The late Mr Waterton having, some time ago,
expressed his opinion that ravens are gradually becoming extinct in England, I
offered the few following words about my experience of these birds.
The raven in this story is a compound of two great originals, of whom I was,
at different times, the proud possessor. The first was in the bloom of his
youth, when he was discovered in a modest retirement in London, by a friend of
mine, and given to me. He had from the first, as Sir Hugh Evans says of Anne
Page, 'good gifts', which he improved by study and attention in a most exemplary
manner. He slept in a stable--generally on horseback--and so terrified a
Newfoundland dog by his preternatural sagacity, that he has been known, by the
mere superiority of his genius, to walk off unmolested with the dog's dinner,
from before his face. He was rapidly rising in acquirements and virtues, when,
in an evil hour, his stable was newly painted. He observed the workmen closely,
saw that they were careful of the paint, and immediately burned to possess it.
On their going to dinner, he ate up all they had left behind, consisting of a
pound or two of white lead; and this youthful indiscretion terminated in death.
While I was yet inconsolable for his loss, another friend of mine in
Yorkshire discovered an older and more gifted raven at a village public-house,
which he prevailed upon the landlord to part with for a consideration, and sent
up to me. The first act of this Sage, was, to administer to the effects of his
predecessor, by disinterring all the cheese and halfpence he had buried in the
garden--a work of immense labour and research, to which he devoted all the
energies of his mind. When he had achieved this task, he applied himself to the
acquisition of stable language, in which he soon became such an adept, that he
would perch outside my window and drive imaginary horses with great skill, all
day. Perhaps even I never saw him at his best, for his former master sent his
duty with him, 'and if I wished the bird to come out very strong, would I be so
good as to show him a drunken man'--which I never did, having (unfortunately)
none but sober people at hand.
But I could hardly have respected him more, whatever the stimulating
influences of this sight might have been. He had not the least respect, I am
sorry to say, for me in return, or for anybody but the cook; to whom he was
attached--but only, I fear, as a Policeman might have been. Once, I met him
unexpectedly, about half-a-mile from my house, walking down the middle of a
public street, attended by a pretty large crowd, and spontaneously exhibiting
the whole of his accomplishments. His gravity under those trying circumstances,
I can never forget, nor the extraordinary gallantry with which, refusing to be
brought home, he defended himself behind a pump, until overpowered by numbers.
It may have been that he was too bright a genius to live long, or it may have
been that he took some pernicious substance into his bill, and thence into his
maw--which is not improbable, seeing that he new-pointed the greater part of the
garden-wall by digging out the mortar, broke countless squares of glass by
scraping away the putty all round the frames, and tore up and swallowed, in
splinters, the greater part of a wooden staircase of six steps and a
landing--but after some three years he too was taken ill, and died before the
kitchen fire. He kept his eye to the last upon the meat as it roasted, and
suddenly. turned over on his back with a sepulchral cry of 'Cuckoo!' Since then
I have been ravenless.
No account of the Gordon Riots having been to my knowledge introduced into
any Work of Fiction, and the subject presenting very extraordinary and
remarkable features, I was led to project this Tale.
It is unnecessary to say, that those shameful tumults, while they reflect
indelible disgrace upon the time in which they occurred, and all who had act or
part in them, teach a good lesson. That what we falsely call a religious cry is
easily raised by men who have no religion, and who in their daily practice set
at nought the commonest principles of right and wrong; that it is begotten of
intolerance and persecution; that it is senseless, besotted, inveterate and
unmerciful; all History teaches us. But perhaps we do not know it in our hearts
too well, to profit by even so humble an example as the 'No Popery' riots of
Seventeen Hundred and Eighty.
However imperfectly those disturbances are set forth in the following pages,
they are impartially painted by one who has no sympathy with the Romish Church,
though he acknowledges, as most men do, some esteemed friends among the
followers of its creed.
In the description of the principal outrages, reference has been had to the
best authorities of that time, such as they are; the account given in this Tale,
of all the main features of the Riots, is substantially correct.
Mr Dennis's allusions to the flourishing condition of his trade in those
days, have their foundation in Truth, and not in the Author's fancy. Any file of
old Newspapers, or odd volume of the Annual Register, will prove this with
terrible ease.
Even the case of Mary Jones, dwelt upon with so much pleasure by the same
character, is no effort of invention. The facts were stated, exactly as they are
stated here, in the House of Commons. Whether they afforded as much
entertainment to the merry gentlemen assembled there, as some other most
affecting circumstances of a similar nature mentioned by Sir Samuel Romilly, is
not recorded.
That the case of Mary Jones may speak the more emphatically for itself, I
subjoin it, as related by SIR WILLIAM MEREDITH in a speech in Parliament, 'on
Frequent Executions', made in 1777.
'Under this act,' the Shop-lifting Act, 'one Mary Jones was executed, whose
case I shall just mention; it was at the time when press warrants were issued,
on the alarm about Falkland Islands. The woman's husband was pressed, their
goods seized for some debts of his, and she, with two small children, turned
into the streets a-begging. It is a circumstance not to be forgotten, that she
was very young (under nineteen), and most remarkably handsome. She went to a
linen-draper's shop, took some coarse linen off the counter, and slipped it
under her cloak; the shopman saw her, and she laid it down: for this she was
hanged. Her defence was (I have the trial in my pocket), "that she had lived in
credit, and wanted for nothing, till a press-gang came and stole her husband
from her; but since then, she had no bed to lie on; nothing to give her children
to eat; and they were almost naked; and perhaps she might have done something
wrong, for she hardly knew what she did." The parish officers testified the
truth of this story; but it seems, there had been a good deal of shop-lifting
about Ludgate; an example was thought necessary; and this woman was hanged for
the comfort and satisfaction of shopkeepers in Ludgate Street. When brought to
receive sentence, she behaved in such a frantic manner, as proved her mind to he
in a distracted and desponding state; and the child was sucking at her breast
when she set out for Tyburn.'
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