10 NIMROD'S NORTHERN TOUR. 



party would be indicative of bad taste on my part, and I should imagine 

 by no means to be wished for by my readers ; but one circumstance 

 occurred which I cannot persuade myself to pass over. 



The officer of the watch came to report a fire in the neighbourhood, 

 which was at first imagined to be on the property of a gentleman who was 

 one of the guests of the evening, but so far the alarm proved false. It 

 was an incendiary fire, as the term is, on an, unfortunately, uninsured 

 farmer and hay jobber, consuming, as we ascertained next morning, 

 nine large ricks of hay and two of corn, and, it was asserted, causing 

 irredeemable ruin to the owner ! Well might the poet sing — the thought, 

 I believe, is Seneca's — 



" Of Heaven's protection who can he 

 So confident, to utter this 1 

 To-morrow I shall spend in bliss." 



But what protection can human power afford against the cowardly act 

 of the midnight incendiary? The crime was unknown in my young days, 

 and I believe it is not of English growth ; but I have always considered 

 it the worst sign of the times, and one that calls for the severest punish- 

 ment our laws can inflict*. The victim here was an overseer of the poor. 



On the third morning after my arrival at Chatham, I took my depar- 

 ture from it for London, and was told by my brother-in-law that I should 

 find "a character" in the driver of the coach that he had ordered to call 

 at his door for me, to take me to the " little city." *' His name?" in- 



* By the law of the Twelve Tables, the incendiary was first whipped, and then 

 delivered to the flames. Gibbon says " in this example alone our reason is tempted 

 to approve the justice of retaliation." 



