To reward native talent, with which view he supports Italian operas, French plays, German singers, and in fact gives gold to the foreigners in exchange for the brass they bring him! To talk sneeringly against tuft-hunting and all tuft-hunters, and yet next to running after a lord, nothing delights him more than to be seen in company with one! To rave about his public spirit and independence, and with the greatest submission to endure perpetually a tax[21] that was only put on for three years! To brag about his politeness and courteous demeanour in public, and to scamper after the Queen whenever there is an opportunity of staring at her! To boast of his cleanliness, and to leave uncovered (as in the Thames) the biggest sewer in the world! To pretend to like music, and to tolerate the Italian organs and the discordant musicians that infest his streets! To inveigh against bad legislation, and to refrain in many instances from exercising the franchise he pays so dearly for! To admit the utility of education, and yet to exclude from its benefits every one who is not of the same creed as himself! And lastly, an Englishman dearly likes: To grumble, no matter whether he is right or wrong, crying or laughing, working or playing, gaining a victory or smarting under a national humiliation, paying or being paid--still he must grumble, and in fact he is never so happy as when he is grumbling; and, supposing everything was to his satisfaction (though it says a great deal for our power of assumption to assume any such absurd impossibilities), still he would grumble at the fact of there being nothing for him to grumble about! [Footnote 21: The income tax. _Punch_ knew better, and prophesied from the very outset that it would never come off.]