orrespondents and _comparses_--Arminius von
Thundertentronckh, Adolescens Leo of the _Daily Telegraph_, the
Bottles family of wealthy Dissenters, with cravings for their deceased
wife's sisters, as well as a large number of more or less celebrated
personages of the day, introduced in their proper persons, and by
their proper names--he instructed England on its own weakness, folly,
and vulgarity, on the wisdom and strength of the Germans, on the
importance of _Geist_ and ideas, &c., &c. The author brought
himself in by name as a simple inhabitant of Grub Street, victimised,
bullied, or compassionately looked down upon by everybody; and by this
well-known device took licence for pretty familiar treatment of other
people. When the greater crash of 1870 came, and the intelligent
British mind was more puzzled, yet more _Prusso-mimic_, than
ever, he supplemented these letters, framed or bound them up, as it
were, with a moving account of the death of Arminius before Paris, and
launched the whole as a book.

The letters had been much laughed over; but I do not think the book
was very widely bought--at any rate, its very high price during the
time in which it was out of print shows that no large number was
printed. Perhaps this cold welcome was not altogether so discreditable
to the British public as it would have been, had its sole cause been
the undoubted but unpalatable truths told by the writer. Either, as
some say, because of its thick-hidedness, or, as others, because of
its arrogant self-sufficiency, the British public has never resented
these much. But, in the first place, the thing was a falsetto. Mr
Arnold had plenty of wit but not much humour; and after a time one
feels that Bottles and Leo & Co. may be, as Dousterswivel says, "very
witty and comedy," but that we should not be altogether sorry if they
would _go_. Further, the direct personalities--the worst
instances concerned Lord Elcho, Mr Frederic Harrison, and the late Mr
Sala--struck, and strike, some people as being not precisely in good
taste. The constant allusions and references to minor and ephemeral
things and persons were not of course then unintelligible, but they
were even then teasing, In all these points, if _Friendship's
Garland_ be compared, I will once more not say with _A Tale of a
Tub_, but even with the _History of John Bull_, its weakness
will come out rather strongly.

But this was not all. It was quite evident--and it was no shame and no
d