Barnaby Raj de Charles Dickens (1841)

Barnaby Rudge, by Charles Dickens (1841)

These accounts were of a sufficiently alarming nature from the first; but as the night wore on, they

grew so much worse, and involved such a fearful amount of riot and destruction, that in comparison

with these new tidings all the previous disturbances sunk to nothing.

The first intelligence that came, was of the taking of Newgate, and the escape of all the

prisoners, whose track, as they made up Holborn and into the adjacent streets, was proclaimed to

those citizens who were shut up in their houses, by the rattling of their chains, which formed a dismal

concert, and was heard in every direction, as though so many forges were at work. The flames too,

shone so brightly through the vintner's skylights, that the rooms and staircases below were nearly as

light as in broad day; while the distant shouting of the mob seemed to shake the very walls and

ceilings.

At length they were heard approaching the house, and some minutes of terrible anxiety ensued.

They came close up, and stopped before it; but after giving three loud yells, went on. And although

they returned several times that night, creating new alarms each time, they did nothing there; having

their hands full. Shortly after they had gone away for the first time, one of the scouts came running in

with the news that they had stopped before Lord Mansfield's house in Bloomsbury Square.

Soon afterwards there came another, and another, and then the first returned again, and so, by

little and little, their tale was this:-- That the mob gathering round Lord Mansfield's house, had called

on those within to open the door, and receiving no reply (for Lord and Lady Mansfield were at that

moment escaping by the backway), forced an entrance according to their usual custom. That they

then began to demolish the house with great fury, and setting fire to it in several parts, involved in a

common ruin the whole of the costly furniture, the plate and jewels, a beautiful gallery of pictures, the

rarest collection of manuscripts ever possessed by any one private person in the world, and worse

than all, because nothing could replace this loss, the great Law Library.

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