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It was impossible to get our boats up the river yesterday, so I spent the day sketching amidst the most picturesque, but horribly smelly, part of the town; much quinine in the evening seemed desirable as a counterblast to possible malaria.

Hamlet, as we shall prove beyond the possibility of cavil, is the hitherto unexplained 'purge' in 'The Return from Parnassus, which 'our fellow Shakspere' administered to Ben Jonson in return for the 'pill' destined for himself in 'The Poetaster. After the publication of 'Hamlet, Jonson wrote his 'Volpone' as a counterblast to this drama.

Gillian tried to shrug away this fanciful depression of the moment. "Well, by way of a counterblast to your dejection of spirit, I propose to send an announcement of your engagement to the Morning Post. You're not meaning to keep it private after we get back to town, are you?" "Oh, no. It was only that I didn't want to be pestered with congratulations while we were down here.

Myriads of zealots, like Peter the Hermit, roused all Europe to frenzy. Fanaticism begat fanaticism, and the Christian West poured upon the Moslem East vast hosts of warriors in those extraordinary expeditions, the Crusades. The Turkish conquest of Islam and its counterblast, the Crusades, were an immense misfortune for the world. They permanently worsened the relations between East and West.

Then on October 6th, 1918, came the note of the German Chancellor, Prince Maximilian of Baden, asking an armistice and a peace conference in essence, an astounding request for time to reconsolidate the German armies and bring up fresh guns and munitions. America might have been fooled into a frightful error if the great war-organizations had not come forward with a roaring counterblast.

It may be regarded generally as a sort of manifesto of the Evangelical party; and specially as a counterblast against the defective theology of what Whitefield called 'England's greatest favourite, "The Whole Duty of Man." The very title of Venn's work indicates its relationship to that once famous book.

"King James I of England issued a counterblast to tobacco, in which he described its use as a 'custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black, stinking fumes thereof nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless." As one contrasts this sentiment with the practice of the present sovereign of England, his breath is almost taken away in his great fall from the sublime to the ridiculous!

Tennyson, as he then was, endeavoured to revive the patriotic spirit of his countrymen by publishing Hands all Round a poem which had the supreme honour of being quoted in the House of Commons by Sir Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett. Forthwith an irreverent parodist some say Mr. Andrew Lang appeared with the following counterblast: The Jingo fever having abated, another malady appeared in the body politic.

Hoadly's position is most fully stated in his Preservative against the Principles and Practice of Nonjurors which he published in 1716 as a counterblast to the papers of Hickes; and they are briefly summarized in the sermon preached before the King on March 31, 1717, on the text "My Kingdom is not of this world," and published by royal command.

He had earned a reputation as a man of violent temper, and the time was not long past when a fraction of the insult Ed Austin had offered him would have provoked a vigorous counterblast.