"It means, my dear Knight," replied Mr. PUNCH pleasantly, "that power and responsibility, otherwise the Village Vote, are, like a new IPHIGENIA, to rouse the rustic CYMON into manhood and manners, till he of whom it was said that 'His corn and cattle were his only care, And his supreme delight, a country fair,' shall learn to rule not only himself, but his own village. You remember your DRYDEN, Sir ROGER?" "Humph!" groaned the Knight, "too well, too well! 'A judge erected from a country clown' might do well enough in poetry, but may mean ruin in practice. My misguided and stubborn friend, Sir ANDREW FREEPORT, should have lived to see this day, and acknowledge the prescience of the testy old Tory he was wont to deride." "Tilly-vally, my dear Sir ROGER," returned the host, cheerily; "trouble not thine honest soul with such gruesome forebodings. 'The old order changeth, yieldeth place to new.' But 'tis 'lest one good custom should corrupt the world.' CYMON, _with_ a vote, will not capsize the Commonwealth, any more than the British workman hath done, despite the prognostications of BOB LOWE and other cocksure clever ones. I'll see that the 'Good Old Times' are not banished, save to give place to Better New Ones! The New Village, Dr. SYNTAX, may not be quite as picturesque--in the old artistically dilapidated, damp, dirty, disease-gendering sense--as the old one. As you yourself said-- 'Though 'twill to hunger give relief, There's nothing _picturesque_ in beef.' No, nor are cleanliness, sanitation, education, fair wage, an independent spirit, and the capacity for self-government. These things, dear Doctor, make the Man, not the Picture, and Man-making is--or should be--the aim of modern statesmanship." "Mr. PUNCH," said Sir ROGER DE COVERLEY earnestly, "my only wish is that Merry England, in going in for the New Politics may not lose the old humanities and humours and heartinesses." "As described, Sir ROGER, in your own words, of which your presence and the festive season, remind me: 'I have often thought that it happens very well that Christmas should fall out in the middle of winter. It is the most dead, uncomfortable time of the year, when the poor people would suffer very much from their poverty and cold, if they had not good cheer, warm fires, and Christmas gambols to support them. I love to rejoice their poor hearts at this season, and to see the whole village merry in my great hall. I allow a double quantity of malt to my small beer, and set it a-running for twelve days to everyone that calls for it.'" (_The Spectator_, No. 131, Tuesday, July 31, 1711.)