h prodigality
that might well be dispensed with; but in the hot summer weather it
_will_ dry up, and turn green: and, although green is a very good colour
in its way, especially in grass, still it certainly is not becoming to
water; and it cannot be denied that the beauty of Mudfog is rather
impaired, even by this trifling circumstance. Mudfog is a healthy
place--very healthy;--damp, perhaps, but none the worse for that. It's
quite a mistake to suppose that damp is unwholesome: plants thrive best
in damp situations, and why shouldn't men? The inhabitants of Mudfog are
unanimous in asserting that there exists not a finer race of people on
the face of the earth; here we have an indisputable and veracious
contradiction of the vulgar error at once. So, admitting Mudfog to be
damp, we distinctly state that it is salubrious.

The town of Mudfog is extremely picturesque. Limehouse and Ratcliff
Highway are both something like it, but they give you a very faint idea
of Mudfog. There are a great many more public-houses in Mudfog--more
than in Ratcliff Highway and Limehouse put together. The public
buildings, too, are very imposing. We consider the town-hall one of the
finest specimens of shed architecture, extant: it is a combination of the
pig-sty and tea-garden-box orders; and the simplicity of its design is of
surpassing beauty. The idea of placing a large window on one side of the
door, and a small one on the other, is particularly happy. There is a
fine old Doric beauty, too, about the padlock and scraper, which is
strictly in keeping with the general effect.

In this room do the mayor and corporation of Mudfog assemble together in
solemn council for the public weal. Seated on the massive wooden
benches, which, with the table in the centre, form the only furniture of
the whitewashed apartment, the sage men of Mudfog spend hour after hour
in grave deliberation. Here they settle at what hour of the night the
public-houses shall be closed, at what hour of the morning they shall be
permitted to open, how soon it shall be lawful for people to eat their
dinner on church-days, and other great political questions; and
sometimes, long after silence has fallen on the town, and the distant
lights from the shops and houses have ceased to twinkle, like far-off
stars, to the sight of the boatmen on the river, the illumination in the
two unequal-sized windows of the town-hall, warns the inhabitants of
Mudfog that its little bo