“Nature seemed to wear a universal grin!”

It being always premised and settled that the term nature only comprehends the people with sleek coats and full stomachs.  Nature abhors a vacuum,—­therefore has nought to do with empty bellies.  Happy are the men whose fate, or better philosophy, has kept them from the turnips and the 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 broad-cloth—­can we marvel at the simper of the artisan fresh from his beef and pudding, solaced with tobacco and porter?  Surely not; for the smile breaks under the highest patronage; nay, even broad grins would have the noblest warranty, for his Grace the Duke of Wellington has pronounced rags to be the livery only of wilful idleness—­has stamped on the withering brow of destitution the brand of the drunkard.  Therefore, clap your hands to your pulpy sides, oh well-dressed, well-to-do London, and disdaining the pettiness of a simper, laugh an ogre’s laugh at the rags of Manchester—­grin like a tickled Polyphemus at the hunger of Bolton!