“Dub-a-dub, dub-a-dub—­thus go the drums, Tantara, tantara, the Englishman comes.”

O England! long, long may it be ere the sun of thy glory sink beneath the wave of darkness!  Though gloomy and portentous clouds are now gathering rapidly around thee, still, still may it please the Almighty to disperse them, and to grant thee a futurity longer in duration and still brighter in renown than thy past!  Or if thy doom be at hand, may that doom be a noble one, and worthy of her who has been styled the Old Queen of the waters!  May thou sink, if thou dost sink, amidst blood and flame, with a mighty noise, causing more than one nation to participate in thy downfall!  Of all fates, may it please the Lord to preserve thee from a disgraceful and a slow decay; becoming, ere extinct, a scorn and a mockery for those selfsame foes who now, though they envy and abhor thee, still fear thee, nay, even against their will, honour and respect thee.

Arouse thee, whilst yet there is time, and prepare thee for the combat of life and death!  Cast from thee the foul scurf which now encrusts thy robust limbs, which deadens their force, and makes them heavy and powerless!  Cast from thee thy false philosophers, who would fain decry what, next to the love of God, has hitherto been deemed most sacred, the love of the mother land!  Cast from thee thy false patriots, who, under the. pretext of redressing the wrongs of the poor and weak, seek to promote internal discord, so that thou mayest become only terrible to thyself!  And remove from thee the false prophets, who have seen vanity and divined lies; who have daubed thy wall with untempered mortar, that it may fall; who see visions of peace where there is no peace; who have strengthened the hands of the wicked, and made the heart of the righteous sad.  O, do this, and fear not the result, for either shall thy end be a majestic and an enviable one, or God shall perpetuate thy reign upon the waters, thou old Queen!

The above was part of a broken prayer for my native land, which, after my usual thanksgiving, I breathed to the Almighty ere retiring to rest that Sunday night at Gibraltar.

CHAPTER LII

The Jolly Hosteler—­Aspirants for Glory—­A Portrait—­Hamalos—­
Solomons—­An Expedition—­The Yeoman Soldier—­The Excavations—­The
Pull by the Skirt—­Judah and his Father—­Judah’s Pilgrimage—­The
Bushy Beard—­The False Moors—­Judah and the King’s Son—­Premature
Old Age.

Perhaps it would have been impossible to have chosen a situation more adapted for studying at my ease Gibraltar and its inhabitants, than that which I found myself occupying about ten o’clock on the following morning.  Seated on a small bench just opposite the bar, close by the door, in the passage of the hostelry at which I had taken up my temporary abode, I enjoyed a view of the square of the exchange and all that was going on there, and by merely raising