state, on the evidence of an imbedded elbow,
that the flesh of that eminent character was of
a firm and elastic type, and strongly suggestive
of india-rubber.

Nor was this punching mania—which was
indulged in by all classes, and sometimes by
obvious town-bred persons who would not know
a heifer from a hog—the only remarkable thing
connected with visitors to the Cattle Show,
observed by your Eye-witness. Were there not
present the wives and children of competing
farmers, and had they not, some of them, taken
up their quarters near to their especial sheep
or ox, believing in it, and thinking it ought to
have had the prize, just as the E.-W. has seen
the families of artists encamped near their
picture at the Exhibition of the Royal Academy,
watching its effect on the public, and wondering
that anything else in the place was looked at
for a moment?

While on the subject of artists, it may be
mentioned that this class of persons is
represented at the Cattle Show by the most singular
and uncomfortable set of men that your
Eye-witness ever beheld. Your cattle painter
combines with the appearance of an ordinary
sign-board artist, a strong flavour of the drover and
the horse-dealer. He has also mysterious ways
of following his profession: being able—while
holding his canvas in one of his hands—to
paint in oils witli the other, from an animal
which is so surrounded by the crowd that he
never sees it. He is also much jogged as to the
elbows, and generally hustled by the mob. Yet
he is indifferent to these things, and progresses
none the worse for them; producing a work of
art which, though remotely suggestive—the
prize ox being this year a mahogany coloured
ox—of a chest of drawers, placed in a
colic-green meadow to season, is yet very attractive
to a nation as fond of cattle-pictures as ours.
The nation, in this case, however, does not
purchase, but confines itself to admiring (and
hustling) the artist, till he is at last obliged to
hold on to the stall of the ox in order to keep
himself in the building at all. Yet even with this
additional claim upon his hands, he manages to
paint away at the chest of drawers, availing
himself of the knocks upon the elbow which he
receives for accidental touches which are very
effective. The amateurs do not (as has just been
said) purchase, and later in the day your
Eye-witness came upon a little knot of these
cattle-painters seated in speechless misery, in a very
dark place, looking at their own works. Every
one of them had two pictures in each of his hands,
and one invariably held between the knees, and as
all their lips were moving, without any sound
issuing from them, the E.-W. could only
conclude that these neglected men were engaged in
selling their own works to themselves at an
imaginary auction, and were whispering
imaginary biddings on a scale of awful and unheard-of
magnificence.

There is something in the failure of a work of
art—however bad it may be— which is always
affecting, and the Eye-witness was touched
by the unsuccessful efforts of these
unfortunate gentlemen, as much as he was by the
evident disappointment of a certain lonely
and inflated sheep which was secreted under a
flight of steps, and which was being furtively fed
by its proprietor with slices of fattening food,
as if, even now, there were a chance of getting
the poor animal into such condition as might
cause its merits to be recognised. That
sheep had doubtless been expected to do great
things. Is this the only instance of a home
prodigy which when sent out into the world and
tried by the terrible test of comparison is found
to be "nowhere" in the race?

Of such failures in the competition there was
a numerous herd, and they all appeared to your
Eye-witness to wear an injured look, laying
their heads together, and secretly disparaging
their more successful rivals: while one abnormal
ox whose owner was seated on the edge of his
pen, evinced the morbid excess to which his
appetite had been cultivated by eating the
coat-tails of his master as they hung over the side of
the stall.

Your Eve-witness, becoming anxious to change
the scene, is thinking of the open air with feelings
more keenly sharpened to appreciate that luxury
by the somewhat tallowy smell emitted by the
Cattle Show generally—when he happens to
observe, in a corner of the building, a door leading
to an obscure passage, dimly lighted with gas.
One glance at the inscription over the door is
enough for him. He plunges through it, pays his
shilling with a free hand, hears a faint tinkling
of music, stumbles up a staircase, the music
becomes louder—another door opens, the music
becomes deafening—and the E.-W. emerges
into a gorgeous apartment of vast size, and
with the oddest looking people, in the oddest
looking dresses, and in the strangest attitudes,
standing round about it. Of whom, more, next
time.

Just published, in one vol. demy 8vo, price 9s.
       A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
        BY CHARLES DICKENS.
With Sixteen Illustrations by HABLOT K. BROWNE.

               Now Ready, price 4d.,
             THE HAUNTED HOUSE,
  Forming the CHRISTMAS NUMBER of ALL THE
YEAR ROUND; and containing the amount of two
ordinary numbers.