The humours of childhood include in rich abundance both Things which would have been better left unsaid, and Things which might have been expressed differently. But just now they lack their sacred bard. There is no one to observe and chronicle them. It is a pity, for the "heart that watches and receives" will often find in the pleasantries of childhood a good deal that deserves perpetuation. The children of fiction are a mixed company, some lifelike and some eminently the reverse. In _Joan_ Miss Rhoda Broughton drew with unequalled skill a family of odious children. Henry Kingsley look a more genial view of his subject, and sketched some pleasant children in _Austin Elliot_, and some delightful ones in the last chapter of _Ravenshoe_. The "Last of the Neros" in _Barchester Towers_ is admirably drawn, and all elderly bachelors must have sympathized with good Mr. Thorne when, by way of making himself agreeable to the mother, Signora Vesey-Neroni, he took the child upon his knee, jumped her up and down, saying, "Diddle, diddle, diddle," and was rewarded with, "I don't want to be diddle-diddle-diddled. Let me go, you naughty old man." Dickens's children are by common consent intolerable, but a quarter of a century ago we were all thrilled by Miss Montgomery's _Misunderstood_. It is credibly reported that an earlier and more susceptible generation was moved to tears by the sinfulness of Topsy and the saintliness of Eva; and the adventures of the _Fairchild Family_ enjoy a deserved popularity among all lovers of unintentional humour. But the "sacred bard" of child-life was John Leech, whose twofold skill immortalized it with pen and with pencil. The childish incidents and sayings which Leech illustrated were, I believe, always taken from real life. His sisters "kept an establishment," as Mr. Dombey said--the very duplicate of that to which little Paul was sent. "'It is not a Preparatory School by any means. Should I express my meaning,' said Miss Tox with peculiar sweetness, 'if I designated it an infantine boarding-house of a very select description?'" "'On an exceedingly limited and particular scale,' suggested Mrs. Chick, with a glance at her brother." "'Oh! exclusion itself,' said Miss Tox."