uble malice, but no potency--has set all the
well-dressed and well-to-do part of "this vast metropolis" off in one
simultaneous simper, took place on the following motion made by Mr.
FIELDEN:--

"Resolved,--That the distress of the working people at the present time is
so great through the country, but particularly in the manufacturing
districts, that it is the duty of this House to make instant inquiry into
the cause and extent of such distress, and devise means to remedy it; and,
at all events, to vote no supply of money until such inquiry be
made."--(Hear, hear.)

This motion was negatived by 149 to 41; and it is to this negative that,
according to the avowal of our veracious contemporary, we owe the radiant
looks that have lighted up the streets of London for the past few days. In
the same sense of the writer, but in the better words of the chorus of
_Tom Thumb_--

"Nature seemed to wear a universal grin!"

It being always premised and settled that the term nature only comprehends
the people with sleek coats and full stomachs. Nature abhors a
vacuum,--therefore has nought to do with empty bellies. Happy are the men
whose fate, or better philosophy, has kept them from the turnips and the
heather--fortunate mortals, who, banned from the murder of partridges and
grouse, have for the last few days of our contemporary, been dwellers in
merry London! What exulting faces! What crowds of well-dressed, well-fed
_Malvolios_, "smiling" at one another, though not cross-gartered! To a man
prone to ponder on that many-leaved, that scribbled, blurred and blotted
volume, the human face,--that mysterious tome printed with care, with
cunning and remorse,--that thing of lies, and miseries, and hypocritic
gladness,--that volume, stained with tears, and scribbled over and over
with daily wants, and daily sufferings, and daily meannesses;--to such a
reader who, from the hieroglyphic lines of feigned content, can translate
the haggard spirit and the pining heart,--to such a man too often
depressed and sickened by the contemplation of the carnivorous faces
thronging the streets of London--faces that look as if they deemed the
stream of all human happiness flowed only from the Mint,--to such a man,
how great the satisfaction, how surpassing the enjoyment of these "last
few days!" As with the Thane of Cawdor, every man's face has been a book;
but, alas! luckier than _Macbeth_, that book has been--_Joe Miller!_

Every well-dressed gent