I am inclined to think, however, from the following advertisement, that some author has been recently piling up the virtues of his hero too strongly for the very delicate stomachs of the penny public, who, it is evident, resent superlatives of all kinds, and are commonplace and conventional to the marrow of their bones:  ’T.B.  TIMMINS is informed that he cannot be promised another story like “Mandragora,” since, in deciding the contents of our journal, the tastes of readers have to be considered whose interest cannot be aroused by the impossible deeds of impossible creatures.’  Alas!  I wish from my heart I knew what ‘deeds’ or ‘creatures’ do arouse the interest of this (to me) inexplicable public; for though I have before me the stories they obviously take delight in, why they do so I cannot tell.

At the ‘Answers to Correspondents,’ indeed, which form a leading feature in most of these penny journals, one may exclaim, with the colonel in ‘Woodstock,’ when, after many ghosts, he grapples with Wildrake:  ’Thou at least art palpable.’  Here we have the real readers, asking questions upon matters that concern them, and from these we shall surely get at the back of their minds.  But it is unfortunately not so certain that these ‘Answers to Correspondents’ are not themselves fictions, like all the rest—­only invented by the editor instead of the author, and coming in handy to fill up a vacant page.  It is, to my mind, incredible that a public so every way different from that of the Mechanic’s Institute, and to whom mere information is likely to be anything but attractive, should be genuinely solicitous to learn that ’Needles were first made in England in Cheapside, in the reign of Queen Mary, by a negro from Spain;’ or that ’The family name of the Duke of Norfolk is Howard, although the younger members of it call themselves Talbot.’

Even the remonstrance of ‘Our Correspondence Editor’ with a gentleman who wishes to learn ‘How to manufacture dynamite’ seems to me artificial; as though the idea of saying a few words in season against explosive compounds had occurred to him, without any particular opportunity having really offered itself for the expression of his views.

There are, however, one or two advertisements decidedly genuine, and which prove that the readers of penny fiction are not so immersed in romance but that they have their eyes open to the main chance and their material responsibilities.  ‘ANXIOUS TO KNOW,’ for example, is informed that ’The widow, unless otherwise decreed, keeps possession of furniture on her marriage, and the daughter cannot claim it;’ while SKIBBS is assured that ’After such a lapse of time there will be no danger of a warrant being issued for leaving his wife and family chargeable to the parish.’