In those meadows are a few stone seats placed at intervals under the trees. On one of these I seated myself, and began to reflect on the situation of my affairs. Though moonless, the sky was clear, and the night was warm and pleasant. The intense solitude of the place contrasted with the recent fiery turmoil of my own thoughts. I felt for a time all the visionary independence of youth: I had left, as it were, all my fetters behind me; but there were my mother, little Lotty, and Amy Lee! How sore, and sad, and bitter, the thoughts of them made my aching heart! The bloody gash on the head of Quirky, and the malevolent smile of Macfarisee, seemed to haunt me amid the darkness, and vague fears came over me.
I thought of how gladly I would work hard, even for a pittance, if well treated; I thought of my own friendlessness, and of all I had endured at the hands of these sanctimonious knaves—these legal parvenus—but my fury had passed away, and I felt it would have been a relief to my soul, could I have wept bitterly.
The low-muttered voices of a number of men approaching now fell upon my ear. I thought immediately of the guard, and seeking a more sequestered place, climbed up a beech tree, amid the thick foliage of which I deemed myself perfectly secure. I had not been perched there three minutes, when, to my terror, I heard voices on all sides of me, and beheld numbers of men coming straight towards the place of my concealment. There was a tingling sensation in my ears, and my breath came thick and fast; while, as if they had sprung from the swampy turf, in an incredibly short space of time, the beech tree was environed by a mob of more than a thousand men, many of whom were armed, as I could perceive swords, pikes, and muskets among them. A torch was now lighted, and its wavering gleam fell redly on their faces—the grim and dirty faces of an excited and unwashed multitude—as, amid cries of "Robert Watt—Robert Watt—hurrah!" they were all turned to one point, where an orator or leader, who was elevated on the shoulders of four men, proceeded to harangue them in a subdued but determined tone of voice.
He was a pale, sallow-visaged and sad-eyed young man, who in no way suggested the idea of a patriot or hero.
My anxiety now increased to agony, when I found myself compelled to act the spy upon a band of these desperate men, who, at that period, styled themselves the "Friends of the People"—a small but desperate section, who were instigated to revolt against all monarchical government, and who had corresponding societies in all parts of Great Britain—men whose avowed object was to reform a very defective parliamentary representation, while, ultimately, they aimed at the seizure of the Castle of Edinburgh, the plunder of the banks and government offices, and the capture, if not the murder, of all the senators of the College of Justice, and other heads of departments, civil, military, and religious.
If discovered by these worthies on my perch in the tree, I had little doubt they would have shot me like a sparrow, and perhaps buried me on the ground where they stood to silence my tongue for ever. I scarcely dared to breathe. I thought of my mother, and imagined her sensations, if I were found there murdered, or if I disappeared for ever, like a bubble on a stream, and, like many other honest persons, was moved to tears, by the prospect of my own untimely demise. Meanwhile the mass below me swayed to and fro; the torches continued to sputter and gleam, and the orator to spout treason, fire and sword against all crowned heads, especially "the old tyrant who dwelt in the castle of Windsor;" liberty, equality, fraternity—the rights of men—oppression, chains and slavery—kings and tyrants, were the staple subjects of his inflammatory discourse, until he mentioned the slave trade and borough reform, in connection with the name of Henry Dundas, the city member, when a yell of hatred broke from the multitude, with cries of,—
"To the lamp-post with him!"
"Up with the barricades!"
"Down with the three estates—kings, lords, and clergy!"
Then this strange band, after giving three cheers for Tom Paine and Robert Watt, passed a unanimous resolution to burn the Tory M.P. in effigy on the next day, the 4th of June, the anniversary of George the Third's birth. They uprooted some hundred yards of paling for staves to arm them with; the torch was extinguished; the orator descended from his perch; in a few minutes they had all disappeared, and the wooded parks became voiceless and silent as before.