"O God, thou hast crushed thine enemies. The sea has swallowed them up; they have fallen into the depths like a stone. Thou hast sent thine anger upon them; it has consumed them like straw. The enemy hath said, I will pursue them, I will fall upon them, I will share their spoils, I will slay them with my sword, and I will be master. But thou hast sent thy breath upon them, and they have been swallowed up as lead in a raging sea. O Lord, what God is like unto thee!"
They sang, and a very tempest of enthusiasm whistled among their bowed heads. A sort of heroic madness raised their commonplace souls quite out of themselves. They fancied that they felt the spirit of the Lord upon them; not the God of pity, who blesses and pardons, raises the fallen, makes the sinner a saint, wipes away tears, heals the wounded, promises peace to the weary, glory to the humble, love to the forsaken, heaven to all such as the earth has wounded and made desperate, but a powerful, jealous, revengeful God, a God who seeks bloody holocausts, and pursues in the children the sins of the father, in the infant at the breast the iniquities of vanished generations.
"The day of glory is at hand!" cried Reuben. "Happy are they who perish in the combat!"
"Amen!" was the universal response.
And with that word they dispersed.
CHAPTER XI.
THE DAY OF DAYS.
A cloudless sun rose upon the 2d of June, 1780. Before six o'clock a large crowd filled Saint George's Fields and the neighborhood. A certain number of the men sought each other and stood in groups as if in obedience to a previous word of command. They talked together in low tones and wore a sombre air of resolution. A great number of humble folk and shop-keepers had come hither at the request of their clergymen, convinced that they were destined to do a pious work in repulsing the religious joke of which their fathers had rid themselves; though from their very bearing it was evident that these worthies were ready to do more barking than biting. A multitude of the curious surrounded them, resolved to see the show out, though it should cost them a cracked pate or two. Occasionally a face betrayed fierce expectation of disorder, a sort of presentiment of what might occur; but the great day still hung heavily on their hands, and the men felt that their hour had not yet come, and that they must leave it to the psalm-singers and idlers to lead the way. About eleven o'clock Lord George Gordon appeared, and was received with acclamation. Mounted upon a table, he delivered some words which were quite lost, but his desperately energetic gestures were seen and were responded to with cries of "Down with popery!" "Death to the papists!"
The leaders passed from place to place endeavoring to enforce order in this vast assemblage of men animated by such contrasting sentiments, but scarcely had they turned their backs ere the confusion was renewed. At last they succeeded in forming four main bodies, which, taking different ways, crossed the Thames upon three bridges,—Westminster, Blackfriars, and London Bridge.