unch 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 restraint, than in our republic, we cannot say.
Were he on this side of the Atlantic, he might possibly find occasion to
be less partial in the use of his reproving fun. Young misses seem to be
growing scarce, and young ladies becoming alarmingly numerous. The early
date at which the cry comes for long skirts, parties, balls, and late
hours, for lace, jewelry, and gold watches, threatens to rob our homes
of one of their sweetest charms,--the bright presence of joyous, gentle,
and modest lasses, willing to be happy children for as many years as
their mothers were, on their way to maidenhood and womanhood.

Punch is a reformer,--and of the right type, too; not destructive,
declamatory, vituperative; not a monomaniac, snarly, and
ill-natured,--as if zeal in riding a favorite hobby excused
exclusiveness of soul and any amount of bad temper. He would not
demolish the social system and build on its ruins a new one; being
clearly of the opinion that the growths of ages and the doings of six
thousands of years are to be respected,--that progress means improvement
upon the present, rather than overthrow of the entire past. Calm,
hopeful, cheerful, and patient, he is at the same time bold and
uncompromising, and a bit radical into the bargain. In his own delicious
way, he has been no mean advocate of liberal principles and measures. He
has argued for the repeal of the corn and the modification of the game
laws, the softening of the cruelties of the criminal code, and the fair
administration of law for all orders and conditions of men and women. He
has had no respect for ermine, lawn, or epaulets, in his assaults upon
the monopolies and sinecures of Church and State, circumlocution
offices, nepotism, patronage, purchase, and routine, in army or navy. He
wants the established religion to be re