scream, the better to extract practical compassion from the pockets of a morbidly humane society; we can believe this, Sir PETER, and feel no more for the trickster than if our heart were made of the best contract saddle-leather; but we confess a cut-throat staggers us; we fear, with all our caution, we should be converted to a belief in misery by a gash near the windpipe.  Sir PETER, however, with his enlarged mind, professes himself determined to probe the wound—­to look narrowly into its depth, breadth, and length, and to prescribe the treadmill, according to the condition of the patient!  Had the cautious Sir PETER been in the kilt of his countryman Macbeth, he would never have exhibited an “admired disorder” on the appearance of Banquo with his larynx severed in two; not he—­he would have called the wound a slight scratch, having narrowly looked into it, and immediately ordered the ghost to the guard-house.

The Duke of WELLINGTON, who has probably seen as many wounds as Sir PETER LAURIE, judging the case, would, by his own admission, have inflicted the same sentence upon the tailor Simmons as that fulminated by the Alderman.  ARTHUR and PETER would, doubtless, have been of one accord, Simmons avowed himself to be starving.  Now, in this happy land—­in this better Arcadia—­every man who wants food is proved by such want an idler or a drunkard.  The victor of Waterloo—­the tutelary wisdom of England’s counsels—­has, in the solemnity of his Parliamentary authority, declared as much.  Therefore it is most right that the lazy, profligate tailor, with a scar in his throat, should mount the revolving wheel for one month, to meditate upon the wisdom of Dukes and the judgments of Aldermen!

We no more thought of dedicating a whole page to one Sir PETER LAURIE, than the zoological Mr. CROSS would think of devoting an acre of his gardens to one ass, simply because it happened to be the largest known specimen of the species.  But, without knowing it, Sir PETER has given a fine illustration of the besetting selfishness of the times.  Had LAURIE been born to hide his ears in a coronet, he could not have more strongly displayed the social insensibility of the day.  The prosperous saddler, and the wretched, woe-begone tailor, are admirable types of the giant arrogance that dominates—­of the misery that suffers.

There is nothing more talked of with less consideration of its meaning and relative value than—­Life.  Has it not a thousand different definitions?  Is it the same thing to two different men?

Ask the man of independent wealth and sound body to paint Life, and what a very pretty picture he will lay before you.  He lives in another world—­has, as Sir Anthony Absolute says, a sun and moon of his own—­a realm of fairies, with attending sprites to perform his every compassable wish.  To him life is a most musical monosyllable; making his heart dance, and thrilling every nerve with its so-potent harmony.  Life—­but especially his life—­is, indeed, a sacred thing to him; and loud and deep are his praises of its miracles.  Like the departed ROTHSCHILD, “he does not know a better;” certain we are, he is in no indecent haste to seek it.