Lavengro by George Borrow (read me a book txt) 📕

best known of them, was a brave soldier and had served with distinction as an officer in the French service; he was one of the excellent swordsmen of Europe; had fought several duels in France, where it is no child’s play to fight a duel; but had never unsheathed his sword for single combat, but in defence of the feeble and insulted⁠—he was kind and openhearted, but of too great simplicity; he had once ten thousand pounds left him, all of which he lent to a friend, who disappeared and never returned him a penny. Ings was an uneducated man, of very low stature, but amazing strength and resolution; he was a kind husband and father, and though a humble butcher, the name he bore was one of the royal names of the heathen Anglo-Saxons. These two men, along with five others, were executed, and their heads hacked off, for levying war against George the Fourth; the whole seven dying in a manner which extorted cheers from the populace, the most of them uttering philosophical or patriotic sayings. Thistlewood, who was, perhaps, the most calm and collected of all, just before he was turned off, said, “We are now going to discover the great secret.” Ings, the moment before he was choked, was singing “Scots wha hae wi’ Wallace bled.” Now there was no humbug about those men, nor about many more of the same time and of the same principles. They might be deluded about Republicanism, as Algernon Sidney was, and as Brutus was, but they were as honest and brave as either Brutus or Sidney, and as willing to die for their principles. But the Radicals who succeeded them were beings of a very different description; they jobbed and traded in Republicanism, and either parted with it, or at the present day are eager to part with it, for a consideration. In order to get the Whigs into power, and themselves places, they brought the country by their inflammatory language to the verge of a revolution, and were the cause that many perished on the scaffold; by their incendiary harangues and newspaper articles they caused the Bristol conflagration, for which six poor creatures were executed; they encouraged the mob to pillage, pull down and burn, and then rushing into garrets looked on. Thistlewood tells the mob the Tower is a second Bastile; let it be pulled down. A mob tries to pull down the Tower; but Thistlewood is at the head of that mob; he is not peeping from a garret on Tower Hill like Gulliver at Lisbon. Thistlewood and Ings say to twenty ragged individuals, Liverpool and Castlereagh are two satellites of despotism; it would be highly desirable to put them out of the way. And a certain number of ragged individuals are surprised in a stable in Cato Street, making preparations to put Castlereagh and Liverpool out of the way, and are fired upon with muskets by Grenadiers, and are hacked at with cutlasses by Bow Street runners; but the twain who encouraged those ragged individuals to meet in Cato Street are not far off, they are not on the other side of the river, in the Borough, for example, in some garret or obscure cellar. The very first to confront the Guards and runners are Thistlewood and Ings; Thistlewood whips his long thin rapier through Smithers’ lungs, and Ings makes a dash at Fitzclarence with his butcher’s knife. Oh, there was something in those fellows! honesty and courage; but can as much be said for the inciters of the troubles of ’32? No; they egged on poor ignorant mechanics and rustics, and got them hanged for pulling down and burning, whilst the highest pitch to which their own daring ever mounted was to mob Wellington as he passed in the streets.

Now, these people were humbugs, which Thistlewood and Ings were not. They raved and foamed against kings, queens, Wellington, the aristocracy, and whatnot, till they had got the Whigs into power, with whom they were in secret alliance, and with whom they afterwards openly joined in a system of robbery and corruption, more flagitious than the old Tory one, because there was more cant about it; for themselves they got consulships, commissionerships, and in some instances governments; for their sons clerkships in public offices; and there you may see those sons with the never-failing badge of the low scoundrel-puppy, the gilt chain at the waistcoat-pocket; and there you may hear and see them using the languishing tones, and employing the airs and graces which wenches use and employ, who, without being in the family way, wish to make their keepers believe that they are in the family way. Assuredly great is the cleverness of your Radicals of ’32, in providing for themselves and their families. Yet, clever as they are, there is one thing they cannot do⁠—they get governments for themselves, commissionerships for their brothers, clerkships for their sons, but there is one thing beyond their craft⁠—they cannot get husbands for their daughters, who, too ugly for marriage, and with their heads filled with the nonsense they have imbibed from gentility-novels, go over from Socinus to the Pope, becoming sisters in fusty convents, or having heard a few sermons in Mr. Platitude’s “chapelle,” seek for admission at the establishment of mother S⁠⸺, who, after employing them for a time in various menial offices, and making them pluck off their eyebrows, hair by hair, generally dismisses them on the plea of sluttishness; whereupon they return to their papas to eat the bread of the country, with the comfortable prospect of eating it still in the shape of a pension after their sires are dead. Papa (ex uno disce omnes) living as quietly as he can; not exactly enviably, it is true, being now and then seen to cast an uneasy and furtive glance behind, even as an animal is wont, who has lost by some mischance a very sightly appendage; as quietly however