centre a crown, and filled up the remaining space with the Lord's Prayer, which he transcribed without a single contraction, except in the case of the word "which," spelling it "wh." Singular to relate, too, used was an ordinary goosequill.

the pen

Amongst the present staff I have the greatest admiration for my friend Sir Henry Lucy, who, in his own particular line, is certainly one of the most gifted men alive. His contributions to "Punch" as "Toby, M.P." are absolutely unique, he being the only individual in the world who can amusingly describe the proceedings of that dismal make-belief assemblage— the modern House of Commons.

Punch" took its second name, the "London Charivari" from a French daily sheet which has now, I think, ceased to exist.

The word signifies "marrow-bones and cleavers," by which the rough music which formerly greeted unpopular married couples was produced. The "Charivari" often took physical defects as the subject of its caricatures. It is said that the discovery that the head of Louis Philippe resembled a pear, by Philippon, one of the caricaturists of the "Paris Charivari," annoyed Louis Philippe more than the attempt upon his life by Fieschi, and that his famous "law of September," against the press and pictures, was due to the "Pear-portrait."

A cultivated mind may be said to have infinite stores of innocent gratification. Everything may be made interesting to it by becoming a subject of

thought or inquiry. Books, regarded merely as a gratification, are worth more than all the luxuries on earth. A taste for literature secures cheerful occupation for the unemployed and languid hours of life; alas, that so many should be attracted only by trash. Matters in this respect, however, were a good deal worse fifty or sixty years ago.

Ladies, for the most part, then read nothing but sentimental novels; at the same time it is only fair to say that for those who loved serious reading, ample provision was made. Those were the days of Books of Beauty and the Keepsake.

The portrait of myself which appears as an illustration, I may add, served in the same capacity to a volume of the latter published in 1851.

Miss Power, a relative of Lady Blessington-a rather clever woman whom I knew well,-was the editress, and it contained, besides a much too flattering poem about myself by Charles Howard, verses by Lord John Manners, and contributions from Dickens and Carlyle, whose article "The Opera" was prefaced by the following characteristic letter.

DEAR P-Not having anything of my own which I could contribute (as is my wish and duty) to this pious Adventure of yours, and not being able in these hot busy days to get anything ready, I decide to offer you a bit of an Excerpt from that singular "Conspectus of England" lately written, not yet printed, by Professor Ezechiel Peasemeal, a distinguished American friend of mine. Dr. Peasemeal

THE MINERVA PRESS

17

His 'Conspectus,' a

will excuse my printing it here. work of some extent, has already been crowned by the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Bunkum, which includes, as you know, the chief thinkers of the New World; and it will probably be printed entire in their 'Transactions' one day. Meanwhile let your readers have the first taste of it; and much good may it do them, and you! T. C."

Quills, it has been said, are things sometimes taken from the pinions of one goose to spread the ideas of another this was very applicable to a certain number of the minor writers of the Victorian age.

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Of late we have heard something about "demoralizing literature." I do not think there are any publications to-day so demoralizing in a certain sense as the novels which delighted a former generation; whilst not vicious, they were vapid and silly to an incredible degree. A great purveyor of this stuff was Anthony King Newman, the proprietor of the Minerva Press Printing Office, who died in the late Fifties. This individual was about the most indefatigable caterer for novel readers who ever existed. He had gained great celebrity as the publisher of a long series of romances, dubbed by the literary critics of a past era as the Minerva Press School of Fiction, a school all of whose writers dealt in the marvellous, used high-sounding adjectives, defied the unities of time and place, dismissed probability as an item of no importance, and always finished off their heroes and heroines by placing them in bowers