cousin, to take back to school. Madness is in
her apron, and Virgil dog's-eared and defaced is in her ringlets. Doubts
may suggest themselves of the perfect disinterestedness of the other
young gentleman contemplating the fair girl at the piano--doubts
engendered by his worldly allusion to 'tin'; though even that may have
arisen in his modest consciousness of his own inability to support an
establishment--but that he should be 'deucedly inclined to go and cut
that fellow out,' appears to us one of the most natural emotions of the
human breast. The young gentleman with the dishevelled hair and clasped
hands who loves the transcendant beauty with the bouquet, and can't be
happy without her, is to us a withering and desolate spectacle. Who
_could_ be happy without her? . . . The growing youths are not less happily
observed and agreeably depicted than the grown women. The languid little
creature who 'hasn't danced since he was quite a boy,' is perfect; and
the eagerness of the small dancer whom he declines to receive for a
partner at the hands of the glorious old lady of the house (the little
feet quite ready for the first position, the whole heart projected into
the quadrille, and the glance peeping timidly at the desired one out of
a flutter of hope and doubt) is quite delightful to look at. The
intellectual juvenile who awakens the tremendous wrath of a Norma of
private life by considering woman an inferior animal, is lecturing at
the present moment, we understand, on the Concrete in connexion with the
Will. The legs of the young philosopher who considers Shakespeare an
over-rated man, were seen by us dangling over the side of an omnibus
last Tuesday. We have no acquaintance with the scowling young gentleman
who is clear that 'if his Governor don't like the way he goes on in, why
he must have chambers and so much a week;' but if he is not by this time
in Van Diemen's land, he will certainly go to it through Newgate. We
should exceedingly dislike to have personal property in a strong box, to
live in the suburb of Camberwell, and to be in the relation of
bachelor-uncle to that youth. . . . In all his designs, whatever Mr. Leech
desires to do, he does. His drawing seems to us charming; and the
expression indicated, though by the simplest means, is exactly the
natural expression, and is recognised as such immediately. Some forms of
our existing life will never have a better chronicler. His wit is
good-natured, and always the