 am sorry to say, for me in return, or for anybody but the
cook; to whom he was attached - but only, I fear, as a Policeman might have
been. Once, I met him unexpectedly, about half-a-mile from my house, walking
down the middle of a public street, attended by a pretty large crowd, and
spontaneously exhibiting the whole of his accomplishments. His gravity under
those trying circumstances, I can never forget, nor the extraordinary gallantry
with which, refusing to be brought home, he defended himself behind a pump,
until overpowered by numbers. It may have been that he was too bright a genius
to live long, or it may have been that he took some pernicious substance into
his bill, and thence into his maw - which is not improbable, seeing that he
new-pointed the greater part of the garden-wall by digging out the mortar, broke
countless squares of glass by scraping away the putty all round the frames, and
tore up and swallowed, in splinters, the greater part of a wooden staircase of
six steps and a landing - but after some three years he too was taken ill, and
died before the kitchen fire. He kept his eye to the last upon the meat as it
roasted, and suddenly turned over on his back with a sepulchral cry of »Cuckoo!«
Since then I have been ravenless.
    No account of the Gordon Riots having been to my knowledge introduced into
any Work of Fiction, and the subject presenting very extraordinary and
remarkable features, I was led to project this Tale.
    It is unnecessary to say, that those shameful tumults, while they reflect
indelible disgrace upon the time in which they occurred, and all who had act or
part in them, teach a good lesson. That what we falsely call a religious cry is
easily raised by men who have no religion, and who in their daily practice set
at nought the commonest principles of right and wrong; that it is begotten of
intolerance and persecution; that it is senseless, besotted, inveterate and
unmerciful; all History teaches us. Bat perhaps we do not know it in our hearts
too well, to profit by even so humble an example as the No Popery riots of
Seventeen Hundred and Eighty.
    However imperfectly those disturbances are set forth in the following pages,
they are impartially painted by one who has no sympathy with the Romish Church,
though he acknowledges as most men do, some esteemed friends among the followers
of its creed.
    In the description of the principal outrages, reference has been had to the
best authorities of that time
