I am not going to expatiate on the battle. I have read in the
correspondent's letter of a Northern newspaper, that in the midst of the
company assembled the reader's humble servant was present, and in a very
polite society, too, of "poets, clergymen, men of letters, and members
of both Houses of Parliament." If so, I must have walked to the station
in my sleep, paid three guineas in a profound fit of mental abstraction,
and returned to bed unconscious, for I certainly woke there about the
time when history relates that the fight was over. I do not know whose
colors I wore--the Benician's, or those of the Irish champion; nor
remember where the fight took place, which, indeed, no somnambulist is
bound to recollect. Ought Mr. Sayers to be honored for being brave, or
punished for being naughty? By the shade of Brutus the elder, I don't
know.

In George II.'s time, there was a turbulent navy lieutenant (Handsome
Smith he was called--his picture is at Greenwich now, in brown velvet,
and gold and scarlet; his coat handsome, his waistcoat exceedingly
handsome; but his face by no means the beauty)--there was, I say, a
turbulent young lieutenant who was broke on a complaint of the French
ambassador, for obliging a French ship of war to lower her topsails to
his ship at Spithead. But, by the King's orders, Tom was next day made
Captain Smith. Well, if I were absolute king, I would send Tom Sayers
to the mill for a month, and make him Sir Thomas on coming out of
Clerkenwell. You are a naughty boy, Tom! but then, you know, we ought
to love our brethren, though ever so naughty. We are moralists, and
reprimand you; and you are hereby reprimanded accordingly. But in case
England should ever have need of a few score thousand champions, who
laugh at danger; who cope with giants; who, stricken to the ground, jump
up and gayly rally, and fall, and rise again, and strike, and die rather