violets in the streets. He was wont to talk of those early days very
freely,--passionately, even to tears, when he got excited,--and always
bravely, heartily, and with the right "moral" to follow. When Diderot had
passed a whole day without bread, he vowed that if he ever got prosperous,
he would save any fellow-creature that he could from such suffering.
Jerrold had learned the same lesson. Through life, he took the side of
the poor and weak. It was the secret, at once, of his philosophy and his
politics. He got endless abuse for his eternal tirades against the great
and the "respectable,"--against big-wigs of every size and shape. But
the critics who attacked him for this negative pole of his intellectual
character overlooked the positive one. He had kindness and sympathy enough;
but he always gave them first to those who wanted them most. And as
humorist and satirist he had a natural tendency to attack power,--to
play Pasquin against the world's Pope. In fact, his radicalism was that
of a humorist. He never adopted the utilitarian, or, as it was called,
"philosophical," radicalism which was so fashionable in his younger
days;--not, indeed, the Continental radicalism held by a party in
England;--but was an independent kind of warrior, fighting under his own
banner, and always rather with the weapons of a man of letters than those
of a politician. For the business aspect of politics he never showed any
predilection from first to last.

Well, then,--picture him to yourself, reader, a small, delicate youth, with
fair, prominent features,--long, thin hair,--keen, eager, large, blue eyes,
glancing out from right to left, as he walks the streets of Babylon,--and
seizing with a quick impulsiveness every feeling of the hour. Still
young,--and very young,--he has married for love. He is living in a cottage
or villakin on the outskirts of town, where there is just a peep of green
to keep one's feelings fresh; and he is writing for the stage. It is hard
work, and sometimes the dun is at the door, and contact is inevitable with