Mr. Graves seems to think that the change in the spirit of _Punch_ is due to the mellowness that comes with increasing years. But the real reason, I fancy, is that, while _Punch_ began under an editor whose sympathies were with the bottom-dog, the sympathies of later editors have been much more respectable. It is not that _Punch_ has lost the fire of youth, but that it has lost the generosity of the Victorian man of letters. It was, it may be admitted, easier to be generous in those days. A Victorian could make himself the champion of the ill-used poor without any feeling that he was assisting in bringing about a new order in society. A middle-class Georgian who attaches himself to the same cause cannot do so without realising that it is not a question of patching an old suit of clothes, but of making a new and a better one. The Victorian committed himself to charity. The Georgian has to commit himself to the cold-blooded charity of equality. _Punch_, indeed, seems to have begun to take alarm as soon as the Chartist movement made it appear likely that the workers were going to demand, not sympathetic treatment, but something like self-determination. By 1873, according to Mr. Graves, “references to the champagne-habit among the miners abound.” In a cartoon, “From the Coal Districts,” we are shown a lady in a fruiterer’s saying, “I’m afraid I must give up the pineapple, Mr. Green! Eight shillings is really too much!” She is interrupted by a “successful collier” who bids the fruiterer, “Just put ’em up for _me_, then, Master. ’Ere’s ’arf a sovereign; and look ’ere--yer may keep the change if yer’ll _only tell us ’ow to cook ’un_.” _Punch_, as we know it to-day, had been born.