of "Lest we forget" their unvaried theme; the more I hear the cries of
derision raised by the makers of this likeness of something unworshipful
on the earth beneath, so much the more am I convinced that the national
humour is that of banter, and that no other kind of mirth so gains as
does this upon the public taste.

Here, for example, is the popular idea of a street festival; that day is
as the people will actually have it, with their own invention, their own
material, their own means, and their own spirit. They owe nothing on
this occasion to the promptings or the subscriptions of the classes that
are apt to take upon themselves the direction and tutelage of the people
in relation to any form of art. Here on every fifth of November the
people have their own way with their own art; and their way is to offer
the service of the image-maker, reversed in hissing and irony, to some
creature of their hands.

It is a wanton fancy; and perhaps no really barbarous people is capable
of so overturning the innocent plan of original portraiture. To make a
mental image of all things that are named to the ear, or conceived in the
mind, being an industrious custom of children and childish people which
lapses in the age of much idle reading, the making of a material image is
the still more diligent and more sedulous act, whereby the primitive man
controls and caresses his own fancy. He may take arms anon,
disappointed, against his own work; but did he ever do that work in
malice from the outset?

From the statue to the doll, images are all outraged in the person of the
guy. If it were but an antithesis to the citizen's idea of something
admirable which he might carry in procession on some other day, the
carrying of the guy would be less gloomy; but he would hoot at a