“Cut off his ugly head, Flibbertygibbet, my squire!” And who are these who pour out of the castle? the imprisoned maidens, the maltreated widows, the poor old hoary grandfathers, who have been locked up in the dungeons these scores and scores of years, writhing under the tyranny of that ruffian!  Ah ye knights of the pen!  May honor be your shield, and truth tip your lances!  Be gentle to all gentle people.  Be modest to women.  Be tender to children.  And as for the Ogre Humbug, out sword, and have at him.

ON TWO ROUNDABOUT PAPERS WHICH I INTENDED TO WRITE.*

* The following paper was written in 1861, after the extraordinary affray between Major Murray and the money- lender in a house in Northumberland Street, Strand, and subsequent to the appearance of M. Du Chaillu’s book on Gorillas.

We have all heard of a place paved with good intentions—­a place which I take to be a very dismal, useless, and unsatisfactory terminus for many pleasant thoughts, kindly fancies, gentle wishes, merry little quips and pranks, harmless jokes which die as it were the moment of their birth.  Poor little children of the brain!  He was a dreary theologian who huddled you under such a melancholy cenotaph, and laid you in the vaults under the flagstones of Hades!  I trust that some of the best actions we have all of us committed in our lives have been committed in fancy.  It is not all wickedness we are thinking, que diable!  Some of our thoughts are bad enough I grant you.  Many a one you and I have had here below.  Ah mercy, what a monster! what crooked horns! what leering eyes! what a flaming mouth! what cloven feet, and what a hideous writhing tail!  Oh, let us fall down on our knees, repeat our most potent exorcisms, and overcome the brute.  Spread your black pinions, fly—­fly to the dusky realms of Eblis, and bury thyself under the paving-stones of his hall, dark genie!  But all thoughts are not so.  No—­no.  There are the pure:  there are the kind:  there are the gentle.  There are sweet unspoken thanks before a fair scene of nature:  at a sun-setting below a glorious sea:  or a moon and a host of stars shining over it:  at a bunch of children playing in the street, or a group of flowers by the hedge-side, or a bird singing there.  At a hundred moments or occurrences of the day good thoughts pass through the mind, let us trust, which never are spoken; prayers are made which never are said; and Te Deum is sung without church, clerk, choristers, parson, or organ.  Why, there’s my enemy:  who got the place I wanted; who maligned me to the woman I wanted to be well with; who supplanted me in the good graces of my patron.  I don’t say anything about the matter:  but, my poor old enemy, in my secret mind I have movements of as tender charity towards you, you old scoundrel, as ever I had when we were boys together at school.  You ruffian! do you fancy I forget that we were fond of