nd in
applications for their own V.C.s while their comrades remain in modest
expectation of them.

I am inclined to think, however, from the following advertisement, that
some author has been recently piling up the virtues of his hero too
strongly for the very delicate stomachs of the penny public, who, it is
evident, resent superlatives of all kinds, and are commonplace and
conventional to the marrow of their bones: 'T.B. TIMMINS is informed
that he cannot be promised another story like "Mandragora," since, in
deciding the contents of our journal, the tastes of readers have to be
considered whose interest cannot be aroused by the impossible deeds of
impossible creatures.' Alas! I wish from my heart I knew what 'deeds' or
'creatures' _do_ arouse the interest of this (to me) inexplicable
public; for though I have before me the stories they obviously take
delight in, why they do so I cannot tell.

At the 'Answers to Correspondents,' indeed, which form a leading feature
in most of these penny journals, one may exclaim, with the colonel in
'Woodstock,' when, after many ghosts, he grapples with Wildrake: 'Thou
at least art palpable.' Here we have the real readers, asking questions
upon matters that concern them, and from these we shall surely get at
the back of their minds. But it is unfortunately not so certain that
these 'Answers to Correspondents' are not themselves fictions, like all
the rest--only invented by the editor instead of the author, and coming
in handy to fill up a vacant page. It is, to my mind, incredible that a
public so every way different from that of the Mechanic's Institute, and
to whom mere information is likely to be anything but attractive, should
be genuinely solicitous to learn that 'Needles were first made in
England in Cheapside, in the reign of Queen Mary, by a negro from
Spain;' or that 'The family name of the Duke of Norfolk is Howard,
although the younger members of it call themselves Talbot.'

Even the remonstrance of 'Our Correspondence Editor' with a gentleman
who wishes to learn 'How to manufacture dynamite' seems to me
artificial; as though the idea of saying a few words in season against
explosive compounds had occurred to him, without any particular
opportunity having really offered itself for the expression of his
views.

There are, however, one or two advertisements decidedly genuine, and
which prove that the readers of penny fiction are not so immersed in
romance but that they