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In case of his defeat, other men would take up the cause, and maintain it until at last England would have to fall back on her old system of courts-martial, and triangles, and free quarters, and Irishmen would find that there was no help for them "in franchises, in votings, in spoutings, in shoutings, and toasts drank with enthusiasm nor in anything in this world, save the extensor and contractor muscles of their right arms, in these and in the goodness of God above."
In the five days that we have been in Corsica we have travelled about so much, talked so much, changed carriages and steeds so often, riding sometimes on mules, sometimes on asses, and sometimes even on men's backs to cross streams, have written so many letters, made notes on so many petitions, given away so many chasubles and altar-cloths, propped up so many tottering church steeples, founded so many asylums, proposed and drunk so many toasts, absorbed so much talk and Talano wine and white cheese, that I have found no time to send an affectionate word to the little family circle around the big table, from which I have been missing for two weeks.
After the cloth was removed, the usual number of regular toasts, prepared by the committee of arrangements, and numerous volunteer sentiments by the members of the company, were drunk with many demonstrations of enthusiasm, and several speeches were made. In response to a complimentary toast, Commodore Stockton made an eloquent address of an hour's length.
William Brokedon, his old friend the painter, conducted him to the dinner of the Royal Geographical Society, where a curious thing happened. Cavour's first essay in public speaking was before an English assembly. After several toasts had been duly honoured, the Secretary of the Society, to his unbounded astonishment, proposed his health.
The usual toasts were given; the health of the Queen was drunk with "loudest cheers," that of the Queen-Dowager with "evident feeling," called forth by the fact that King William's good Queen, who had for long years struggled vainly with mortal disease, was, as everybody knew, drawing near her end.
There are two inconvenient things in this world, a conscience and a tender heart, and Charley Vanderhuyn was plagued with both. While going through with the toasts, his mind was busy with poor Henry Vail suffering in a smallpox hospital.
There was no variety either in the looks or in the performance of the Toasts; I must admit that they were very heavy, awkward, and short of breath, and were as much alike as the trained sea-lions at a circus. However, you felt that, like the sea-lions, they were doing very well to perform at all.
And to all this must be added the damning fact of Te Deums, orations, toasts, and processions of the clergy, and the judges, with all the leaders of the federal, or opposition party, in celebration of the success of the Spaniards in restoring the Inquisition, and recalling the reign of superstition and terror; against which we have been preaching and praying ever since the first settlement of our country.
Then followed toasts to a list of second-rate names, dancing girls and French milliners, who kept place of assignation for the dissolute crew, and maids of honour, who were no maids of honour, but adventuresses in the pay of great men to advance their interest with the king, and riffraff women whose names history hath done well to forget.
There was another banquet at Havre while the ships were awaiting a fair wind, when again high hopes were expressed concerning the results to be achieved by the expedition, and where one of the toasts was proposed by a Chinese, Ah Sam, who had been found on board a captured English frigate, and was, by Bonaparte's orders, being taken by Baudin to Mauritius, whence he was to be shipped to his own country.
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