scale of
creation--for he can work for those who, thickly clothed, and buttoned to
the throat, have no rent in their purple, no stitch dropped in their
superfine, to expose their precious souls to an annihilating gust, and who
therefore keep their immortal sparks like tapers in burglars'
dark-lanthorns, whereby to rob and spoil with greater certainty!

Gentle reader, think you this a fantastic chapter on holes? If so, then of
a surety you do not read those instructive annals of your country penned
by many a TACITUS of the daily press--by many a profound historian who
unites to the lighter graces of stenography the enduring loveliness of
philosophy.

Some days since a meeting was held in the parish of Saint Pancras of the
"Young Men's Anti-Monopoly Association." The place of gathering, says the
reporter, was "a ruined _penny_ theatre!" It is evident in the brain of
the writer that the small price at which the theatre was ruined made its
infamy: to be blighted for a penny was the shame. Drury Lane and Covent
Garden have been ruined over and over again--but then their ruin, like
PHRYNE'S, has ever been at a large price of admission; hence, like court
harlots, their ruin has been dignified by high remuneration. What,
however, could be expected from a theatre that, with inconceivable
wickedness, suffered itself to be undone for a penny? Let the reporter
answer:--

"---- FORSTER, Esq., advanced, and, assuming _a teapot position_
on the stage, moved the first resolution, to the effect 'That the
bread-tax was the cause of all distress, and that they should use
their strenuous efforts to remove it.' 'Ladies (there was one old
woman _in a shocking bad black and white straw bonnet present_)
and gentlemen (said he), this is a public meeting to all intents
and purposes.'"

For ourselves we care not for an orator's standing like a teapot, if what
he pours out be something better than mere hot-water or dead small beer.
If, however, we were to typify orators in delf, there are many Tory
talkers whom we would associate with more ignominious shapes of crockery
than that of a teapot--senators who are taken by the handle, and by their
party used for the dirtiest offices.

We now come to the bad old woman whose excess of iniquity was blazoned in
her "bad black and white straw bonnet." This woman might have been an
ASPASIA, a DE STAEL, a Mrs. SOMERVILLE,--nay, the SYBILLA CUMEA herself.
What of that? The "ba