n to cold
mutton for dinner, and much prefers a whitebait banquet at Greenwich,
or a nice well-ordered repast at the Star and Garter. So do we.

And the only thing he feared is the horse. Nimrod as he is, and the
happiest illustrator of the hunting-field that ever was, he seems for
ever haunted by a terror of the heels of that noble animal he drew so
well--and I thoroughly sympathise with him!

In all the series the chief note is joyousness, high spirits, the
pleasure of being alive. There is no _Weltschmerz_ in his happy world,
where all is for the best--no hankering after the moon, no discontent
with the present order of things. Only one little lady discovers that
the world is hollow, and her doll is stuffed with bran; only one
gorgeous swell has exhausted the possibilities of this life, and finds
out that he is at loss for a new sensation. So what does he do? Cut
his throat? Go and shoot big game in Africa? No; he visits the top of
the Monument on a rainy day, or invites his brother-swells to a Punch
and Judy show in his rooms, or rides to Whitechapel and back on an
omnibus with a bag of periwinkles, and picks them out with a pin!

Even when his humour is at its broadest, and he revels in almost
pantomimic fun, he never loses sight of truth and nature--never
strikes a false or uncertain note. Robinson goes to an evening party
with a spiked knuckle-duster in his pocket and sits down. Jones digs
an elderly party called Smith in the back with the point of his
umbrella, under the impression that it is his friend Brown. A charming
little street Arab prints the soles of his muddy feet on a smart old
gentleman's white evening waistcoat.

Tompkyns writes Henrietta on the stands under two hearts transfixed by
an arrow, and his wife, whose name is Matilda, catches him in the act.
An old gentleman, maddened by a bluebottle, smashes all his furniture
and breaks every window-pane but one--where the bluebottle is. And in
all these scenes one does not know which is the most irresistible, the
most inimitable--the mere drollery or the dramatic truth of gesture
and facial expression.

The way in which every-day people really behave in absurd situations
and under comically trying circumstances is quite funny enough for
him; and if he exaggerates a little and goes beyond the absolute prose
of life in the direction of caricature, he never deviates a
hair's-breadth from the groove human nature has laid down. There is
exaggeration, b