cripples his younger brother's outset in life, for the pleasure of entertaining my lord, and riding by the side of Sir John. And though it may be very good fun for Robinson to fuddle himself at home as he does at College, and to be brought home by the policeman he has just been trying to knock down—think what fun it is for the poor old soul his mother!—the half-pay captain's widow, who has been pinching herself all her life long, in order that that jolly young fellow might have a University education.

   What will he say about Literary Snobs? has been a question, I make no doubt, often asked by the public. How can he let off his own profession? Will that truculent and unsparing monster who attacks the nobility, the clergy, the army, and the ladies, indiscriminately, hesitate when the turn comes to EGORGER his own flesh and blood?

   My dear and excellent querist, whom does the schoolmaster flog so resolutely as his own son? Didn't Brutus chop his offspring's head off? You have a very bad opinion indeed of the present state of literature and of literary men, if you fancy that any one of us would hesitate to stick a knife into his neighbour penman, if the latter's death could do the State any service.

   But the fact is, that in the literary profession THERE ARE NO SNOBS. Look round at the whole body of British men of letters; and I defy you to point out among them a single instance of vulgarity, or envy, or assumption.

   Men and women, as far as I have known them, they are all modest in their demeanour, elegant in their manners, spotless in their lives, and honourable in their conduct to the world and to each other. You MAY, occasionally, it is true, hear one literary man abusing his brother; but why? Not in the least out of malice; not at all from envy; merely from a sense of truth and public duty. Suppose, for instance, I, good-naturedly point out a blemish in my friend MR. PUNCH'S person, and say, MR. P. has a hump-back, and his nose and chin are more crooked than those features in the Apollo or Antinous, which we are accustomed to consider as our standards of beauty; does this argue malice on my part towards MR. PUNCH? Not in the least. It is the critic's duty to point out defects as well as merits, and he invariably does his duty with utmost gentleness and candour.

   An intelligent foreigner's testimony about our manners is always worth having, and I think, in this respect the work of an eminent American, Mr. N. P. Willis is eminently valuable and impartial. In his 'History of Ernest Clay,' a crack 

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