FOR "HER MAJESTY'S SERVANTS" 221

A NUT FOR THE LANDLORD AND TENANT COMMISSION 225

A NUT FOR THE HUMANE SOCIETY 228

[Illustration]

A NUT FOR MEN OF GENIUS.

If Providence, instead of a vagabond, had made me a justice of the
peace, there is no species of penalty I would not have enforced
against a class of offenders, upon whom it is the perverted taste of
the day to bestow wealth, praise, honour, and reputation; in a word,
upon that portion of the writers for our periodical literature whose
pastime it is by high-flown and exaggerated pictures of society,
places, and amusements, to mislead the too credulous and believing
world; who, in the search for information and instruction, are but
reaping a barren harvest of deceit and illusion.

Every one is loud and energetic in his condemnation of a bubble
speculation; every one is severe upon the dishonest features of
bankruptcy, and the demerits of un-trusty guardianship; but while the
law visits these with its pains and penalties, and while heavy
inflictions follow on those breaches of trust, which affect our
pocket, yet can he "walk scatheless," with port erect and visage high
who, for mere amusement--for the passing pleasure of the moment--or,
baser still, for certain pounds per sheet, can, present us with the
air-drawn daggers of a dyspeptic imagination for the real woes of
life, or paint the most common-place and tiresome subjects with
colours so vivid and so glowing as to persuade the unwary reader that
a paradise of pleasure and enjoyment, hitherto unknown, is open before
him. The treadmill and the ducking-stool, "_me judice_," would no
longer be tenanted by rambling gipsies or convivial rioters, but would
display to the admiring gaze of an assembled multitude the
aristocratic features of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, the dark whiskers
of D'Israeli, the long and graceful proportions of Hamilton Maxwell,
or the portly paunch and melo-dramatic frown of that right pleasant
fellow, Henry Addison himself.

You cannot open a newspaper without meeting some narrative of what, in
the phrase of the day, is denominated an "attempted imposition." Count
Skryznyzk, with black moustachoes and a beard to match, after being
the lion of Lord Dudley Stuart's parties, and the delight of a certain
set of people in the West-end--who, when they give a tea-party, call
it a _soiree_, and deem it necessary to have either