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THE COMMERCIAL VIEW.-The muslin home-market is in a state of extreme depression. The supply greatly exceeds the demand, and the article is a mere drug. Hands can scarcely command a purchaser, and the inquiries for hearts are very few. Sempstresses are quoted at lamentably reduced figures, and domestic servants, at no time particularly brisk, are now duller than ever. The colonial trade in this description of goods, however, is still lively, they being especially in request in Australia, whither some shipments of them have been already consigned; and it is to be hoped that every facility will be given to their continued exportation.

THE CYNICAL VIEW.-Wherever there is mischief, women are sure to be at the bottom of it. The state of the country bears out this old saying. All our difficulties arise from a superabundance of females. The only remedy for this evil is to pack up bag and baggage, and start them away.

THE ALARMIST VIEW.-If the surplus female population with which we are overrun increases much more, we shall be eaten up with women. What used to be our better half will soon become our worse nine-tenths; a numerical majority which it will be vain to contend with, and which will reduce our free and glorious constitution to that most degrading of all despotisms, a petticoat government.

THE DOMESTIC VIEW.-The daughters of England are too numerous, and if their Mother cannot otherwise get them off her hands, she must send them abroad into the world.

THE SCHOLASTIC VIEW.-The country is fast losing its masculine character, and becoming daily more feminine. Measures must be taken for restoring the balance of gender, or there will soon be no such property as propria quæ maribus in Great Britain, and not a stiver shall we have to bless ourselves with of as in præsenti.

THE NATURALIST'S VIEW.-On the Cockney Sportsman's game-list there is a little bird called commonly the chaffinch; by Hampshire youth, the chink; and by LINNEUS, Fringilla cælebs. LINNEUS was a Swede, and called the chaffinch celebs, because in Sweden and other northern countries, in winter, the females migrate, and leave the males bachelors. It is to be wished that our own redundant females were far enough north to take wing, like the hen-chaffinch.

OUR OWN VIEW. It is lamentable that thousands of poor girls should starve here upon slops, working for slopsellers, and only not dying old maids because dying young, when stalwart mates and solid meals might be found for all in Australia. Doubtless, they would fly as fast as the Swedish hen-chaffinches-if only they had the means of flying. It remains with the Government and the country to find them wings.

66

A Glorious Resolve.

AN important resolution has just been come to by the Corporation of Rochester, whose members, we are told by the public press, have determined to wear appropriate costume on all future public occasions." There must be some very determined characters among the Corporation of Rochester, for it requires no little determination in these days to resume the masquerade dresses of a Mayor and Alderman, after it has once been agreed to abandon them. It is rare, indeed, that we find persons desirous of hugging their chains, even though they be of an Aldermanic character.

The Dignity of Coal.

THE New York Enquirer says of the "Negro Emperor," that "his colour is the most thorough coal-black." Can this personage be identical with our ancient friend, KING COAL? If so, we hope His Majesty will keep up his famous concerts with renewed spirit, and that the merry old soul, with his fiddlers and trumpeters, will be merrier than ever, now that he has been promoted to be Emperor. COAL will make as good an Emperor, no doubt, as anybody, in the face of his complexion: and, notwithstanding the cold weather, we rejoice at this rise

of COAL.

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TRAPS AND RATTLE TRAPS.

THERE must be something quite Hindooish in the constitution of the British female of our own day, for in spite of every warning she is continually rushing to the alarming sacrifice. Directly a linen-draper raises the alarm, and intimates to the public an extensive smash or crash, the British female runs forward to be smashed or crashed, as the case may be, and to implicate herself in the meshes of some ruinous and tremendous failure. The Linendrapery Juggernaut has an uninterrupted stream of female victims throwing themselves constantly beneath it, and we can scarcely pity them, when, having voluntarily placed themselves in the power of the victimiser, they find their retreat rudely cut off, and their escape impossible.

