Then, slipping a shilling into old Thomas's hand, Mr. Paget mounted his horse and rode away.
"A regular old country bumpkin!" Melville exclaimed. "He looks as if he had come out of the Ark, and taken the pattern of Noah's coat!"
"He is a splendid old fellow," Harry said. "I wish we had more county gentlemen like him. But I am rather sorry I did not offer to go on the box of the carriage. I hope Joyce won't get into any crowd, or come in for stone throwing and uproar."
"Oh, bother it! She will be all right. No one would want to steal her children; there is enough of that article in the world and to spare, without taking other people's."
Harry was nevertheless uneasy.
The unsettled condition of the whole district was becoming daily more serious. The popular cry in Bristol only the year before had been for Sir Charles Wetherall, and no Popery!
The people who went out to meet him when he came to open the assize, had cheered and applauded him, trying to take the horses out of the carriage and drag him into the city in triumph. But now a change had come over the mind of the people, and the Reform Bill was exciting them to frenzy and hatred of every man who opposed it, of whom their once idolized Recorder was one of the most prominent.
As we look back over the half century which lies between our own days and those of the great riots in the ancient city of Bristol, it is strange to mark how the questions, then so furiously contested, are now settled; how the pendulum, then swinging so violently, has subsided into a more regular beat; how even the second Reform Bill, carried by a large majority, is now a thing of the past; how the exclusion of any one from holding office, parliamentary or social, on the ground of religion, is now considered an act of tyrannical, and ill-judged interference, between the conscience of a man, and his duty to God.
These fifty years, full of the great events so strongly marked by the discoveries of science, are full also of lessons, which we do well to ponder. They seem to take the text and preach patience to those who are hot-headed, and eager to press on any reform, or to advocate, with intemperate zeal, any scheme, even though they honestly believe it is for the good of the people.
The wise advice of the Poet Laureate seems worthy to be followed at this very moment, when the kingdom is, from one end to the other, vibrating with the burning questions which shall decide the success, or non-success, of the two great parties which divide the nation: