was that of a London ruffian, - would have put Staffordshire clothes on the Bill Sykes he may have seen in the flesh or more likely on the stage, and that would be all: Leech gives you the essence, the clothes, and the county. Look at these two fellows, brutal as their own bull-dogs and as stanch, - having their own virtues too, in a way, — what a shoulder, what a deltoid and biceps! the upper man developed largely by generations of arm work, the legs well enough, but not in proportion, their education having been neglected. Contrast these men with Leech's Highlandmen in Briggs' Salmon and Grouse Adventures: there matters are reversed, because so are the conditions of growth. A Staffordshire upper-man on Rannoch or Liddesdale legs would be an ugly customer. Observe the pipe fallen round from the mouth's action in speaking, and see how the potteries are indicated by the smoking brick cupola.

This is delicious! What comic vis! Pluck and perspiration! bewilderment and bottom! He'll be at it again presently, give him time. This is only one of the rounds, and the boothooks are ready for the next. Look at the state of his back-hair, his small, determined eye! the braces burst with the stress! The affair is being done in some remote, solitary room. The hat is ready, looking at him, and so are the spurs and the other boot, standing bolt upright and impossible; but he'll do it; apoplexy and asphyxia may be imminent ; but doubtless these are the very boots he won the steeplechase in. A British lion this too, not to be "done," hating that bête of a word "impossible" as much as Bonaparte did, and as Briggs does him. We have an obscure notion, too, that he has put the wrong foot into the boot; never mind.

The character of Mr. Briggs, throughout all predicaments in Punch, is, we think, better

sustained, more real, more thoroughly respectable and comic, than even Mr. Pickwick's. Somehow, though the latter worthy is always very delightful and like himself when he is with us, one does n't know what becomes of him the rest of the day; and if he was asked to be, we fear he could n't live through an hour, or do anything for himself. He is for the stage. Briggs is a man you have seen, he is a man of business, of sense, and energy; a good husband and citizen, a true Briton and Christian, peppery, generous, plucky, obstinate, faithful to his spouse and bill; only he has this craze about hunting and sport in general.

This is from the Little Tour in Ireland, in which, by the by, is one of the only two drawings he ever made of himself, — at page 141; it is a back view of him, riding with very short stirrups a rakish Irish pony; he is in the Gap of Dunloe, and listening to a bare