All sorts of expedients are now adopted to prevent the departure of a fair captive, who has once been tempted within the cheap linen-drapery establishment, to which the cave of the forty thieves affords a fit companion. Steps are drawn across the door to bar her egress, and an unrestricted opening of the purse is the only "Open Sesame" which will set her again at liberty. We begin to see the drift of those remarkable contrivances for shutting up a shop entrance by means of a sort of blind

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Talk of undertakers' charges! Talk of butchers' and bakers' bills! Well-Christmas is the time for making a to-do about them, certainly. But of all the expense and ruination to families, there's nothing comes near the wickedness there is in washing. Here, I came up a month ago, next Wednesday, to keep house for AUGUSTUS, who I hope and trust will succeed in his profession, and in his poor Uncle's time, when he lived in the Cottage, having none of our own, we considered him as such, and used to wash him in the country. know he'll never forget his poor Aunt, and how nice his things used to be sent him, without speck or spot, as white and as sweet as lilies, without a rumple or a crease, and not a button off any of them. So, when I got here, I took and looked over his linen, when lo, and behold you, it was all shrids and fribbits, the pleats of the shirt-fronts slit all up, the gussets unripped, the backs all in holes, and the rest as rotten as a pear; and his sheets the same, and his night-gowns, and night-caps, and his doileys, fit for nothing but to make tinder of, and that is no use now they have those dangerous congreves. His best silk handkerchiefs I bought myself, and gave five shillings a-piece for, worn to rags, worse than old dusters; his drawers and under-waistcoats, fine merino, patched all over with calico, and his poor toes coming through his socks. 'Gracious goodness! AUGUSTUS,' I said, 'how you have been wearing out your things. Well,' he says, Aunt, I don't know how it is.' Well,' said I, 'it's very strange.' But I soon found out the reason. Not more than twice had I sent my own things to the wash, when home they came; my frills that I had only just made up myself; my capes and collars bran new; my shimmyzetts, and everything in jags and tatters. Shameful! Shocking! Scandalous! My linendraper's bill had just come in, five pounds ten and sixpencehalfpenny, if a farthing; and all my nice things spoiled. Abominable! You may suppose I gave our Washerwoman a pretty talking to; but what do you think I found out? I said to her *** [We are under the necessity of slightly curtailing the conversation.-ED.] * and she said * * * *and then says JANE * * and so * * * AND I FOUND IT WAS ALL BECAUSE THEY USE BLEACHING POWDER! Yes, Mr. Punch; that is what the nasty lazy old creatures do to save trouble. They might as well steep things in vittril, or put them into the fire to be cleaned, as I have heard is done with clothes made out of ashbestis. This is how my beautiful aprons, every one, and all AUGUSTUS'S table-cloths, and each bit of under-clothing we have either of us got, have all been ruined. Besides, the bleaching only whitens the dirt-doesn't get it out, so it is nasty as well as destructive. I have no patience with those good-for-nothing washerwomen that eat up our clothes, worse than moths, in this way; it is a sin. There is quite waste enough in every house without that. Do, pray, Mr. Punch, try your best to put down this wicked system of washing; and the save it will be, and the distress you will remove, and the dreadful scenes of passion and scolding that you will prevent, there is no saying. Do, Sir, and I am sure I shall ever be, "Your thankful Reader,

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"SARAH TRIMMER."

DEPOSITS FOR THE SINKING FUND.

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WE present MR. DISRAELI with the following small deposits for his Sinking-Fund.

Westminster Bridge, which looks in such a very weak state that we are sure it is gradually sinking.

The new façade to Buckingham Palace, which has sunk the remainder of the building to the very lowest insignificance.

MR. CHARLES PHILLIPS's Letter, which has been the means of sinking him in the public estimation.

And lastly, MR. DISRAELI's speeches on agricultural questions, which we are sure are heavy enough to sink anything.

The above are sufficient to start the famous Sinking Fund, for at present it is a matter of such very little account that we doubt if there is any foundation for it at all. We really believe the Fund in question is nothing more than a mere Fund of Humour, upon which MR. DISRAELI draws pretty freely as often as he wishes to pay off the poor Protectionists.

Midwinter Harvest.

IN the course of a suburban walk last Saturday, in company with an acquaintance, we passed a horse-pond, out of which some confectioner's men were loading a donkey-cart with ice. On our observing that this was a wise preparation for next summer, our companion, an Irish gentleman, said "that it cer ainly was making hay in fine weather."

OUR LITTLE BIRD.

PROPOSAL FOR A MONUMENT TO THE LATE QUEEN DOWAGER.

