rescinded, and the irreverent publication now lies upon the tables of the reading-rooms. So, iron power is not beyond the reach of the shafts of wit; once make it ridiculous, and it may continue to lie dreaded, but will cease to be respected. Limits permitting, it would be pleasant to refer at length to various other marked graces of Punch,--such, for example, as his care for true Art, by exposing to merited contempt the abortions of statuary, painting, and architecture that come under his accurate eye,--his concern for good letters, exhibited in fantastic parodies of affectations, mannerisms, absurdities of plot, and vices of style in modern poets and novelists,--his "_nil nisi bonum_," and, where there is no "_bonum_," his silent "_nil_," of the dead, whom when living he pursued with unrelenting raillery,--his cool, eclectic judgments, freedom from extremes, and other manifestations of clear-headedness and refined sentiment, glimmering and shooting through his rollicking drollery, quick wit, and quiet humor. But we must pass them by, to emphasize a quality that out-tops and outshines them all,--his humanity. This is Mr. Punch's specialty, generating his purest fun and consecrating his versatile talents to highest ends. Wherever he catches meanness, avarice, selfishness, force, preying upon the humble and the weak, he is sure to give them hard knocks with his baton, or home-thrusts with his pen and pencil. His practical kindness is charmingly comprehensive, too. He speaks for the dumb beast, pleads for the maltreated brutes of Smithfield Market, craves compassion for skeleton omnibus-horses, with the same ready sympathy that he fights for cheated fellow-mortals. In the court of public opinion, he is volunteer counsel for all in any way defrauded or kept in bondage by pitiless pride, barbarous policy, thoughtless luxury, or wooden-headed prejudice. His sound ethics do not admit that the lower law of man's enactment can, under any circumstances, override or abrogate the higher laws of God. Consequently, he judges with unbiased, instinctive rectitude, when he shows up in black and white the Model Republic's criminal anomaly, by making the African Slave a companion-piece to the Greek Slave, among "Jonathan's" contributions to the great Crystal Palace Exhibition. In this same vein of a wide-ranging application of the Golden Rule, he is ever on the alert to brand inhuman deeds and institutions, wherever found. You cannot very often hit him with the "_tu quoque_" retort, insinuate that he lives in a house of glass, or charge him with visiting his condemnation upon distant iniquities whilst winking at iniquities of equal magnitude directly under his nose.