As the winter approaches we are promised increasing sources of amusement
from the manufacturing districts. What sunny faces will break though the
fogs of November--what giggling will drown the cutting blasts of January!
Eschewing the wise relaxation of pantomimes, we shall be taught to consult
the commercial reports in the newspapers as the highest and fullest source
of salutary laughter. How we shall simper when mills are stopped--how crow
with laughter when whole factories are silent and deserted! How
reader--(for we acknowledge none who are not well-dressed and
well-to-do)--how you will scream with joy when banks break!--and how
consult the list of bankrupts as the very spirit and essence of the most
consummate fun. Insolvency shall henceforth be synonymous with
repartee--and compositions with creditors practical _bons mots_.

Oh! reader--(but mind, you _must_, we say, to be our reader, be
well-dressed and well-to-do; for though we owe the very paper beneath your
eye to rags, we trust we are sufficiently in the mode to laugh
contemptuously at such abominations)--oh! reader, quit your lighter
recreations; seek not for merriment in fictitious humour; it is a poor,
unsatisfactory diet, weak and watery; but find substantial drollery from
the fluttering of tatters--laugh, and with the crowing joy, grow sleek and
lusty at the writhings and the lamentations of want!

We have, however, a recent benevolent instance of the political and social
power of dress--an instance gathered from the Court of Spain. The organ
(or rather barrel-organ of Toryism, for it has only a set number of tunes)
which played our opening quotation, also grinds the following:--

"The Regent Espartero, and the tutor Arguelles, are doing all in their
power to keep the young Queen and the Infanta _in good humour_,