heather--fortunate mortals, who, banned from the murder of partridges and
grouse, have for the last few days of our contemporary, been dwellers in
merry London! What exulting faces! What crowds of well-dressed, well-fed
_Malvolios_, "smiling" at one another, though not cross-gartered! To a man
prone to ponder on that many-leaved, that scribbled, blurred and blotted
volume, the human face,--that mysterious tome printed with care, with
cunning and remorse,--that thing of lies, and miseries, and hypocritic
gladness,--that volume, stained with tears, and scribbled over and over
with daily wants, and daily sufferings, and daily meannesses;--to such a
reader who, from the hieroglyphic lines of feigned content, can translate
the haggard spirit and the pining heart,--to such a man too often
depressed and sickened by the contemplation of the carnivorous faces
thronging the streets of London--faces that look as if they deemed the
stream of all human happiness flowed only from the Mint,--to such a man,
how great the satisfaction, how surpassing the enjoyment of these "last
few days!" As with the Thane of Cawdor, every man's face has been a book;
but, alas! luckier than _Macbeth_, that book has been--_Joe Miller!_

Every well-dressed gentleman has smiled, but then the source of his
satisfaction has been the rags fluttering on the human carcases in the
manufacturing districts. Every well-to-do artisan has wended his way along
the streets showing his teeth, but then at his own sweet will he can
employ those favoured instruments on roast or boiled: hence his smile for
those who, gifted with the like weapons, bear them as men bear court
swords, for ornament, not use. Alas! the smirk of the well-dressed may be
struck into blank astonishment by the fluttering of rags--by a standard of
tatters borne by a famine-maddened myriad; the teeth of the dragon want
may be sown, and the growth may, as of old, be armed men.

Yet can we wonder at the jocoseness of those arrayed in lawn and