That intelligent reader, with his hand following the line as he read it out to his audience, was saying:—­“And—­now—­Tom—­coming up smiling—­after his fall—­dee—­delivered a rattling clinker upon the Benicia Boy’s—­potato-trap—­but was met by a—­punisher on the nose—­which,” &c. &c.; or words to that effect.  Betty at 52 let me in, while the boy was reading his lecture and, having been some twenty minutes or so in the house and paid my visit, I took leave.

The little lecturer was still at work on the 51 doorstep, and his audience had scarcely changed their position.  Having read every word of the battle myself in the morning, I did not stay to listen further; but if the gentleman who expected his paper at the usual hour that day experienced delay and a little disappointment I shall not be surprised.

I am not going to expatiate on the battle.  I have read in the correspondent’s letter of a Northern newspaper, that in the midst of the company assembled the reader’s humble servant was present, and in a very polite society, too, of “poets, clergymen, men of letters, and members of both Houses of Parliament.”  If so, I must have walked to the station in my sleep, paid three guineas in a profound fit of mental abstraction, and returned to bed unconscious, for I certainly woke there about the time when history relates that the fight was over.  I do not know whose colors I wore—­the Benician’s, or those of the Irish champion; nor remember where the fight took place, which, indeed, no somnambulist is bound to recollect.  Ought Mr. Sayers to be honored for being brave, or punished for being naughty?  By the shade of Brutus the elder, I don’t know.

In George II.’s time, there was a turbulent navy lieutenant (Handsome Smith he was called—­his picture is at Greenwich now, in brown velvet, and gold and scarlet; his coat handsome, his waistcoat exceedingly handsome; but his face by no means the beauty)—­there was, I say, a turbulent young lieutenant who was broke on a complaint of the French ambassador, for obliging a French ship of war to lower her topsails to his ship at Spithead.  But, by the King’s orders, Tom was next day made Captain Smith.  Well, if I were absolute king, I would send Tom Sayers to the mill for a month, and make him Sir Thomas on coming out of Clerkenwell.  You are a naughty boy, Tom! but then, you know, we ought to love our brethren, though ever so naughty.  We are moralists, and reprimand you; and you are hereby reprimanded accordingly.  But in case England should ever have need of a few score thousand champions, who laugh at danger; who cope with giants; who, stricken to the ground, jump up and gayly rally, and fall, and rise again, and strike, and die rather than yield—­in case the country should need such men, and you should know them, be pleased to send lists of the misguided persons to the principal police stations, where means may some day be found to utilize their wretched powers, and give their deplorable energies a right direction.