It was the time of the plague at Messina. The English fleet had anchored there, and searched the felucca I was on. That subjected us to a quarantine of twenty-one days upon arriving at Genoa after a long and troublesome crossing. They gave the passengers the choice of undergoing it on board, or in the lazaretto in which they warned us that we would find only the four walls, because they had not yet had time to furnish it.

Abrogators and dispensers against the law of God, but tyrannous importunators and exactors of their own.

England’s response came in the form of the brilliantly choreographed move that concluded with Wayne Rooney’s second goal and the kind of outstanding football that was beyond their opponents.

Our Patent Museum now forms a portion of The Boilers, but, although in them, it is not of them.