Christmas creep may have a timeless and unfading ability to irritate us in part because social-media imagery so deftly amplifies our rage over small annoyances.

But there was one scene that his memory held in unfading colors:— Roses and wild honeysuckle climbing over a bank by the road-side.

The Government was foiled; the prisoners were acquitted; Erskine, their advocate, won unfading laurels; and the doctrine of "constructive treason" was forever exploded in England.