"Italy, my Italy! Queen Mary's saying serves for me-- (When fortune's malice Lost her--Calais)-- Open my heart and you will see Graved inside of it, 'Italy.'"
[152] The same conceit, humorously applied, occurs in Calverley--
"And the lean and hungry raven, As he picks my bones, will start To observe 'M.N.' engraven Neatly on my blighted heart."
[154] Perceval was Prime Minister from 1809 to 1812, in the time of the Regency and the Peninsular War.
[155] The "Dictionary of National Biography" gives the following account of this event: "There was a certain bankrupt named John Bellingham, a man of disordered brain, who had a grievance against the Government originating in the refusal of the English Ambassador at St. Petersburg to interfere with the regular process of Russian law under which he had been arrested. He had applied to Perceval for redress, and the inevitable refusal inflamed his crazy resentment. On Monday, May 11 (1812), the House of Commons went into Committee on the orders in Council, and began to examine witnesses. Brougham complained of Perceval's absence, and he was sent for. As he passed through the lobby to reach the house, Bellingham placed a pistol to his breast and fired. Perceval was dead before a doctor could be found.... Bellingham was tried at the Old Bailey on May 15, and the plea of insanity being set aside by the court, he was hanged on May 18."
"Mount and follow! stout and cripple! Horse and hattock, 'but and ben;'[157] Horses for the Pixie people, Hattock for the Brownie men."
People may talk if they please about the march of agriculture, and they may boast that by the discoveries of science a man will soon be able to carry into a large field enough manure for its soil in his coat-pocket, but there has been the ready answer, "Yes, and bring away the produce in his fob." I am half inclined to agree with an old parishioner of mine, who used often to say, "It was an unlucky time for England when the phrase 'gentleman farmer' came up, and folks began to try their new-fangled plans--such as clover for horses and turnips for sheep." "Rents," he declared, "were never lower than when a tenant would pare and burn,[158] and take their crops out of every field, so as to carry off the land as much as he brought on it"--a theory on which, being a renter himself, he had thriven, and put by money for full fifty years. Equally original, by the way, were the devices cherished by my aged friend for the repair of roads. When Macadam had driven his first turnpike through the West, a public dinner was given in honour of the event; and being presented with a free ticket, and well coaxed into the bargain, Old Trevarten made his appearance as a guest. But it was observed that, amid all the jingling of glasses and cheering of toasts, he sat motionless and mute, if not actually sulky. At length the engineer, somewhat piqued at his silence, said, during a pause, "Why, sir, I am afraid that I have not had the honour of gaining your approval in this undertaking of mine."