* * * * * Thus needs it the courage of old Cousin Hotspur, To sit to an artist who flatters no sitter; Yet Self-love will urge us to seek him, for what spur So potent as that, though it make the truth bitter! And thus are all flocking, to see Ph[oe]bus mocking, Or making queer faces, a visage per minute; And truly 'tis shocking, if winds should be rocking The building, or clouds darken all that's within it, To witness the frights Which shadows and lights Manufacture, as like as an owl to a linnet. For there, while you sit up, Your countenance lit up, The mists fly across, a magnificent rack; And your portrait's a patch, with its bright and its black, Out-Rembrandting Rembrandt, in ludicrous woe, Like a chimney-sweep caught in a shower of snow. Yet nothing can keep the crowd below, And still they mount up, stair by stair; And every morn, by the hurry and hum, Each seeking a prize in the lottery there, You fancy the "last day of drawing" has come. L. B. [Illustration: [All the World and his Wife must recollect that they are not figuring before a mere mortal artist with whom they may all the while laugh and chat. Here you must sit mute and motionless. You _may_ wink; you may perhaps just put on a smile; but you _must not_ laugh; for if you do, one half of your head will go off!]] [Illustration: COMMENTARY upon the late--"New Police Act" by which it appears that ... ... Designed Etched & Published by George Cruikshank-- June 1st 1841] PUNCH _v._ LAW. I was dozing over the last half-dozen glasses of a bowl of punch (the rest of the club having departed) when the waiter at the British came into the coffee-room to remind me that it was Saturday night, and that in obedience to the New Police Act it was absolutely necessary that I should take my departure before Sunday morning--the door must be finally closed at twelve o'clock, and it then wanted but five minutes. This appeal, and a "Now, Sir, if you please," a few times repeated, were not more than half heard; sleep seized me irresistibly, and in twenty seconds more I was dreaming that I had fallen fast asleep, with the punch-bowl for a nightcap.