As I was saying, you should not despise a hint from an old hand. We ancients may not be quite so smart as you moderns, but we are tolerably good judges of the taking qualities of an article--we know, by experience, the sort of thing which is likely to tickle the public ear. Now, you will forgive me for saying, that in your late writings you exhibit, now and then, certain marks of precipitancy, which it might be as safe to avoid. What I mean to express is, that you are too dashing--too daring--too ready to encounter your antagonist with his own weapons. You assume the part of Achilles, instead of imitating the example of Ulysses; you don't touch the Hospitaller's shield, though he has the worst seat of the party, but you make your lance ring against the buckler of Brian de Bois-Guilbert. This may be plucky, but it is not wise. People may applaud you for your hardihood, but it is not a pleasant thing to be chucked over your horse's croup, among shard, and mire, and the general laughter of mankind. You made a great mistake the other day in pitting yourself against Lord Stanley. You might have known better. You were no more than a baby in the hands of the best lance of the Temple; and the attempt only ended, as all must have foreseen, in your own confusion. Don't be angry, Dick. I know you only obeyed orders, but the result demonstrates, very clearly, the utter imbecility of the clique under which you have had the misfortune to serve. You say you did not write the article about gestures and looks being more expressive than words? I am aware you did not. I am talking to a sensible man, and not to an irreclaimable idiot. It is no fault of yours if the dunderheads, who find the money, will occasionally mistake their vocation, and commit themselves by using the pen. Such things are inevitable in journalism; and they are enough to sow the seeds of decline in the bosom of a printer's devil. But you know very well, notwithstanding, that you committed yourself most egregiously. You were laughed at, Dick, and held up to scorn in every paper from Truro to Caithness. And for what? Why, for attempting pertinaciously to maintain that a statesman meant and said one thing, whereas he distinctly meant and said another. Did you seriously expect to impose upon any one by such a stale device as that--so palpable, and, moreover, so exceedingly open to contradiction? You might as well expect the public to believe that the Duke of Wellington has broken his neck on the hunting-field, in the teeth of a letter from the Field-marshal announcing that he is well and hearty. Yes; I know very well that John Bull is a gullible animal, but not to the degree which you assume. You may state, if you like, that the moon is made of green cheese; or, as some wiseacre did the other day, that the electric telegraph is to be superseded by the employment of magnetic snails; but you won't persuade any one that Ferrand is a friend of Cobden, or that Sir Robert Inglis is a