esented, in the picture, as a youth
of sixteen, dressed in a ruffled shirt, a red jacket, and white
trousers; and his exhibitor assured the spectators that, though but a
boy, he already measured nine feet in height and seven feet round the
body; that each of his shoes would make a coffin for a child of five
years old, and every stocking hold a sack of flour. Six full-grown
persons, he added, could be easily buttoned within his waistcoat; and
his tailor, he asserted, was obliged to mount a ladder when he measured
him for a jacket.

Deeply interested by the astounding picture of this extraordinary youth,
and the still more astounding description given of him by his exhibitor,
I ascended the little ladder that conducted to the platform in front of
the show, paid my twopence--the price of admission--and in the next
minute was in the presence of "The Great Lancashire Giant;" a position
which enabled me to make discoveries regarding that personage that were
not a little mortifying.

In the first place, I found that, instead of being a youth of sixteen,
he was a man of at least six-and-thirty; in the next, that if it had not
been for the raised dais on which he stood, the enormous thickness of
the soles of his shoes, and the other palpably fictitious contrivances
and expedients by which his dimensions were enlarged, he would not
greatly have exceeded the size of my own father. I found, in short, that
the tremendous "Lancashire Giant" was merely a pretty tall man, and
nothing more.

Quitting this exhibition, and not a little displeased at being so
egregiously bitten, I passed on to the next, which was "Mr.
Higgenbotham's Royal Menagerie. The Noblest Collection of Wild Beasts
ever seen in the Civilised World."

This was a splendid affair. On a narrow stage in front were seated four
fat red-faced musicians, in beef-eater coats, puffing and blowing on
bugles and trombones. Close by these, stood a thin, sharp-eyed,
sallow-complexioned man in plain clothes, beating a huge drum, and
adding the music of a set of Pandean pipes, which were stuck into his
bosom, to the general harmony. This was Mr. Higgenbotham himself.

But it was the paintings on the immense field of canvas above that
particularly attracted my attention. On this field were exhibited an
appalling collection of the most terrific monsters: lions, as large as
cows, gambolling amongst rocks; ourang-outangs, of eight feet in height,
walking with sticks in their hands,