It will be needless to enumerate the many minor classes of this important subject; it will be needless to dwell upon the nickname classical, the nickname clerical, the nickname military, and the nickname bargee; as we believe that no specimen of these is to be found which may not be ranked under one of the preceding descriptions. There is, however, one great and extensive species remaining, to which we shall here give only a brief notice, as we may possibly, at some future period, devote a leading article to its consideration--we mean the nickname general. This last-mentioned class claims our attention, from the comprehensive range of its operation. It is not applied to the mental foibles or personal defects of a single object, it does not attack the failings of a solitary individual, it wastes not the lash of censure on an isolated instance of absurdity; but it inflicts a wound upon thousands in a moment, and stamps the mark of ridicule upon numberless victims. The Quizzes, the Prigs, the Marines, the Chaises are, amongst our _alumni_, well-known examples of the nickname general. But we have too long lost sight of the main object of our present lucubration, which was the recommendation of this art to our fellow-citizens, as a commendable, though much neglected, study. When we say much neglected, we mean not that nicknames have ceased to be the rage, and are falling into disuse (for certainly there never was an age in which they spread more luxuriantly); but we allude to the lamentable decay of imagination and ingenuity in their formation. If we look back to ancient times, we shall find that, in those days, nicknames were derived from the same sources as in the present age; they had their origin from natural defects, from personal deformities; yet how amazingly do the _cognomina_ of antiquity exceed in elegance and taste the nicknames of more modern date. How wonderfully are the “Chicken,” the “Shanks,” the “Nosey,” of Etonian celebrity surpassed by the “Pullus,” the “Scaurus,” the “Cicero,” of Roman literature. It is a disgrace upon the genius of our generation, that, at a time when other arts have arrived at such a high perfection that our age may almost be considered the Augustan age of the world, the art of nicknames should have totally lost the classical polish for which it was in the olden time so eminently remarkable, until it has sunk into the vehicle of vulgar abuse, neither adorned by wit nor chastened by urbanity.