"FIRST BOY: 'Go easy, Blacky; mind his corns.' (_Swell winces_.) 'That was a nasty one.' "(_The comments are extended from the swell's boots to his costume and appearance generally. And all this for a penny_)." Mr. Thackeray's "Four Georges" are, no doubt, familiar to my readers, some of whom may also remember his delivery of them in the form of lectures to large audiences. In that great writer's early time he wrote many essays, art-criticisms, etc., under the name of "Michael Angelo Titmarsh," and it is under that title that he is represented in the drawing by his friend Leech, as he appeared at Willis's Rooms "in his celebrated character of Mr. Thackeray." In the _Month_, Mr. Albert Smith makes Leech's drawing a peg upon which he hangs some justly complimentary remarks on the Thackeray lectures which took the town by storm forty years ago. Whether the "Belle of Hyde Park" or the "Belle of the Ball" is to be considered the belle of the _Month's_ July issue is left in doubt; but there is no doubt whatever about the claim of the pretty creature (who, accompanied by an extremely plain and dissolute-looking cavalier in the costume of Charles II.'s time, enters an imaginary ball-room) to a loveliness that it would be difficult to surpass, as the drawing amply proves. This cut is accompanied by some verses which appear to me quite unreadable; I therefore spare my readers from the infliction of any of them. The frontispiece to the _Month_ for August is an etching by Leech of singular beauty, called "Charade Acting." I have looked in vain through the letter-press for any explanation of this charade, so I suppose the meaning is purposely left for discovery to the intelligence of the observer. It represents the clever performance of Mr. Smiley and Miss Corgy. Mr. Smiley evidently represents a valorous knight--else why that dish-cover shield, that saucepan helmet, that long surcoat of nightshirt in the place of mail? The knight has armed himself further with sword and lance (sword of any period, lance a roasting-spit). Those warlike preparations must have been made in defence of that delicious girl leaning over the back of the ancient chair. Is she supposed to be a distressed damsel leaning from her prison-window and listening to Mr. Smiley's vows of liberating her or dying in the attempt? If so, where is the word that will express as much? Not in the brain of the stout old gentleman who is fast asleep amongst the audience, nor in that of the pretty little girl who sits in front of him apparently wondering why people should be "so silly." The lady who tries to hide a yawn with her fan has evidently "given it up," and the two lovely women near her are much in the same condition.