her career, accompanying her portrait in the gallery of noted women, this sentence is given from a descriptive letter:—"Her general demeanor is quiet and rather reserved; still, I am much mistaken, if she is not gifted with a very lively sense of the ridiculous." Here is a delightful, and, we doubt not, true intimation. Since the springs of pathos lie very near the springs of humor, in the richest souls, the fair Florence must, in moments of weariness, have glanced with merry eyes over the pages of Punch, or handed, with smiling archness, his inimitable numbers to her wan and wounded patients, kindly to cheat them into momentary forgetfulness of their agonies. If this were so, who shall say that the use or enjoyment of wit is not as right as it is natural? None, unless it be the narrowest of bigots,—like those who objected to this heroic lady's mission of mercy to the East, because she did not echo their sectarian shibboleths, and would not ask whether a good nurse were Protestant or Romanist.
We may repeat, therefore, as a prime excellence of Punch, that he is the maker of mirth for the million. He is mainly engaged in furnishing titillating amusement,—and he furnishes an article, not only marketable, but necessary. All work makes Jack a dull boy,—and not infrequently an unhappy, if not bad boy,—whether Jack be in the pulpit, the counting-room, the senate-house, or digging potatoes; and what is true of Jack is equally true of Gill, his sister, sweetheart, or wife. That Punch every week puts a girdle of smiles round the earth, interrupts the serious business of thousands by his merry visits, and with his ludicrous presence delights the drawing-room, cheers the study, and causes side-shakings in the kitchen,—entitles him to be called a missionary of good. Grant this,—then allow, on the average, five minutes of merriment to each reader of each issue of Punch,—then multiply these 5 minutes by—say 50,000, and this again by 52 weeks, and this, finally, by 17 years, and thus cipher out, if you have a tolerably capacious imagination, the amount of happiness which has flowed and spread, like a river of gladness, through the world, from that inexhaustible, bubbling, and sparkling fountain, at 85, Fleet Street, London.
Punch is the advocate of true manliness. Velvet robes and gilded coronets go for nothing with him, if not worn by muscular integrity; and fustian is cloth-of-gold, in his eyes, when it covers a stout heart in the right place. He has no mercy on snobbism, flunkeyism, or dandyism. He whips smartly the ignoble-noble fops of the household-troops,—parading them on toy-horses, and making them, with suicidal irony, deplore the hardships of comrades in the Crimea. He sneers at the loungers, and the delicate, dissipated roués of the club-house,—though their names were once worn by renowned ancestors, and are in the peerage. Fast young men are to him befooled prodigals, wasting the wealth of life in profitless living. He is not, however, an anchorite, or hard upon youth. On the contrary, he is an indulgent old fellow, and too sagacious to expect the wisdom of age from those sporting their freedom-suits. Still, he has no patience with the foppery whose whole existence advertises fine clothes, patronizes taverns, saunters along fashionable promenades, and ogles opera-dancers. In this connection, his hits at "the rising generation" will be called to mind. Punch has found out that in England there are no boys now,—only male babies and precocious men;—no growing up,—only a leap from the cradle, robe, and trousers to the habiliments and manners of a false manhood. Punch has found out and frequently illustrates this fact, and furnishes a series of pictures of Liliputians aping the questionable doings of their elders. It is observable, however, that he confines these portraits of precocity chiefly to one sex. Whether this be owing to his innate delicacy and habitual gallantry, or to the English custom of keeping little girls—and what we should call large girls also—at home longer, and under more re-
