Page:English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the nineteenth century.djvu/335

Minories yelling, hooting, and using abusive language, their numbers and threatening demeanour momentarily increasing. About halfway up the Minories he was met by Mr. Ballantine, the Thames police magistrate, who asked him if he could render him any assistance; but the cool, courageous soldier simply replied that he did not mind what was going on. When his grace had got to about the middle of Fenchurch Street, one of the cowardly ruffians rushed out of the crowd, and seizing the bridle with one hand attempted to dismount the duke with the other, in which he would have succeeded but for the courageous conduct of the groom and a body of city police, who opportunely made their appearance at the time. The mob had now grown as numerous as it was cowardly; but by the exertions of the police, his grace was escorted through it and along Cheapside without sustaining personal injury. In Holborn, however, the rabble, growing bolder, began to throw stones and filth, and the duke, followed by the canaille, rode to the chambers of Sir Charles Wetherell, in Stone Buildings, Lincoln's Inn, where he remained, till a body of police arrived from Bow Street, by whom he was escorted in safety to Apsley House. To make the outrage more disgraceful, if possible, it happened on the anniversary of the crowning victory of Waterloo; the mob, forgetting in their unreasoning wrath the priceless services the great soldier had rendered to the nation, whilst the cowardly rascals who composed it were the very persons who could by no possibility be benefited by the provisions of the bill in which they professed to take so great an interest. On the night of the illumination which followed the passing of the Act, they broke the windows of his grace and other opponents of the measure; and in one of the contemporary HB sketches, Taking an Airing to Hyde Park, the duke is seen looking out of one of his broken window-panes. Before the end of the year he was visited by serious illness, and the angry feelings his opposition to the measure had provoked, and which had been gradually subsiding, were suddenly followed by a complete reaction in his favour. HB commemorates this in his sketch of Auld Lang Syne, which shows the happy reconciliation between John Bull and the hero of Waterloo.