id="pgepubid00021">PUNCH PRESENTING YE TENTH VOLUME TO YE QUEENE.

(1846.)]

FROM W.M. THACKERAY TO MR. PUNCH. (FEBRUARY, 1849.)

MR. PUNCH,—"When the future inquirer shall take up your volumes, or a bundle of French plays, and contrast the performance of your booth with that of the Parisian theatre, he won't fail to remark how different they are, and what different objects we admire or satirise. As for your morality. Sir, it does not become me to compliment you on it before your venerable face; but permit me to say, that there never was before published in this world so many volumes that contained so much cause for laughing, and so little for blushing; so many jokes, and so little harm. Why, Sir, say even that your modesty, which astonishes me more and more every time I regard you, is calculated, and not a virtue naturally inherent in you, that very fact would argue for the high sense of the public morality among us. We will laugh in the company of our wives and children; we will tolerate no indecorum: we like that our matrons and girls should be pure."

"ON WE GOES AGAIN!"