so good and kindly as dear Miss Edgeworth's Frank? It used to
belong to a fellow's sisters generally; but though he pretended
to despise it, and said, "Oh, stuff for girls!" he read it; and
I think there were one or two passages which would try my eyes
now, were I to meet with the little book.

As for Thomas and Jeremiah (it is only my witty way of calling
Tom and Jerry), I went to the British Museum the other day on
purpose to get it; but somehow, if you will press the question
so closely, on reperusal, Tom and Jerry is not so brilliant as I
had supposed it to be. The pictures are just as fine as ever;
and I shook hands with broad-backed Jerry Hawthorn and Corinthian
Tom with delight, after many year's absence. But the style of
the writing, I own, was not pleasing to me; I even thought it a
little vulgar -- well! well! other writers have been considered
vulgar -- and as a description of the sports and amusements of
London in the ancient times, more curious than amusing.

But the pictures! -- oh! the pictures are noble still! First,
there is Jerry arriving from the country, in a green coat and
leather gaiters, and being measured for a fashionable suit at
Corinthian House, by Corinthian Tom's tailor. Then away for the
career of pleasure and fashion. The park! delicious excitement!
The theatre! the saloon!! the green-room!!! Rapturous bliss --
the opera itself! and then perhaps to Temple Bar, to knock down a
Charley there! There are Jerry and Tom, with their tights and
little cocked hats, coming from the opera -- very much as
gentlemen in waiting on royalty are habited now. There they are
at Almack's itself, amidst a crowd of high-bred personages, with
the Duke of Clarence himself looking at them dancing. Now,