kindly tie is established between writer and reader, and lasts pretty
nearly for life. I meet people now who don't care for Walter Scott, or
the "Arabian Nights;" I am sorry for them, unless they in their time
have found THEIR romancer--their charming Scheherazade. By the way,
Walter, when you are writing, tell me who is the favorite novelist in
the fourth form now? have you got anything 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 years'
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