This announcement inspired general enthusiasm. The women wept, the men
shook hands with him, and all the boys huzzaed. Popanilla proceeded: --

'Actuated by the most pure, the most patriotic, the most noble, the most
enlightened, and the most useful sentiments, I aspired to ameliorate the
condition of my fellowmen. To this grand object I have sacrificed all
that makes life delightful: I have lost my station in society, my taste
for dancing, my popularity with the men, my favour with the women; and
last, but, oh! not least (excuse this emotion), I have lost a very
particular lock of hair. In one word, my friends, you see before you,
banished, ruined, and unhappy, the victim of a despotic sovereign, a
corrupt aristocracy, and a misguided people.'

No sooner had he ceased speaking than Popanilla really imagined that he
had only escaped the dangers of sedition and the sea to expire by less
hostile, though not less effective, means. To be strangled was not much
better than to be starved: and certainly, with half-a-dozen highly
respectable females clinging round his neck, he was not reminded for the
first time in his life what a domestic bowstring is an affectionate
woman. In an agony of suffocation he thought very little of his arms,
although the admiration of the men had already, in his imagination,
separated these useful members from his miserable body and had it not
been for some justifiable kicking and plunging, the veneration of the
ingenuous and surrounding youth, which manifested itself by their active
exertions to divide his singular garment into relics of a martyr of
liberty, would soon have effectually prevented the ill-starred Popanilla
from being again mistaken for a Nereid. Order was at length restored,
and a committee of eight appointed to regulate the visits of the
increasing mob.