nd scowling warriors with limbs strongly knitted;
there was especially, at the end of a black passage, a den of lions,
that would frighten any boy not born in Africa, or Exeter 'Change, and
accustomed to them.

Another exhibition used to be West's Gallery, where the pleasing figures
of Lazarus in his grave-clothes, and Death on the pale horse, used to
impress us children. The tombs of Westminster Abbey, the vaults at St.
Paul's, the men in armor at the Tower, frowning ferociously out of
their helmets, and wielding their dreadful swords; that superhuman Queen
Elizabeth at the end of the room, a livid sovereign with glass eyes, a
ruff, and a dirty satin petticoat, riding a horse covered with steel:
who does not remember these sights in London in the consulship of
Plancus? and the wax-work in Fleet Street, not like that of Madame
Tussaud's, whose chamber of death is gay and brilliant; but a nice old
gloomy wax-work, full of murderers; and as a chief attraction, the Dead
Baby and the Princess Charlotte lying in state?

Our story-books had no pictures in them for the most part. Frank (dear
old Frank!) had none; nor the "Parent's Assistant;" nor the "Evenings
at Home;" nor our copy of the "Ami des Enfans:" there were a few just at
the end of the Spelling-Book; besides the allegory at the beginning, of
Education leading up Youth to the temple of Industry, where Dr. Dilworth
and Professor Walkinghame stood with crowns of laurel. There were, we
say, just a few pictures at the end of the Spelling-Book, little oval
gray woodcuts of Bewick's, mostly of the Wolf and the Lamb, the Dog and
the Shadow, and Brown, Jones, and Robinson with long ringlets and
little tights; but for pictures, so to speak, what had we? The rough old
wood-blocks in the old harlequin-backed fairy-books had served hundreds
of years; before OUR Plancus, in the time of Priscus Plancus--in Queen
Anne's time, who knows? We were flogged at school; we were fifty boys in
our boarding-house, and had to wash in a leaden trough, under a cistern,
with lumps of fat yellow soap floating about in the ice and water.
Are OUR sons ever flogged? Have they not dressing-rooms, hair-oil,
hip-baths, and Baden towels? And what picture-books the young villains
have! What have these children done that they should be so much happier
than we were?

We had the "Arabian Nights" and Walter Scott, to be sure. Smirke's
illustrations to the former are very fine. We did not know how good
the