bygone bugbears which had lain
quietly in their graves for centuries, were raised again to haunt the ignorant
and credulous; when all this was done, as it were, in the dark, and secret
invitations to join the Great Protestant Association in defence of religion,
life, and liberty, were dropped in the public ways, thrust under the
house-doors, tossed in at windows, and pressed into the hands of those who trod
the streets by night; when they glared from every wall, and shone on every post
and pillar, so that stocks and stones appeared infected with the common fear,
urging all men to join together blindfold in resistance of they knew not what,
they knew not why; - then the mania spread indeed, and the body, still
increasing every day, grew forty thousand strong.
    So said, at least, in this month of March, 1780, Lord George Gordon, the
Association's president. Whether it was the fact or otherwise, few men knew or
cared to ascertain. It had never made any public demonstration; had scarcely
ever been heard of, save through him; had never been seen; and was supposed by
many to be the mere creature of his disordered brain. He was accustomed to talk
largely about numbers of men - stimulated, as it was inferred, by certain
successful disturbances, arising out of the same subject, which had occurred in
Scotland in the previous year; was looked upon as a cracked-brained member of
the lower house, who attacked all parties and sided with none, and was very
little regarded. It was known that there was discontent abroad - there always
is; he had been accustomed to address the people by placard, speech, and
pamphlet, upon other questions; nothing had come, in England, of his past
exertions, and nothing was apprehended from his present. Just as he has come
upon the reader, he had come, from time to time, upon the public, and been
forgotten in a day; as suddenly as he appears in these pages, after a blank of
five long years, did he and his proceedings begin to force themselves, about
this period, upon the notice of thousands of people, who had mingled in active
life during the whole interval, and who, without being deaf or blind to passing
events, had scarcely ever thought of him before.
    »My lord,« said Gashford in his ear, as he drew the curtains of his bed
betimes; »my lord!«
    »Yes - who's that? What is it?«
    »The clock has struck