And thus have we brought to a conclusion our history of the great French Revolution of 1884.  It records the actions of great and various characters; the deeds of various valor; it narrates wonderful reverses of fortune; it affords the moralist scope for his philosophy; perhaps it gives amusement to the merely idle reader.  Nor must the latter imagine, because there is not a precise moral affixed to the story, that its tendency is otherwise than good.  He is a poor reader, for whom his author is obliged to supply a moral application.  It is well in spelling-books and for children; it is needless for the reflecting spirit.  The drama of Punch himself is not moral:  but that drama has had audiences all over the world.  Happy he, who in our dark times can cause a smile!  Let us laugh then, and gladden in the sunshine, though it be but as the ray upon the pool, that flickers only over the cold black depths below!

COX’S DIARY.

The announcement.

On the 1st of January, 1838, I was the master of a lovely shop in the neighborhood of Oxford Market; of a wife, Mrs. Cox; of a business, both in the shaving and cutting line, established three-and-thirty years; of a girl and boy respectively of the ages of eighteen and thirteen; of a three-windowed front, both to my first and second pair; of a young foreman, my present partner, Mr. Orlando Crump; and of that celebrated mixture for the human hair, invented by my late uncle, and called Cox’s Bohemian Balsam of Tokay, sold in pots at two-and-three and three-and-nine.  The balsam, the lodgings, and the old-established cutting and shaving business brought me in a pretty genteel income.  I had my girl, Jemimarann, at Hackney, to school; my dear boy, Tuggeridge, plaited her hair beautifully; my wife at the counter (behind the tray of patent soaps, &c.) cut as handsome a figure as possible; and it was my hope that Orlando and my girl, who were mighty soft upon one another, would one day be joined together in Hyming, and, conjointly with my son Tug, carry on the business of hairdressers when their father was either dead or a gentleman:  for a gentleman me and Mrs. C. determined I should be.

Jemima was, you see, a lady herself, and of very high connections:  though her own family had met with crosses, and was rather low.  Mr. Tuggeridge, her father, kept the famous tripe-shop near the “Pigtail and Sparrow,” in the Whitechapel Road; from which place I married her; being myself very fond of the article, and especially when she served it to me—­the dear thing!

Jemima’s father was not successful in business:  and I married her, I am proud to confess it, without a shilling.  I had my hands, my house, and my Bohemian balsam to support her!—­and we had hopes from her uncle, a mighty rich East India merchant, who, having left this country sixty years ago as a cabin-boy, had arrived to be the head of a great house in India, and was worth millions, we were told.