prevented your annoying any company by talking politics--always
assuring you that you would thank me for it yourself some day when
you grew older,--to expatiate, in short, upon my own assiduity as a
parent, is beside my present purpose, though I cannot but
contemplate your fair appearance--your robust health, and unimpeded
circulation (which I take to be the great secret of your good
looks) without the liveliest satisfaction and delight.

It is a trite observation, and one which, young as you are, I have
no doubt you have often heard repeated, that we have fallen upon
strange times, and live in days of constant shiftings and changes.
I had a melancholy instance of this only a week or two since. I
was returning from Manchester to London by the Mail Train, when I
suddenly fell into another train--a mixed train--of reflection,
occasioned by the dejected and disconsolate demeanour of the Post-
Office Guard. We were stopping at some station where they take in
water, when he dismounted slowly from the little box in which he
sits in ghastly mockery of his old condition with pistol and
blunderbuss beside him, ready to shoot the first highwayman (or
railwayman) who shall attempt to stop the horses, which now travel
(when they travel at all) INSIDE and in a portable stable invented
for the purpose,--he dismounted, I say, slowly and sadly, from his
post, and looking mournfully about him as if in dismal recollection
of the old roadside public-house the blazing fire--the glass of
foaming ale--the buxom handmaid and admiring hangers-on of tap-room
and stable, all honoured by his notice; and, retiring a little
apart, stood leaning against a signal-post, surveying the engine
with a look of combined affliction and disgust which no words can
describe. His scarlet coat and golden lace were tarnished with
ignoble smoke; flakes of soot had fallen on his bright green shawl-