he
heart,--or rather from the stomach, jolly, good comfortable souls as
they were, and their words go right home to the stomachs and hearts of
all, wherever the British lion has the privilege of lashing his tail or
shaking his mane.

As to eating, _quoad comedendum constipandumque_, we keep up the
Boeotic charter to the very letter and spirit of all its provisions;
and in the moistening of our national clay, we certainly show a
praiseworthy diligence; we wet it like bricks--and that's a fact, too;
but as for doing these important matters in proper places and at proper
times, there, _selon nous_, we are lamentably behind-hand with the rest
of the unfledged, articulate-speaking, bipedal genus to which we have
the honour to belong. And as it has been lately shown in our pages, as
clear as the sun at noonday, (the truth of which beautiful and rare
simile, gentle reader, varies considerably with the place where you may
happen to use it--from Shoe Lane, London, to the Strada di Toledo at
Naples,) or as clear as--clear can be, that John Bull does not know how
to put a decent coat on his back when he goes out to dinner; so now it
is to be essayed to show, that for all he may think otherwise, John has
not got a comfortable, sensible house to go and eat his dinner in; that
he does not know what a regular, good, snug, and snoozy chimney-corner
is; and that, when he stumbles up-stairs to bed, he generally puts
himself into a hole, but not what can be called a room--a real
comfortable, respectable bed-room. We do not say that he might not have
done so once--we know, on the contrary, that he did; all we contend for
is, that he does not do so now, and we don't think he is in the right
way to mend; and, as John is a special friend of ours, and so is Mrs
Bull, and all the little Bulls, who will be big, full-grown Bulls some
day or other, and as we like to make ourselves useful to the present
generation, and hope to be agreeably remembered by posterity, therefore
do we intend to take the Bull by the horns, and see if we cannot
wheedle, coax, pull, push, or bully him into our way of thinking about
rooms and houses.

It is set down as a national axiom at the present day, that we are at
the very head of the world in arts, arms, manufactures, laws,
constitution, Church and State, literature, science--(any thing
else?--there must be something more; to be sure there is)--money and
railroads! and he's no true Englishman, Sir, he's not one of