"Come, move on--make way here, will you though?--move on, you sir! No Punch and Judy now; it's unlegal by the law; ain't you awor o' the New Police Act what's put it down?" Such was the arbitrary order which in my dream Serjeant Higginbotham of the X division issued, as he pushed his way into the centre of a crowd of urchins assembled round that little stage on which Punch was playing off his antics in unapproachable style. As the words fell from his lips, they smote my heart with the fear that a revolution in the country must inevitably follow. Punch to be put down by Act of Parliament! Judy to be snatched away for ever by a vote of both Houses! Mirth, fun, jollity, to be legislated into nothing--in the passing of a clause, or the twinkling of the Speaker's eye! Impossible; put Punch down in one place, lo! he is up again in another; stifle his voice in the east, and hark! you hear him the next minute squeaking in the west, like the piping shepherd-boy, "as though he should never grow old." This was consolatory to my feelings; but yet methought, the mere intent, the bare threat of the legislature to banish the people's own Punch, their time-honoured favourite, would paralyse all London at first, and then all London would be seen on its legs rushing to the Queen's palace to petition! To my astonishment, not a soul in that crowd took the smallest notice of Serjeant Higginbotham's imperative command to be off. Punch went on squeaking and rapping away; the troop of boys, girls, and miscellanies around, continued to grin, laugh, scream, and stretch their necks to stare over one another's heads as though they never could look enough; and what was more, the policeman, who had penetrated into the midst of them, and of whose presence they appeared so singularly heedless, stood there, grinning, laughing, screaming, and stretching his neck to stare too. There indeed stood Serjeant H., his truncheon dropping from one hand, while the other was tightly pressed against his side, where he seemed to be in imminent peril of a split. That truncheon he had scarce uplifted, when the laugh seized him, and his arm fell powerless. Serjeant Higginbotham, six feet high, was a little boy again. How he laughed and roared. I heard his "Ho! ho!" for days afterwards, and can even now see the tears run down his cheeks, fringing his whiskers like dewdrops on a bush.