languor that attends the want
of food," they are, to use a homely Scotch expression, "neither to haud
nor bind;" the eyes of the young lads being all as brisk, bold, and
bright as the stars in Charles's Wain, while those of the young lasses
shine with a soft, faint, obscure, but beautiful lustre, like the dewy
Pleiades, over which nature has insensibly been breathing a mist almost
waving and wavering into a veil of clouds?

Have you, our dear Doctor, no compassion for those unfortunate blades,
who, _nolentes-volentes_, must remain out perennially all night--we mean
the blades of grass, and also the flowers? Their constitutions seem
often far from strong; and shut your eyes on a frosty night, and you
will hear them--we have done so many million times--shivering, ay,
absolutely shivering under their coat of hoar-frost! If the night air be
indeed what Dr Kitchiner has declared it to be--Lord have mercy on the
vegetable world! What agonies in that field of turnips! Alas, poor
Swedes! The imagination recoils from the condition of that club of
winter cabbages--and of what materials, pray, must the heart of that man
be made, who could think but for a moment on the case of those carrots,
without bursting into a flood of tears!

The Doctor avers that the firm health and fine spirits of persons who
live in the country, are not more from breathing a purer air, than from
enjoying plenty of sound sleep; and the most distressing misery of "this
Elysium of bricks and mortar," is the rareness with which we enjoy "the
sweets of a slumber unbroke."

Doctor--in the first place, it is somewhat doubtful whether or not
persons who live in the country have firmer health and finer spirits
than persons who live in towns--even in London. What kind of persons do
you mean? You must not be allowed to select some dozen or two of the
hairiest among the curates--a few chosen rectors whose faces have been
but lately elevated to the purple--a team of prebends issuing sleek from
their golden stalls--a picked bishop--a sacred band the elite of the
squirearchy--with a corresponding sprinkling of superior noblemen from
lords to dukes--and then to compare them, cheek by jowl, with an equal
number of external objects taken from the common run of Cockneys. This,
Doctor, is manifestly what you are ettling at--but you must clap your
hand, Doctor, without discrimination, on the great body of the rural
population of England, male and female, and take whatever c