for his freedom .... As soon as this was
passed, the industrious rabble, who hate idleness,
had procured a dead cat, covered all
over with dirt, blood, and nastiness, in which
pickle she was handed about as an agreeable
diversion, every now and then being tossed
in the face of some gaping booby or other.
By that time this sport had gone a little about,
crying out, "No squibs! no squibs!" another
pageant approached us.....In every interval
between pageant and pageant the mob had still a
new project to put on foot. By this time they
had got a piece of cloth a yard or more square;
this they dipped in the kennel, till they had
made it fit for their purpose, then tossed it
about, it expanding itself in the air, and falling
on the heads of two or three at once. By that
time forty or fifty of the heedless spectators
were made as dirty as so many scavengers, the
fourth pageant came up.... The rabble, having
changed their sport to a new scene of unluckiness,
had got a bullock's horn, which they filled
with kennel water, and poured it down people's
necks and in their pockets, that it run down
their legs and into their shoes."

The same reporter of London life having
described the funeral of Dryden, speaks of the
unseemly riot among hackney-coachmen, who
had been waiting in the press at the end of
Chancery-lane to see that procession pass; and
adds, "No sooner had these dispersed
themselves, but one of the prize-fighting gladiators
from Dorset Garden Theatre, was conducted by
in triumph, with a couple of drums to proclaim
his victory, attended by such a parcel of scarified
ruffians, whose faces seemed to be as full of
cuts as a ploughed field is of furrows. These
were hemmed in with such a cluster of journeymen
shoemakers, weavers, and tailors, that no
pickpocket carrying to be pumped, could have
been honoured with a greater attendance."

A few traces of this spirit no doubt still
lurk in our foul alleys, but the men who cherish
them slink into haunts of their own, and never
hope now to assume the leadership of any
English crowd. We passed on foot through the
dense crowd on both those March days that
brought all our London poor into the street for
a rare holiday and a delightful spectacle that
cost them not a penny to enjoy. Among the
crowd in many places, during many hours, the
only vestige of the old mob we could find was
the occasional small streak through the vast
mass, of a knot of rough youths who thought it
frolicsome to wear false noses and eccentric
hats, hang on to one another and plunge
wherever they could make an inconvenient pressure.
The proportion of such idle fellows was so
small, that the rare appearance of a little knot of
them was an exception calling strong attention to
the rule. And the exception was a weak one,
for beyond the sort of laughter which bespeaks
the vacant mind and the wild steering of erratic
courses—a wildness dangerous, and it would
seem in one or two places the cause of fatal
accident—there was nothing offensive in the
conduct even of these persons. They insulted
nobody, and were left alone by the police as
being held in sufficient check by their involuntary
though limited respect for the good order
that prevailed around them. On both days, and
on the intervening Sunday, when in many
streets the concourse was immense, the crowd
was full of young children. The very poor, who
have no nurses in their pay, must carry their
little ones about with them when they make
holiday. Wherever you looked, there was some
patient father, with a child on his arm, and the
rest of his household by his side, trudging
together; the child in arms received many a
friendly look or gentle playful touch from the
people about it.

Everywhere, when the pressure was serious,
men were to be seen, careful not only of
themselves, but pressing the crowd back from women
and children, or hopeless fellow-victims waiting
their time of release, and exchanging friendly
words, stranger with stranger. We passed,
certainly, through a million of people, and did not
hear a dozen oaths. Of those we heard, there was
not one spoken in anger. One solitary fight we
discovered at the back of a crowd waiting to see
the procession pass; it was a fight without words,
short and sharp; one combatant was floored
in less than a minute, and peace was instantly
restored. We stood at the door of a hospital,
and saw some who were wounded being carried
in, with silent endurance of pain and surrounding
sympathy. We climbed a shilling stand on the
top of a waggon, and found a charming family
party of man and wife and female friend, with
three or four dirty children, all full of kindliness
and happiness and gentle cheerful words.
They had their holiday, and took a few shillings
from the sight-seers who climbed up to them,
and fraternised with them, and joined them in
making the best of everything.

The mob is absorbed in the people, or, what
little may yet remain of it, keeps order in
presence of the people. But what has produced
the change? There was no such mass of kindly
self-disciplined men, women, and children, in the
street when the fun of the illumination in
honour of Queen Caroline was to smash the
dark windows with cries of "Light up!" The
same sort of amusement was sought at the
illumination after the passing of the Reform Bill;
the candle illuminations themselves being in
those days, it must be owned, not calculated to
afford sufficient entertainment to the public.
The concurrent spread of education and cheap
literature, of the power to read and the supply
of wholesome reading that tends to inform and
refine without tasking too heavily (often, no
doubt, without tasking quite enough for their
healthy development) the untrained powers of
attention, have done much to bring about this
change. Instead of living upon half a dozen
thoughts, the million now enjoys the exercise of
mind: is educated by mere variety of topic. It
has learnt to reason, is remote as the poles are
asunder from the spirit in which Jack Cade would
have hanged, with his ink-horn about his neck,
any man who could read and write, and delights