entlest and most graceful forms; and that many weary
hunters of happiness through the noisy world, have learnt this truth too
late, and found a cheerful spirit and a quiet mind only at home at last.

How much may depend on the education of daughters and the conduct of
mothers; how much of the brightest part of our old national character may
be perpetuated by their wisdom or frittered away by their folly--how much
of it may have been lost already, and how much more in danger of
vanishing every day--are questions too weighty for discussion here, but
well deserving a little serious consideration from all young couples
nevertheless.

To that one young couple on whose bright destiny the thoughts of nations
are fixed, may the youth of England look, and not in vain, for an
example. From that one young couple, blessed and favoured as they are,
may they learn that even the glare and glitter of a court, the splendour
of a palace, and the pomp and glory of a throne, yield in their power of
conferring happiness, to domestic worth and virtue. From that one young
couple may they learn that the crown of a great empire, costly and
jewelled though it be, gives place in the estimation of a Queen to the
plain gold ring that links her woman's nature to that of tens of
thousands of her humble subjects, and guards in her woman's heart one
secret store of tenderness, whose proudest boast shall be that it knows
no Royalty save Nature's own, and no pride of birth but being the child
of heaven!

So shall the highest young couple in the land for once hear the truth,
when men throw up their caps, and cry with loving shouts--

GOD BLESS THEM.

THE MUDFOG AND OTHER SKETCHES

PUBLIC LIFE OF MR. TULRUMBLE--ONCE MAYOR OF MUDFOG

Mudfog is a pleasant town--a remarkably pleasant town--situated in a
charming hollow by the side of a river, from which river, Mudfog derives
an agreeable scent of pitch, tar, coals, and rope-yarn, a roving
population in oilskin hats, a pretty steady influx of drunken bargemen,
and a great many other maritime advantages. There is a good deal of
water about Mudfog, and yet it is not exactly the sort of town for a
watering-place, either. Water is a perverse sort of element at the best
of times, and in Mudfog it is particularly so. In winter, it comes
oozing down the streets and tumbling over the fields,--nay, rushes into
the very cellars and kitchens of the houses, with a lavis