ON SOME LATE GREAT VICTORIES.
On the 18th day of April last I went to see a friend in a neighboring Crescent, and on the steps of the next house beheld a group something like that here depicted.A newsboy had stopped in his walk, and was reading aloud the journal which it was his duty to deliver; a pretty orange-girl, with a heap of blazing fruit, rendered more brilliant by one of those great blue papers in which oranges are now artfully wrapped, leant over the railing and listened; and opposite the nympham discentem there was a capering and acute-eared young satirist of a crossing-sweeper, who had left his neighboring professional avocation and chance of profit, in order to listen to the tale of the little newsboy.
That intelligent reader, with his hand following the line as he read it out to his audience, was saying:--"And--now--Tom--coming up smiling--after his fall--dee--delivered a rattling clinker upon the Benicia Boy's--potato-trap--but was met by a--punisher on the nose--which," &c.&c.; or words to that effect.Betty at 52 let me in, while the boy was reading his lecture and, having been some twenty minutes or so in the house and paid my visit, I took leave.
The little lecturer was still at work on the 51 doorstep, and his audience had scarcely changed their position.Having read every word of the battle myself in the morning, I did not stay to listen further; but if the gentleman who expected his paper at the usual hour that day experienced delay and a little disappointment I shall not be surprised.
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 Icertainly 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 than yield--in case the country should need such men, and you should know them, be pleased to send lists of the misguided persons to the principal police stations, where means may some day be found to utilize their wretched powers, and give their deplorable energies a right direction.Suppose, Tom, that you and your friends are pitted against an immense invader--suppose you are bent on holding the ground, and dying there, if need be--suppose it is life, freedom, honor, home, you are fighting for, and there is a death--dealing sword or rifle in your hand, with which you are going to resist some tremendous enemy who challenges your championship on your native shore? Then, Sir Thomas, resist him to the death, and it is all right: kill him, and heaven bless you.Drive him into the sea, and there destroy, smash, and drown him; and let us sing Laudamus.In these national cases, you see, we override the indisputable first laws of morals.Loving your neighbor is very well, but suppose your neighbor comes over from Calais and Boulogne to rob you of your laws, your liberties, your newspapers, your parliament (all of which SOME dear neighbors of ours have given up in the most self-denying manner): suppose any neighbor were to cross the water and propose this kind of thing to us? Should we not be justified in humbly trying to pitch him into the water? If it were the King of Belgium himself we must do so.I mean that fighting, of course, is wrong;but that there are occasions when, &c.--I suppose I mean that that one-handed fight of Sayers is one of the most spirit-stirring little stories ever told and, with every love and respect for Morality--my spirit says to her, "Do, for goodness' sake, my dear madam, keep your true, and pure, and womanly, and gentle remarks for another day.Have the great kindness to stand a LEETLE aside, and just let us see one or two more rounds between the men.That little man with the one hand powerless on his breast facing yonder giant for hours, and felling him, too, every now and then! It is the little 'Java'
and the 'Constitution' over again."
I think it is a most fortunate event for the brave Heenan, who has acted and written since the battle with a true warrior's courtesy, and with a great deal of good logic too, that the battle was a drawn one.The advantage was all on Mr.Sayers's side.Say a young lad of sixteen insults me in the street, and I try and thrash him, and do it.Well, I have thrashed a young lad.You great, big tyrant, couldn't you hit one of your own size? But say the lad thrashes me?
