the drama we wish was omitted, for it always
saddens us--we allude to the prison scene. PUNCH, it is true, sings in
durance, but we hear the ring of the bars mingling with the song. We are
advocates for the _correction_ of offenders; but how many generous
and kindly beings are there pining within the walls of a prison, whose
only crimes are poverty and misfortune! They, too, sing and laugh, and
appear jocund, but the _heart_ can ever hear the ring of the bars.

We never looked upon a lark in a cage, and heard him trilling out his
music as he sprang upwards to the roof of his prison, but we felt sickened
with the sight and sound, as contrasting, in our thought, the free
minstrel of the morning, bounding as it were 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 be