the ingenious young Meadowses who bring forth gigantic gooseberries, supernatural strawberries, and miraculous melons.  He went into the country, and endeavoured to penetrate beyond the mere surface of things, listening to the speeches of county members, and dining diligently in warm weather with mayors, and people with corporations.  He endeavoured to detect the root of all evil, investigated the ramifications of radical reform, and exposed the ephemeral bulbous roots of speculation.  Prejudice he found too deeply rooted to be dug up very easily, whilst the fashions and follies of the day seemed to him to lie so entirely on the surface of the soil, and to be so shortlived, that to throw away any manual labour in an attempt to eradicate them, would be absurd.”

"Impossible” Amusements.

“At many of your amusements, the chief attraction consists in the extreme bodily peril in which the exhibiter is placed.  You took me to see a man walk up a rope, to an immense height, and had his foot slipped, he must have been dashed to pieces:  the place was crowded with persons who were in raptures; yet had the man been dancing on level ground, he would have danced far better; and the merit of the dancer seemed to consist in his giving the audience a chance of seeing him break his neck or dash his brains out!  If a foreigner were to announce that he would dance on a pack-thread, he would ruin the ropedancer; because, as the thread would in all probability break, his danger would be greater, and therefore his exhibition would be incomparable!  Then you all delight in distortions; if a man can bend his back bone, or sit upon his head, you are in raptures, and seem to think it a good joke to see a fellow creature shortening his life.  Then if any man will ride a dozen horses at once, without saddle or bridle; or go into an oven and be baked brown, or eat a fire shovel full of burning coals, or drink deadly poison, or fly off a church steeple, or thrust a pointed instrument down his throat, or walk on a ceiling with his head downwards, or go to sea in a washing tub, you would not lose the sight for the world; you clap your hands, shout with delight, and hold up your little children, that they may share papa and mamma’s rational amusement! and yet you tell me your national characteristic is humanity!”

A Man of Honour.

“Is Mr. Rabbitts a man of honour?”

“In the strictest sense of the word.”

“Living at the rate of thousands a year, when his income is just so many hundreds! furnishing his house magnificently without ever intending to pay for a pipkin, and at last making a sudden disappearance, which closely resembles what I have heard described as an Irish ‘moonlight flitting,’ where a tenant, who is unable to pay his rent, departs at dead of night with his wife and other movables, having previously thrashed his grain, and left the straw in its place to keep up appearances! The flittings of some of your ‘leading stars in the hemisphere of fashion’ are very similar; yet afterwards you may see them at some watering-place, as gay and as expensive as ever!  Have they mislaid their bills, and forgotten the names of their creditors?  If so, let them call for the Gazette, and look over the list of bankrupts. Such is the honour of Mr. Rabbitts!”