'Until Caldecott's charming illustrations of it made me laugh so much,' said a young lady to me the other day, 'I confess—though I know it's very stupid of me—I never saw much fun in "John Gilpin."' She evidently expected a reproof, and when I whispered in her ear, 'Nor I,' her lovely features assumed a look of positive enfranchisement.

'But am I right?' she inquired.

'You are certainly right, my dear young lady,' said I, 'not to pretend admiration where you don't feel it; as to liking "John Gilpin," that is a matter of taste. It has, of course, simplicity to recommend it; but in my own case, though I'm fond of fun, it has never evoked a smile. It has always seemed to me like one of Mr. Joe Miller's stories put into tedious verse.'

I really almost thought (and hoped) that that young lady would have kissed me.

'Papa always says it is a free country,' she exclaimed, 'but I never felt it to be the case before this moment.'

For years this beautiful and accomplished creature had locked this awful secret in her innocent breast—that she didn't see much fun in 'John Gilpin.' 'You have given me courage,' she said, 'to confess something else. Mr. Caldecott has just been illustrating in the same charming manner Goldsmith's "Elegy on a Mad Dog," and—I'm very sorry—but I never laughed at that before, either. I have pretended to laugh, you know,' she added, hastily and apologetically, 'hundreds of times.'

'I don't doubt it,' I replied; 'this is not such a free country as your father supposes.'

'But am I right?'

'I say nothing about "right,"' I answered, 'except that everybody has a right to his own opinion. For my part, however, I think the 'Mad Dog' better than 'John Gilpin' only because it is shorter.'

Whether I was wrong or right in the matter is of no consequence even to myself; the affection and gratitude of that young creature would more than repay me for a much greater mistake, if mistake it is. She protests that I have emancipated her from slavery. She has since talked to me about all sorts of authors, from Sir Philip Sidney to Washington Irving, in a way that would make some people's blood run cold; but it has no such effect upon me—quite the reverse. Of Irving she naïvely remarks that his strokes of humour seem to her to owe much of their success to the rarity of their occurrence; the flashes of fun are spread over pages of dulness, which enhance them, just as a dark night is propitious to fireworks, or the atmosphere of the House cf Commons, or of a Court of Law, to a joke. She is often in error, no doubt, but how bright and wholesome such talk is as compared with the platitudes and commonplaces which one hears on all sides in connection with literature!