Now, Smith, are you not convinced that it would be the height of folly to expose yourself to any such unpleasant occurrences? To be sure you are; and yet there are some dozen of men, no better situated than yourself, who would barter their ears for the chance of being made such laughingstocks for life. The innate good sense and fine feeling of the upper classes, prevents these persons from assuming so extremely false and ridiculous a position, and yet this consideration is rewarded by the most foul and malignant abuse. It is high time that these gentlemen should be brought to their senses, and be taught the real value of themselves and of their writings. Personally they are objectionable and offensive--relatively they are bores--and, in a literary point of view, they have done much more to lower than to elevate the artistic standard of the age. Their affectation of philanthropy and maudlin sentiment is too shallow to deceive any one who is possessed of the ordinary intellect of a man; and in point of wit and humour, which is their stronghold, the best of them is far inferior to Paul de Kock, whose works are nearly monopolized for perusal by the _flaneurs_ and the _grisettes_ of Paris. Take my advice then, and have nothing to say to the earnest and oneness-of-purpose men. They are not only weak but wicked; and they will lead you most lamentably astray. Let us now look a little into your style, which, after all, is a matter of some importance in a serial. On the whole, I like it. It is nervous, terse, and epigrammatic--a little too high-flown at times; but I was fully prepared for that. What I admire most, however, is your fine feeling of humanity--the instinct, as it were, and dumb life which you manage to extract from inanimate objects as well as from articulately-speaking men. Your very furniture has a kind of automatonic life; you can make an old chest of drawers wink waggishly from the corner, and a boot-jack in your hands becomes a fellow of infinite fancy. This is all very pleasant and delightful; though I think, upon the whole, you give us a little too much of it, for I cannot fancy myself quite comfortable in a room with every article of the furniture maintaining a sort of espionage upon my doings. Then as to your antiquarianism you are perfect. Your description of "the old deserted stable, with the old rusty harness hanging upon the old decayed nails, so honey-combed, as it were, by the tooth of time, that you wondered how they possibly could support the weight; while across the span of an old discoloured stirrup, a great spider had thrown his web, and now lay waiting in the middle of it, a great hairy bag of venom, for the approach of some unlucky fly, like a usurer on the watch for a spendthrift,"--that description, I say, almost brought tears to my eyes. The catalogue, also, which you give us of the decayed curry-combs all clogged with grease, the shankless besoms, the worm-eaten corn-chest,