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in the shape of taxes, and some of whom especially, feed upon letter paper-for the family tree of a GRAFTON is in truth only a bulrush. Post Office papyrus *-if these, the teeth of the State, would forego somewhat of their provender, paper would instantly, like NOAH's dove, fly free nor fly without the olive. But this is not to be hoped," says THERE have been made several pre ositions for a monument of some ADELAIDE in other materials. Paper is forbidden us. But what think our statistical friend; "and so we must seek a Monument to QUEEN kind to tell to future generations the abounding goodness of the late The amount of duty on QUEEN DOWAGER. One writer proposes that the sum of a hundred you of an Advertisement Monument? thousand pounds be raised in subscriptions of no larger amount than advertisements in 1849-the price paid to the State for permission to ask custom, or to ask employ in print, was only one hundred and half-a-crown, so that eight hundred thousand persons may have a small share, a stone or brick in the church, to be called Adelaide Church-fifty-two thousand, nine hundred and twenty-six pounds. The late QUEEN DOWAGER, in her lapsed pension, at once contributes one an edifice that shall make memorable the piety of the departed lady. hundred thousand of the sun-whilst the odd fifty-two, why, it is not Another kindly projector suggests the erection of a Cross only-a simple Cross. At which suggestion, we take it, Exeter Hall shakes its to be spoken of the Life Guards would contribute it in abandoned gold-lace, or the Maids of Honour offer it in pocket-money. What say stony head, and glowers with becoming scorn. Another thinks a certain number of Alms-houses, in which poor you? An Advertisement Monument to the QUEEN DOWAGER?" A most felicitous thought. Far better than the half-crown subscripgentlewomen may meekly wait to die, would in a manner, significant tion is the eighteenpence saved to the poor who, seeking labour as useful, illustrate the active virtues of the noble gentlewoman who has made so gracious an end, rebuking nothing save the vanities through the newspapers, must pay the additional one-and-sixpence to of the undertaker, that might follow her; and which, indeed, were not make such abolition monumental to the memory of the QUEEN the Exchequer, or hold their peace. Abolish the advertisement duty; to be altogether rebuffed even by the last words of an anointed QUEEN. DOWAGER, and consider for a moment the number and the condition Pomp would somewhat assert itself. We meddle not with any of these projects. If the money be forth- of the people who are made to feel the relief granted by QUEEN coming, if the half-crowns leap to the willing hand, let them be paid in, tion as Governess," feels the royal bounty in her own narrow pocket. ADELAIDE even in her grave. The "Young Lady who wants a situaand let the masons set forthwith to work, the trowels tinkling har- The "Wet-nurse, a respectable married woman," is eighteenpence the moniously. All we ask is, the enjoyment of our right to propose the richer; and "A Good Plain Cook, with no objection to the country' notion of a QUEEN ADELAIDE Monument, such memorial to be solely saves her one-and-sixpence to help her on her way by rail or coach, the undertaken and wholly carried out at the expense of government. the eighteenpenny benevolence would be felt, and the memory of situation carried. From the schoolroom, down-down to the scullery QUEEN ADELAIDE be gratefully enshrined.

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But then, it may be urged, the expense of government is only phrase of course-so many shifting words, the true meaning of which is, the expense of His Majesty, the People. In this case, however, we do not propose to lay even an extra pennyweight upon the aforesaid people. No; the Adelaide Monument shall stand fair and beautiful in the light, and not cost the people an additional farthing. For the Monument shall not be of ephemeral Purbeck stone or decaying granite-but of enduring stuff: of nothing less than Paper of paper white and spotless, and typical of the purity of the memory it eternises. Our plan is wondrously simple-and then so very facile of execution.

One hundred thousand pounds a year is saved to the revenue by the loss of the good QUEEN ADELAIDE. We simply propose that, saving this much, we repeal the excise upon paper. For consider, what a serious thing-what a grand thing, is paper! How lofty-how sublime, may be its functions! A sheet of paper is as the physical wing to the spiritual thought, carrying its presence round about the world. Upon such wings do the philosophers and poets, the jurists and the journalists, fly. Upon such wings do all mute words enter into the souls and hearts of men. What is the paper of a letter, but the wings that bear a voice?

