th his pen and pencil. His practical kindness is
charmingly comprehensive, too. He speaks for the dumb beast, pleads for
the maltreated brutes of Smithfield Market, craves compassion for
skeleton omnibus-horses, with the same ready sympathy that he fights for
cheated fellow-mortals. In the court of public opinion, he is volunteer
counsel for all in any way defrauded or kept in bondage by pitiless
pride, barbarous policy, thoughtless luxury, or wooden-headed prejudice.
His sound ethics do not admit that the lower law of man's enactment can,
under any circumstances, override or abrogate the higher laws of God.
Consequently, he judges with unbiased, instinctive rectitude, when he
shows up in black and white the Model Republic's criminal anomaly, by
making the African Slave a companion-piece to the Greek Slave, among
"Jonathan's" contributions to the great Crystal Palace Exhibition. In
this same vein of a wide-ranging application of the Golden Rule, he is
ever on the alert to brand inhuman deeds and institutions, wherever
found. You cannot very often hit him with the "_tu quoque_" retort,
insinuate that he lives in a house of glass, or charge him with visiting
his condemnation upon distant iniquities whilst winking at iniquities of
equal magnitude directly under his nose.

Punch is no Mrs. Jellyby, brimful of zeal for Borrio boolas in far-off
Africas, and utterly stolid to disorders and distresses under his own
roof. Proud of the glory, he feels and confesses the shame of England;
and the grinding injustice of her caste-system, aristocracy, and
hierarchy does not escape the lash of his rebuke. He is the friend of
the threadbare curate, performing the larger half of clerical duty and
getting but a tittle of the tithes,--of the weary seamstress, wetting
with midnight tears the costly stuff which must be ready to adorn
heartless rank and fashion at to-morrow's pageant,--of the pale
governess, grudgingly paid her pittance of salary without a kind word to
sweeten the bitterness of a lonely lot. He is the friend even of the
workhouse juveniles, and, as their champion, castigates with cutting
sarcasm and stinging scorn the reverend and honorable guardians, who,
just as, full of hope, they had reached the door of the theatre,
prohibited a band of these wretched orphans from availing of a
kind-hearted manager's invitation to an afternoon performance of "Jack
and the Bean-Stalk." Truly, Punch is more than half right, as, in his
indig