into the
blue caverns of the heavens, with the bird to whom the world was
circumscribed. May the time soon arrive, when every prison shall be
a palace of the mind--when we shall seek to instruct and cease to
punish. PUNCH has already advocated education by example. Look at his
dog Toby! The instinct of the brute has almost germinated into reason.
Man _has_ reason, why not give him intelligence?

We now come to the last great lesson of our motley teacher--the
gallows! that accursed tree which has its _root_ in injuries.
How clearly PUNCH exposes the fallacy of that dreadful law which
authorises the destruction of life! PUNCH sometimes destroys the
hangman: and why not? Where is the divine injunction against the
shedder of man's blood to rest? None _can_ answer! To us there is but
ONE disposer of life. At other times PUNCH hangs the devil: this is as
it should be. Destroy the principle of evil by increasing the means
of cultivating the good, and the gallows will then become as much a
wonder as it is now a jest.

We shall always play PUNCH, for we consider it best to be merry and
wise--

"And laugh at all things, for we wish to know,
What, after all, are all things but a show!"--_Byron_.

As on the stage of PUNCH's theatre, many characters appear to fill
up the interstices of the more important story, so our pages will be
interspersed with trifles that have no other object than the moment's
approbation--an end which will never be sought for at the expense of
others, beyond the evanescent smile of a harmless satire.

* * * * *

COMMERCIAL INTELLIGENCE.

There is a report of the stoppage of one of the most respectable
_hard-bake_ houses in the metropolis. The firm had been speculating
considerably in "Prince Albert's Rock," and this is said to have
been the rock they have ultimately split upon. The boys will be the
greatest sufferers. One of them had stripped his jacket of all its
buttons as a deposit on some _tom-trot_, which the house had promised
to supply on the following day; and we regret to say, there are
whispers of other transactions of a similar character.

Money has been abundant all day, and we saw a half-crown piece and
some halfpence lying absolutely idle in the hands of an individual,
who, if he had only chosen to walk with it into the market, might
have produced a very alarming effect on some minor description of
securities. Cherries were taken very freely at twop