The lions of literature are present in the flesh. Here is the distinguished Snortup, author of “The Common Objects of the Back-yard,” “Geology in Joke,” “Trigonometry Judged by Taxation,” “The Extinct Animals of Eel-pie Island,” and other erudite and ponderous scientific works. Snortup, who is a Doctor of Philosophy of the University of Schinckelbrauen, is a heavy man, with a black wig and a huge black satin stock, in which gleams a cameo bearing a curious resemblance to an oyster. He snuffs a great deal, and when he speaks he does not belie his name, but literally snorts. Near him is young Twiddles, with his auburn hair, his turn-down collar, and Byron tie, his speckled silk stockings and low shoes, his baby face and falsetto voice. Twiddles, who writes under the pseudonym of Swedenborg Scanderberg, has just published a volume of poems of the ultra-spasmodic order. In passages replete with burning eloquence, he has spoken of the “moonbeam’s frosty rime, that hoars the head of nature, and makes last summer’s sapling patriarchal white.” His grand passage in “Ladye Babbynetta,” in which he alludes to “the hot and rabid ice, that burns and sears by force of congelation,” has been enthusiastically spoken of by Sidney Muffins, editor of the “Tomfool” (with which is incorporated the “Pinchbeck News”) weekly journal. Muffins is not a poet yet, but he hopes to be one when his whiskers grow and he has read “Cassel’s Popular Educator.” Meanwhile, he swears by Twiddles, and fiercely abuses, in print and in person, those who can’t avoid the conviction that Twiddles is a donkey. Do you see that man with the enormous red beard, the black velvet cuffs, collars, and facings to his coat, and the fez cap? That is O’Roarer. O’Roarer is a special correspondent to the “Howl” daily newspaper. O’Roarer went to the Crimea for the “Howl,” during the war; he quarrelled with a major in a marching regiment, and challenged him to mortal combat. The general commanding the division was compelled to request O’Roarer to select some other locality for his hut, and terrific were the criticisms upon that divisional general’s military conduct, which subsequently appeared in the “Howl.” Little Eggles, who was a clerk in the Commissariat Department, who hates O’Roarer, declares that he was found in Balaclava once returning from a carouse on board ship, and _Bacchi plenus_, that he was taken to the main-guard, and in the morning, notwithstanding his protestations that it was “all a mistake,” and his assertions of his “responsible position,” he received the customary hospitality of the main-guard, namely, two dozen lashes. Eggles adds, with a knowing wink, that the provost-marshal was not General ——’s nephew for nothing.