And then the moral and physical good acquired by the workmen themselves!  After six days’ toil, there is scarcely one of them who will not feel himself wonderfully enlightened on the wants and feelings of labouring man.  They will learn sympathy in the most efficient manner—­by the sweat of their brow.  Pleasant, indeed, ’twill be to see CASTLEREAGH lean on his axe, and beg, with Sly, for “a pot of the smallest ale.”

Having, we trust, remedied the evils of the mason’s strike—­having shewn that the fitness of things calls upon the Commons, in the present dilemma, to build their own house—­we should feel it unjust to the government not to acknowledge the good taste which, as we learn, has directed that an estimate be taken of the disposable space on the walls of the new buildings, to be devoted to the exalted work of the historical painter.  Records of the greatness of England are to endure in undying hues on the walls of Parliament.

This is a praiseworthy object, but to render it important and instructive, the greatest judgment must be exercised in the selection of subjects; which, for ourselves, we would have to illustrate the wisdom and benevolence of Parliament.  How beautifully would several of the Duke of WELLINGTON’S speeches paint!  For instance, his portrait of a famishing Englishman, the drunkard and the idler, no other man (according to his grace) famishing in England!  And then the Duke’s view of the shops of butchers, and poulterers, and bakers—­all in the Dutch style—­by which his grace has lately proved, that if there be distress, it can certainly not be for want of comestibles!  But the theme is too suggestive to be carried out in a single paper.

We trust that portraits of members will be admitted.  BURDETT and GRAHAM, half-whig, half-tory, in the style of Death and the Lady, will make pretty companion pictures.

To do full pictorial justice to the wisdom of the senate, Parliament will want a peculiar artist:  that gifted man CAN be no other than the artist to PUNCH!

Q.

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PUNCH’S PENCILLINGS.—­No.  XIV.

[Illustration:  THE IMPROVIDENT; OR, TURNED UPON THE WIDE WORLD.]

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THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE LONDON MEDICAL STUDENT.

III.—­OF HIS GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT.

For the first two months of the first winter session the fingers of the new man are nothing but ink-stains and industry.  He has duly chronicled every word that has fallen from the lips of every professor in his leviathan note book; and his desk teems with reports of all the hospital cases, from the burnt housemaid, all cotton-wool and white lead, who set herself on fire reading penny romances in bed, on one side of the hospital, to the tipsy glazier who bundled off his perch and spiked himself upon the area rails on the other.  He becomes a walking chronicle of pathological statistics, and after he has passed six weeks in the wards, imagines himself an embryo Hunter.