. It was this that I found impressive as
I watched the "manifestation" of Mr. Odger's underfed partisans--the
fact that the mighty mob could march along and do its errand, while the
excellent quiet policemen stood by simply to see that the channel was
kept clear and comfortable.

When Easter Monday came it was obvious that every one (save Mr. Odger's
friends--three or four million or so) had gone out of town. There was
hardly a pair of shutters in the West End that was not closed; there was
not a bell that it was any use to pull. The weather was detestable, the
rain incessant, and the fact that all one's friends were away gave one
plenty of leisure to reflect that the country must be the reverse of
enlivening. But all one's friends had gone thither (this is the
unanimity I began by talking about), and to keep down as much as
possible the proportions of that game of hide-and-seek of which, at the
best, so much of London social life consists, it seemed wise to bring
within the limits of the dull season any such excursion as one might
have projected in commemoration of the first days of spring. After due
cogitation I paid a little visit to Canterbury and Dover, taking
Rochester by the way, and it was of this momentous journey that I
proposed, in beginning these remarks, to give an account. But I have
dallied so much by the way that I have come almost to my rope's end
without reaching my first stage. I should have begun, artistically, by
relating that I put myself in the humor for remote adventure by going
down the Thames on a penny steamboat to--the Tower! This was on the
Saturday before Easter and the City was as silent as the grave. The
Tower was a me