No less than three people are "smashed,"-- the Old Man of Whitehaven "who danced a quadrille with a Raven;" the Old Person of Buda; and the Old Man with a gong "who bumped at it all the day long," though in the last-named case we admit that there was considerable provocation.
Before quitting the first "Nonsense-Book," we would point out that it contains one or two forms that are interesting; for instance, "scroobious," which we take to be a Portmanteau word, and "spickle-speckled," a favorite form of reduplication with Mr.Lear, and of which the best specimen occurs in his last book, "He tinkledy-binkledy-winkled the bell." The second book, published in 1871, shows Mr.Lear in the maturity of sweet desipience, and will perhaps remain the favorite volume of the four to grown-up readers.
The nonsense-songs are all good, and "The Story of the Four little Children who went Round the World" is the most exquisite piece of imaginative absurdity that the present writer is acquainted with.

But before coming to that, let us quote a few lines from "The Jumblies," who, as all the world knows, went to sea in a sieve:-- "They sailed to the Western Sea, they did, To a land all covered with trees.
And they bought an Owl, and a useful Cart, And a pound of Rice, and a Cranberry Tart, And a hive of silvery Bees.
And they bought a Pig, and some green Jack-Daws, And a lovely Monkey with lollipop paws, And forty bottles of Ring-Bo-Ree, And no end of Stilton Cheese.
_Far and few, far and few, Are the lands where the Jumblies live.
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue, And they went to sea in a sieve._ And in twenty years they all came back, In twenty years or more, And every one said, 'How tall they've grown! For they've been to the Lakes, and the Torrible Zone, And the hills of the Chankly Bore.'" From the pedestrian excursion of the Table and the Chair, we cannot resist making a brief quotation, though in this, as in every case, the inability to quote the drawings also is a sad drawback:-- "So they both went slowly down, And walked about the town, With a cheerful bumpy sound, As they toddled round and round.
And everybody cried, As they hastened to their side, 'See, the Table and the Chair Have come out to take the air!' "But in going down an alley To a castle in a valley, They completely lost their way, And wandered all the day, Till, to see them safely back, They paid a Ducky-Quack, And a Beetle and a Mouse, Who took them to their house.
"Then they whispered to each other, 'O delightful little brother, What a lovely walk we've taken! Let us dine on Beans and Bacon!' So the Ducky and the leetle Browny-Mousy, and the Beetle Dined, and danced upon their heads, Till they toddled to their beds." "The Story of the Four little Children who went Round the World" follows next, and the account of the manner in which they occupied themselves while on shipboard may be transcribed for the benefit of those unfortunate persons who have not perused the original: "During the day-time Violet chiefly occupied herself in putting salt-water into a churn, while her three brothers churned it violently in the hope it would turn into butter, which it seldom if ever did." After journeying for a time, they saw some land at a distance, "and when they came to it they found it was an island made of water quite surrounded by earth.

Besides that it was bordered by evanescent isthmuses with a great Gulf-Stream running about all over it, so that it was perfectly beautiful, and contained only a single tree, five hundred and three feet high." In a later passage, we read how "by-and-by the children came to a country where there were no houses, but only an incredibly innumerable number of large bottles without corks, and of a dazzling and sweetly susceptible blue color.

Each of these blue bottles contained a bluebottlefly, and all these interesting animals live continually together in the most copious and rural harmony, nor perhaps in many parts of the world is such perfect and abject happiness to be found." Our last quotation from this inimitable recital shall be from the description of their adventure on a great plain where they espied an object which "on a nearer approach and on an accurately cutaneous inspection, seemed to be somebody in a large white wig sitting on an arm-chair made of sponge-cake and oyster-shells." This turned out to be the "Co-operative Cauliflower," who, "while the whole party from the boat was gazing at him with mingled affection and disgust ...

suddenly arose, and in a somewhat plumdomphious manner hurried off towards the setting sun, his steps supported by two superincumbent confidential cucumbers ...