"Eve of a land that still is Paradise,
Italian beauty!"

But as we never look for perfection in human nature, it is too much to
expect it in wood. We wish it to be understood that we repudiate such
principles and conduct. We have a Judy of our own, and a little
Punchininny that commits innumerable improprieties; but we fearlessly aver
that we never threw him out of window, nor belaboured the lady with a
stick--even of the size allowed by law.

There is one portion of the drama we wish was omitted, for it always
saddens us--we allude to the prison scene. PUNCH, it is true, sings in
durance, but we hear the ring of the bars mingling with the song. We are
advocates for the _correction_ of offenders; but how many generous
and kindly beings are there pining within the walls of a prison, whose
only crimes are poverty and misfortune! They, too, sing and laugh, and
appear jocund, but the _heart_ can ever hear the ring of the bars.

We never looked upon a lark in a cage, and heard him trilling out his
music as he sprang upwards to the roof of his prison, but we felt sickened
with the sight and sound, as contrasting, in our thought, the free
minstrel of the morning, bounding as it were into the blue caverns of the
heavens, with the bird to whom the world was circumscribed. May the time
soon arrive, when every prison shall be a palace of the mind--when we
shall seek to instruct and cease to punish. PUNCH has already advocated
education by example. Look at his dog Toby! The instinct of the brute has
almost germinated into reason. Man _has_ reason, why not give him
intelligence?

We now come to the last great lesson of our motley teacher--the gallows!