On My Observing That That Was A Piece
Of Ignorance With Which Few Landladies Or Landlords Either Were
Taxable, He
Said that however other publicans might overcharge,
undercharging was her foible, and that she had brought herself very
low in
The world by it - that to his certain knowledge she might
have been worth thousands instead of the trifle which she was
possessed of, and that she was particularly notorious for
undercharging the English, a thing never before dreamt of in Wales.
I told him that I was very glad that I had come under the roof of
such a landlady; the old barber, however, said that she was setting
a bad example, that such goings on could not last long, that he
knew how things would end, and finally working himself up into a
regular tiff left me abruptly without wishing me good-night.
I returned to the inn, and called for lights; the lights were
placed upon the table in the old-fashioned parlour, and I was left
to myself. I walked up and down the room some time. At length,
seeing some old books lying in a corner, I laid hold of them,
carried them to the table, sat down and began to inspect them; they
were the three volumes of Scott's "Cavalier" - I had seen this work
when a youth, and thought it a tiresome trashy publication.
Looking over it now when I was grown old I thought so still, but I
now detected in it what from want of knowledge I had not detected
in my early years, what the highest genius, had it been manifested
in every page, could not have compensated for, base fulsome
adulation of the worthless great, and most unprincipled libelling
of the truly noble ones of the earth, because they the sons of
peasants and handycraftsmen, stood up for the rights of outraged
humanity, and proclaimed that it is worth makes the man and not
embroidered clothing. The heartless, unprincipled son of the
tyrant was transformed in that worthless book into a slightly-
dissipated, it is true, but upon the whole brave, generous and
amiable being; and Harrison, the English Regulus, honest, brave,
unflinching Harrison, into a pseudo-fanatic, a mixture of the rogue
and fool. Harrison, probably the man of the most noble and
courageous heart that England ever produced, who when all was lost
scorned to flee, like the second Charles from Worcester, but,
braved infamous judges and the gallows, who when reproached on his
mock trial with complicity in the death of the king, gave the noble
answer that "It was a thing not done in a corner," and when in the
cart on the way to Tyburn, on being asked jeeringly by a lord's
bastard in the crowd, "Where is the good old cause now?" thrice
struck his strong fist on the breast which contained his courageous
heart, exclaiming, "Here, here, here!" Yet for that "Cavalier,"
that trumpery publication, the booksellers of England, on its first
appearance, gave an order to the amount of six thousand pounds.
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