t bottom, but he certainly was not at
top, seeing that his coat was of the roughest, and most
ill-favoured kind. So Nicholas merely observed that he shouldn't
wonder if he was. 'Many and many is the circuit this pony has
gone,' said Mr. Crummles, flicking him skilfully on the eyelid, for
old acquaintance sake. 'He is quite one of us. His mother was on
the stage.'

"'Was she?' rejoined Nicholas.

"'She ate apple-pie at circus for upwards of fourteen years,' said
the Manager, 'fired pistols, and went to bed in a night-cap; and in
short, took the low comedy entirely. His father was an actor.'

"'Was he at all distinguished?'

"'Not very,' said the Manager. 'He was rather a low sort of pony.
The fact is, he had been originally jobbed out by the day, and he
never quite got over his old habits. He was clever in melodrama,
too, but too broad, too broad. When the mother died he took the
port wine business.'

"'The port wine business?' cried Nicholas.

"'Drinking port wine with the clown,' said the Manager; 'but he was
greedy and one night bit off the bowl of the glass and choked
himself, so his vulgarity was the death of him at last.'"

It is greatly to the credit of Dickens that although he wrote so much
and salted so freely, he never approached any kind of impropriety. The
only weak point in his humour is that he borrows too much from his
imagination, and too little from reality.

I trust that those who have accompanied me through the chapters of this
work, will have been able to trace a gradual amelioration in humour. We
have seen it from age to age running parallel with the history, and
varying with the mental development of the times, rising and falling in
fables, demonology, word-coining and coarseness, and I hope we may add
in practical joking and coxcombry.

The remaining chapters will draw conclusions from our general survey.
There can be little doubt that humour cannot be studied in any country
better than in our own. The commercial character of England, and its
connection with many nations whose feelings are intermingled in our
minds as their blood is in our veins, are favourable for the development
of fancy and of the finest kinds of wit, while the moderate Government
under which we live, tends in the same direction. Humour may have
germinated in the darkness of despotism, among the discontented subjects
of