The Demiurgos: the Creator.
113 Mrs Elton, in Jane Austen's novel Emma, is the somewhat meddlesome wife of the village parson. Mr Knightley is a gentleman living at Donwell, in the neighbourhood. The rest of the people named are other neighbours and friends, one of them, Mr Woodhouse, being an old gentleman of valetudinarian habits.
118 Coleridge, as a young man (he was born in 1772), was for a time in the habit of preaching in Unitarian chapels.
122 This is an extract from a letter of Keats to a friend, written in 1818.
124 The Flight to Varennes: by the middle of 1791 the French Revolution had gone so far that the king and queen were practically prisoners in the palace of the Tuileries at Paris. They at last determined to try to escape, and the arrangements for their flight were carried out, in all possible secrecy, by Choiseul, an officer of the French army, and Fersen, a young Swedish count. Carlyle's vivid account tells how the start was made; but the royal party were stopped at Varennes, not far from the frontier, and brought back to Paris.
the Carrousel, or 'tilting-ground,' was an open space in front of the Tuileries.
130 Trial of the Seven Bishops: James II, in 1687, issued a 'declaration of indulgence,' promising to suspend certain laws against Roman Catholics. His command that this declaration should be read in all parish churches was resisted by seven bishops, who were accordingly brought to trial for sedition. The declaration was very unpopular in the country, so that the result of the trial was anxiously awaited.
135 Cimon was one of the Athenian commanders in the Persian war. He died in 449 B.C.
140 The scene of Hawthorne's novel, The House of the Seven Gables, is laid in a small town in New England.
148 Mr Weston was in the plot with the highwayman to rob Dr Barnard.
He had himself tampered with his own pistols (in the stable at
Maidstone) so that they should miss fire. Hence his peevishness with
Denis Duval, for so unexpectedly routing the thief.