When, however, his puffs are not squared according to the publisher’s liking, he is sent about his business; sometimes threatened with an expos‚ of the peculiarities of his trade.  He has free drinks and dinners at various first class hotels, which he invariably recommends in his ‘articles.’  Doctor Thompson’s purgative powders, Lubin’s perfumery, and the Home Journal, are severally victims of his profound respect.

“The correspondent critic has small apartments at first class hotels, which he changes frequently, out of sheer respect, as he says, to economy.  But I have failed to discover how this could apply, since the change was invariably made for a more expensive hotel, while a little score always remained on the ledger, to the no small annoyance of the host.  But, sir, where they have it is in ‘knowing’ the impressibility of certain ambitious actresses, whose acquaintance they cultivate, and for a given sum set them up for Siddonses and Rachels, with the same respect for modesty they evince in puffing Peteler’s soda water.

“And now, sir, we have come to the last, but depend upon it, he is not the least of them all—­I mean the critic at large.”  Here Mr. Tickler, who, it must be known, was as big a knave as any of them, and only charged upon others the little inconsistencies he had himself been guilty of, lighted his cigar, and suggested the good results of another well compounded punch, which the general ordered without delay.  “I tell you, sir,” Mr. Tickler resumed, “he is an oily gentleman in very shabby clothes, and might be easily mistaken for a cross between a toper and a tinker.  Lacking capacity for any other business, he forms a cheap connection with the press, where his first office would seem to be that of sitting in judgment upon literature.  Indeed, I have seldom seen a more shabby gentleman set up for a man of letters.  His aversion to water and clean linen is only equaled by his love of actors and bad brandy, the latter having painted his face with a deep glow.  The limit of his ‘set phrases’ is somewhat narrow; but notwithstanding this little impediment, he has a wonderful facility for making heroes.  He assists publishers in ‘getting out books,’ getting up sensations, and, perhaps, a learned controversy, in which the Evening Post, feeling its reserved rights infringed, will join issue with every one else.  The critic at large is, in most cases, a foreign gentleman, who boasts an engagement on the Express, adding at the same time, and with some assurance, that he writes for the Sunday Dispatch and Atlas.  This stroke of policy he holds necessary to preserve his respectability.  He is in high favor at all the theaters, tips winks to his actress acquaintances, drinks slings and toddies at Honey’s with actors befuddling themselves into that dreamy state regarded by the profession as necessary to the clear bringing out of all the beauties with which a beneficent providence endowed the kings and conquerors they are to personate at night, on that sequestered