the knuckles for having dirty hands, should
wear the imperial purple. Still, I believe in
great men, as I believe in good men: as I also
believe in those who are both little and bad.

I was sauntering along a great thoroughfare.
A newly-erected portico caught my
eye. Glancing at an inscription which was
over it, I perceived that I was in the
vicinity of a sort of Pantheon for great men,
where, not only the dead, but the living, are
"honoured by the nations," and very much
visited by country cousins. I had passed this
building a thousand times, without once
being struck by the fact, that the greatness
of which I had all my life been dreaming,
was there in visible presence: not merely
sculptured in marble, or pourtrayed on
canvas, but actually wearing the habit in
which it lived; a thing to be walked close
up to and examined; to be looked at behind
and before; to be handled—no, that was a
mistake of mine, as I afterwards discovered;
to be face to face with, and yet, not altogether
to be borne down. But now, when I saw
the matter in this new light, I hesitated no
longer to make acquaintance with the
"famous in story," at the small cost of one
shilling for admission, and sixpence for the
catalogue.

The catalogue! Was it necessary to have
a catalogue to enable me to distinguish
between Oliver Cromwell and Mr. George
Hudson; between John Knox and the Bishop
of Exeter, between Loushkin, the Russian
giant, and the American "General" Tom
Thumb; between greatness itself and that
which Fielding happily calls "great greatness"?
No; it was not for such a purpose
that I bought my catalogue. I was desirous
of studying History in Wax by the aid of its
latest commentator; and had a more
voluminous historian been before me—one, for
instance, who can write you a dozen large
octavos and put nothing into them but words
—I question if I should have been as much
entertained or instructed.

"Strip the word 'Majesty' of its
externals"— everybody knows the rest. The
proprietors of the Unrivalled Exhibition
as our Pantheon is rightly termed, adopt a
different method. Not always; but then the
departure from their custom is on principle—
to heighten the glory of the rest.

Thus, the first figure that greets you on
entering the Great Room, is that of one of
the most celebrated of the French African
Generals, in plain clothes, with the ribbon of
the Legion of Honour as his sole decoration.
Physiognomy is not always an unerring guide;
though I rely upon it in nine cases out of ten,
but I confess, if it had not been for the
catalogue, I should have taken Number Seventy-
one which represents General Cavaignac,
for a waiter at the Muette de Portici, on the
Prado at Marseilles; or, at the best, for a
half-caste deputy from Martinique. Had he
really been an African general, instead of
having gloriously earned the title, his
complexion could scarcely have been darker. For
his costume, my opinion has already been
implied, though the catalogue says it is that
which was usually worn by him when
President of the French Republic. The truth
is, that although "a plain man in black" may
pass muster very well in real life, a man of
wax is all the better for a little gilding. The
rouged cheek, the glittering eye, and the well-
arranged hair, which are the universal
characteristics of the waxen race, do not harmonise
well with simple black and white; they
require to be sustained by rich colours, bright
ornaments, and flowing draperies. There must,
of course, be exceptions. William Cobbett,
now, who sits so naturally gazing on the group
where Henry the Eighth stands in armour,
surrounded by all his wives (with their heads
on) and children, would look strange if he
were attired in the warlike habiliments of
the "beau Sabreur," Murat; while Richard
Cobden, Lord Brougham, or Daniel O'Connell,
would scarcely appear to advantage in suits
of knightly armour. To return to General
Cavaignac, and my own deficiency in
physiognomical acumen. I ought to have discerned
republicanism in every one of those well-
tanned lineaments, for I find it stated in the
catalogue that his father was a deputy of
the National Assembly, and considered a
stanch republican, while his mother was
a woman of considerable talent, and to her
is attributed the strong republican bias of
the general's mind.

But, if plain republicanism be not easily
recognised, the same cannot be said with
respect to the royalty that meets one in the
Pantheon at every turn. Close to General
Cavaignac stands the splendid cot containing
the Prince of Wales and the Princess Royal
—in wax, of course—whose respective births
are thus adverted to: The Princess Royal
was born November the twenty-first, eighteen
hundred and forty, at Buckingham Palace, to
the great gratification of the nation; and
her royal brother was born November the
ninth, eighteen hundred and forty-one, to the
special joy of their royal parents. They are
regarded by all loyal Britons with peculiar
satisfaction, as continuing the royal line of
Brunswick, which, under Divine Providence,
may be their polar star for generations to come.

Queen Victoria is thrice represented in
the Pantheon. Number Thirty-seven is a
"little go" group of three figures, in which
her Majesty and Prince Albert are
supposed to be offering to the late illustrious
Duke of Wellington, the honours he so well
merited. If this supposition have any foundation
in fact, then Prince Albert, attired in a
field-marshal's uniform, with white shorts,
silks, and pumps, must have stood in a very
unstable attitude when, balancing himself on
one toe, he advanced, in the manner of Coulon,
to place a wreath of laurel on the brow of the
great warrior.