Well, knowing this, it is a little irksome to human patience to know the many tyrannical and foolish practices wrought upon paper pinions by the fantastic exciseman. How they are cut and plucked, and laden by a hundred stupid and despotic caprices. The Egyptians, who had a deep meaning in all their symbols-so deep, it often baffles us in its darkness-shipped Isis, when she searched for the remains of OSIRIS in a bark of papyrus-a paper boat; for even the crocodiles respected the papyrus, never so much as snapping at it. There can be no doubt that in this the Egyptians intended to manifest the solemn function of paper as a vessel sacred to the Intellect-a vessel that even the instinct of savage ignorance should respect. Such was the paper boat of Isis. How different the fate of the paper boats of Britannia--the millions of craft made on the banks of her thousand rivulets and

streams! Why, in every paper mill-dam lurk twenty alligators, who, at any hour, may turn up in the shape of excisemen! And how they overhaul the boats, what pranks they are duly licensed to play with them, it would take too much paper here to tell.

And yet the State professes to venerate the function of paper. In our love of its sublime utility, we make schools for raggedness, and hope to save from shipwreck the soul of ignorance in a paper boat. And we do all we can to overload, even to sinking, the paper vessel with the weight of taxes flung aboard. Wonderful is it to think how, with such a crew of excisemen, paper swims!

However, to proceed with our plan for a Paper Monument to the Memory of QUEEN ADELAIDE. The repeal of the excise on the fabric would be a beautiful memorial, and lasting as touching. Her late Majesty, from her shelf in St. George's Vault, subscribes towards the repeal a hundred thousand a year.

"Very true," answers a statistical familiar; "but then the Paper duty-the tax laid upon the wings of knowledge-was for 1848, not one hundred, but seven hundred and fifty-one thousand pounds. Thus, it is clear that the dropped pension of QUEEN ADELAIDE, would not give even a seventh of the tax. To be sure, the whole matter might be disposed of in a trice if certain of the living would subscribe to the Monument. If, for instance, a king would send from Hanover a subscription of £21,000 a-year-if a king in Belgium would do something-if sinecurists, the white ants of the State, who devour anything

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An Eighteenpenny Monument to the QUEEN DOWAGER, by all means.
A LITTLE BIRD.

CHARLES THE SECOND's costly blood in his veins-the royal purple is very dear, how-
ever adulterated-takes by royal grant, £10,598 a year.

From the profits of ROWLAND HILL'S pennies, the DUKE OF GRAFTON, having

ROMAN WALLS HAVE EARS.

R. PUNCH'S old friends, the Archæologians, have lately discovered something which they call a Roman Wall, and they are determined the wall shall have ears, for they give it an audience. How they ascertained the Romanism of the wall, we cannot tell, for it consisted only of a few old bricks, and there was no other foundation to go upon.

DR. PETTIGREW brought it forward, and the Committee sat on the wall for nearly an hour. Another Member then produced some fragments of coarse pottery, consisting of a slice of an old tile, half an ounce of broken plate, and the spout of a pipkin, which somebody turned into a handle for a long argument. Another Member then threw down upon the table a "small collection of old nails;" but after vainly trying to tack something on to these nails, or to hit the right one on the head, the meeting broke up in a state of wisdom about equal to that in which they had assembled. Another Member had been proceeding to lecture upon an old helmet, which he called a " casque," but the casque was so thoroughly dry, that it served as a wet to nobody's curiosity.

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A FUNERAL AFTER SIR JOHN MOORE'S.

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FURNISHED BY AN UNDERTAKER.

NOT a mute one word at the funeral spoke, Till away to the pot-house we hurried, Not a bearer discharged his ribald joke

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O'er the grave where our party" we buried.
We buried him dearly with vain display,
Two hundred per cent. returning,
Which we made the struggling orphans pay,
All consideration spurning.

With plumes of feathers his hearse was drest,
Pall and hatbands and scarfs we found him;
And he went, as a Christian, unto his rest,

With his empty pomp around him.

None at all were the prayers we said,

And we felt not the slightest sorrow,

But we thought, as the rites were perform'd o'er the dead,
Of the bill we'd run up on the morrow.

We thought as he sunk to his lowly bed
That we wish'd they cut it shorter,

So that we might be off to the Saracen's Head,
For our gin, and our pipes, and our porter.
Lightly we speak of the "party" that's gone,
Now all due respect has been paid him;
Ah! little he reck'd of the lark that went on
Near the spot where we fellows had laid him.

As soon as our sable task was done,

Not a moment we lost in retiring;

And we feasted and frolick'd, and poked our fun,

Gin and water each jolly soul firing.

