pping season, when white-bait abounds at
Blackwall and Greenwich, and when the Lord Mayor gives his Easter-ball;
and 'keeps up the hospitalities of his high office.'" Not, however, that
life is without its graver duties--its religious observations. Oh, no! it
is the duty of well-to-do Life to punish starving men for forgetting its
surpassing loveliness--it is a high obligation of Life to go to church in
a carriage, and confess itself a miserable sinner--it is the duty of Life
to read its bible; and then the Alderman, to show that he is well versed
in the volume, quotes a passage--"when the voice of the turtle is heard in
the land."

Now ask the Paisley weaver what is Life? Bid the famine-stricken
multitudes of Bolton to describe with their white lips the surpassing
beauty of human existence. Can it be possible that the glorious
presence--the beneficent genius that casts its blessings in the paths of
other men--is such an ogre, a fiend, to the poor? Alas! is he not a daily
tyrant, scourging with meanest wants--a creature that, with all its bounty
to others, is to the poor and destitute more terrible than Death? Let
Comfort paint a portrait of Life, and now Penury take the pencil. "Pooh!
pooh!" cry the sage LAURIES of the world, looking at the two
pictures--"that scoundrel Penury has drawn an infamous libel. _That_ Life!
with that withered face, sunken eye, and shrivelled lip; and what is
worse, with a suicidal scar in its throat! _That_ Life! The painter Penury
is committed for a month as a rogue and vagabond. We shall look very
narrowly into these cases."

We agree with the profound Sir PETER LAURIE that it is a most wicked, a
most foolish act of the poor man to end his misery by suicide. But we
think there is a better remedy for such desperation than the tread-mill.
The surest way for the rich and powerful of the world to make the poor man
more careful of his life is to render it of greater value to him.

Q.

* * * * *

PUNCH'S PENCILLINGS.--No. XVIII.

[Illustrations: POLITICAL THEATRICALS EXTRAORDINARY.

NORMA.

NORMA (the Deserted) LORD MELBOURNE.
ADALGISA (the Seductive) SIR R. PEEL.
POLLIO (the Faithless) MR. WAKLEY.
CHILDREN MASTERS RUSSELL & MORPETH.]

* * * * *

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE LONDON MEDICAL STUDENT.

7.--OF VARIOUS OTHER DIVERTING MATTERS CONNECTED WITH GRINDING.

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