But, while the potency of these pictorial beauties is admitted, it must be conceded that the variations from the true standard, although good for the eyesight, are productive of much inconvenience; and that, to consider the subject like a Benthamite, utility and the general advantage would be promoted if the total amount of flesh, blood, bone, and muscle were more equally distributed. As affairs are at present arranged, it is almost impossible to find a “ready-made coat” that will answer one’s purpose, and a man may stroll through half the shops in town without being able to purchase a pair of boots which he can wear with any degree of comfort. In hanging a lamp, every shop-keeper, who “lights up,” knows that it is a very troublesome matter so to swing it, that, while the short can see the commodities, the tall will not demolish the glass. If an abbreviated “turnippy” man, in the goodness of his heart and _in articulo mortis_, bequeaths his wardrobe to a long and gaunt friend, of what service is the posthumous present? It is available merely as new clothing for the juveniles, or as something toward another kitchen carpet. Many a martial spirit is obliged to content himself with civic employment, although a mere bottle of fire and wrath, because heroism is enlisted by inches, and not by degree. If under “five foot six,” Cæsar himself could find no favour in the eye of the recruiting-sergeant, and Alexander the Great would be allowed to bestride no Bucephalus in a dragoon regiment of modern times. Thus, both they who get too much, and they who get too little, in Dame Nature’s apportionment bill, as well as those who, though abundantly endowed, are not well made up, have divers reasons for grumbling, and for wishing that a more perfect uniformity prevailed. Some of the troubles which arise from giving a man more than his share in altitude, find illustration in the subjoined narrative: Linkum Langcale is a subject _in extenso_. He is, to use the words of the poet, suggested by his name, “. . . . . . _A bout_ _Of linked sweetness long drawn out:_” and, in speaking of him, it is not easy to be brief. Linkum is entirely too long for his own comfort—something short—if the word _short_ may be used in this connection—something short of the height of the Titans of old, who pelted Saturn with brickbats; but how much, has never yet been ascertained, none of his acquaintances being sufficiently acquainted with trigonometry to determine the fact. He is one of those men who, like the gentle Marcia, “tower above their sex,” and must always be called down to their dinner, as no information can be imparted to them unless it be hallooed up, and in conversing with whom, it is always necessary to begin by hailing the maintop.