I have taken down from the shelves two volumes among the most recent and most prized addition to our Library, and, turning over the leaves, come upon fresh testimony to my Honoured Sir's prescience. Turning over _John Leech's Pictures of Life and Character_, garnered from the Collection of _Mr. Punch_, I find under date twenty-five years back, women of all degrees presented under cover of monstrous hoops. Everybody wore crinoline in those days. It was the thing, the only possible thing, and the average human mind could not grasp the idea of there being any other way of arraying the female form. But the prophetic eye of one of the most brilliant of _Mr. Punch's_ Young Men peered into the future and beheld what was to come.[1] In the very midst of delineations of these everyday monstrosities, fearful in the drawing-room, grotesquely exaggerated in the kitchen, JOHN LEECH flashed forth a view of the future. There are three sketches of girls, two in the eelskin dress that marked the rebound from the hideous tyranny of crinoline, and the third showing a style of dress that might have been sketched to-day in Bond Street, not forgetting the upper rearward segment of the crinoline which survives at this day to hint what has been. _Ex pede Herculem._ It seemed at the date a monstrous idea, a nightmare fancy, peradventure a joke. But _Mr. Punch's_ calm eye pierced the veil of the future, and saw then, as he has always seen, what was to be. [Footnote 1: There is a later example of this gift in the date of another Young Man's letter.--ED.] This, Sir, is only a solitary instance of your prescience cited in accidentally turning over the collected pages that seem so familiar and are still so fresh. I could quote indefinitely as I turn over the leaves. But time is shorter than usual this evening. There is less than an hour left of 1877. The procession I spoke of just now has passed out and closed the doors. Under brighter and more inspiriting auspices comes another group. May I present them to my honoured Master? EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-EIGHT this is _Mr. Punch_ of whom you may have heard. _Mr. Punch_, this is EIGHTEEN EIGTHY-EIGHT of whom I expect you will hear a good deal. And here, happier in his possessions than _King Lear_, are his four daughters--Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. They come to wish you a Happy New Year in which no one joins so heartily as your humble friend and servitor, TOBY, M.P. * * * * * [Illustration: WHAT OUR ARTIST HAS TO PUT UP WITH. _Friendly Critic._ "HUMPH! A LITTLE _WOOLLY_ IN TEXTURE, ISN'T IT? OF COURSE I DON'T MEAN THE _SHEEP_!"] * * * * * FROM A COUNTRY COUSIN. MY DEAR MR. PUNCH,