“Poor fellow, I pity him,” said Mr. Punch to Father TIME, as the pair passed away from the Lunar precincts together, bowing courteously, and a little apologetically, to ’ARRY’s late hostess, who called off her dogs, and affably responded to their parting salutation.  “Fact is,” pursued the Sage, “my young friend ’ARRY, though smart and fin de siecle, in his way, is a little of ’the earth, earthy,’ and lacks both the adventurousness and the tact of an Ixion.”

“I presume,” said the Scythe-bearer, “our inter-planetary peregrinations are now pretty nearly at an end—­for this time?”

“We have yet one more visit to pay,” said Mr. Punch.

At this moment, as the space-pervading trio fleeted forward, a strange unusual effulgence grew to the eastward, and began to bathe them in golden light.  Miraculously metamorphic was its action upon the aerial travellers. Mr. Punch flung aside his hat and his “Immensikoff,” and appeared as the Apollo-like personage he really is.  TOBY’s wings expanded, and his pace mended.  As for “Old Father TIME” himself, the combined influence of the regenerating philtre in Faust, and the fire-bath in She, could not more completely have transmogrified him.  His face brightened with youthfulness, his solitary forelock bushed out into a wavy and hyacinthine hirsute crop, his ancient and magician-like garments fell from him, his plumes expanded, until he looked more like “the herald Mercury” than old Edax Rerum.

  Then they swung, as on airy trapeze, or on wings of the thunder-bird
      strong,
  With the sound in their ears of the voice of the starry and sisterly
      throng. 
  Did the orbs of splendiferous Sol give a wink as they ranged into
      reach? 
  Was his genial mouth all alight with the flame of the friendliest
      speech? 
  Hey, Presto!  Great Scott!  Transformation on DRURIOLANUS’s stage
  Was never so sudden as this!  Who rides there as the Sun-God?  The Sage! 
  The Great Hypnotiser!  Utopia’s lord!  He Who Must Be Obeyed! 
  He whose Magical Spell is on Princes and Peoples, on Art and on Trade.
  Houp-la! Transformation tremendous!  The round of the Planets we’ve
      travelled,
  Some curious secrets unveiled, and some mysteries mighty unravelled.
  We manage things better on Earth! That’s the formula!  Sounds it
      sardonic? 
  Was Punch just a morsel sarcastic, his hosts just a trifle ironic? 
  At any rate, Punch here explains to the World how to manage things
      better,
  By purging Humanity’s spirit, and snapping Hate’s tyrannous fetter. 
  He’d Hypnotise Man into health, both of body and spirit, and out of
  The follies, and vices, and greeds, and conceits.  See the whole
      Comus-rout of
  Absurdities, Appetites, Antics, Antipathies, personal, national,
  Driven before his bright Sun-Car!  The Rule of the Rosily Rational
  He would inaugurate, making Earth’s atmosphere healthy as Thanet’s,
  That Father TIME, is his aim; that’s the Moral of Punch and the
      Planets!