Blithely and quickly we quaff'd it down,

Singing song, cracking joke, telling story; And we shouted and laugh'd all the way up to Town, Riding outside the hearse in our glory!

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THE OLD LADY IS SUPPOSED (AFTER A GREAT EFFORT) TO HAVE MADE UP HER MIND TO TRAVEL, JUST FOR ONCE, BY ONE OF THOSE NEW FANGLED RAILWAYS," AND THE FIRST THING SHE BEHOLDS ON ARRIVING AT THE STATION, IS THE ABOVE MOST ALARMING PLACARD.

A BETTER PLANT THAN PROTECTION. "MR. PUNCH,

"I BE a farmer, and afore the carn laws was done away wi, I was a monoppulist, as was only nateral, for of all our mother's childern we all on us loves ourzelves the best. But full well I knows 'tis in vain expectin to get then laws back. The people wun't stand a bread-tax agin never no more. We've got Vree Trade, and must put up wi't. Well; seein as how we have got it, what I say is let's make the most on 't. Goo droo wi't. Doan't stand shilly-shallyin halfway. Goo the whole hog in Vree Trade, and let 's ha 't in every thing. If forreners be to compete wi us, let we compete wi forreners. Gie us Vree Cultivation. Let's ha liberty and licence to grow whatsumdever we've a mind to. What cause or just impediment is there, I wants to know, why we shouldn't cultivate TOBACCO ? There's a law agin it, as I dare say you're aware; and don't tell me that 't wouldn't pay; for if so there never would ha bin no sich law: besides 'tis well enough know'd as 'twould pay in some siles, specially in Ireland. Let's ha the tobacco-stopper took out o' the statutes, and zee what we can do with the TOBACCO PLANT. I say our game is to agitate for the right to make the most as ever we can out o' the land, which ool do us moor good by half than goin about blubberun for Purtection. Just you mind, Mr. Punch, what I says about TOBACCO, and if so be as how you'd be so good as to print it, I'd thankee; for I do believe 'tis a hint worth

takin.

"I believe, Sir, you be a true friend to the Farmer, thof you doan't palaver un. Now just you put the farmerun world to this here notion o mine about HOME GROWN TOBACCO; and I doan't think you'll repent follern the advice of

"Your reglar Reader, "FREELAND TILLER."

A DEAD SWINDLE.-An Undertaker's Bill.

THE LAST DAYS OF THE PALACE COURT.

As Pompeii was swept away or rather buried under a stream of lava, so has the Palace Court been destroyed by the volcanic burst of indig nation which, within the last year, has broken over it. Its own piteous palaver has been washed away in the lava emanating from that avenging Vesuvius, the public mouth, which had sent forth in words that burn, the doom of the Palace Court.

Friday, December the 28th, will be remarkable in the annals of enlightenment, as the last day of the sittings of this tribunal. The Judge was on the bench, but the bar was absent from the melancholy scene, and a solitary usher attended as chief mourner at the solemnity. Two attornies acted as mutes, for they never opened their mouths, and as if to perform an act of pity in its last moments, the Court refused to make an order upon a poor woman, who attended for her sick husband, at the suit of a tally-man.

The case was one with which the Court would, no doubt, have dealt, in its days of vigour and rigour; for though the defendant's bed had been pawned, and the family were starving, there was nothing to distinguish the case from hundreds of others that had gone before, and would have come again if the Court had continued to exist. Happily, the recording angel has something to place among the final records of the Court which may be accepted as a partial expiation of some of its past enormities. De mortuis nil nisi bonum. The Palace Court is dead; so is our enmity.

University Prizes.

THE subjects proposed to the competitors for prizes in the University of Cambridge, would certainly do credit to the authors of that popular farthing serial which comes out at four sheets a penny, under the title of "Nuts to Crack" at Christmas time. The Cambridge nuts are peculiarly adapted for those who have cut their wise teeth; and perhaps a dog-tooth or two may be useful in digesting such dog Latin as Shakesperus, and other terms, in which the University illuminati luxuriate.

One of the themes for Latin prose, is "SHAKESPEARE and HOMER compared," which seems to pave the way for the still greater puzzle in an ensuing year, of a comparison between Goodwin Sands and Tenterden Steeple.

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