How we shall simper when mills are stopped--how crow
with laughter when whole factories are silent and deserted! How
reader--(for we acknowledge none who are not well-dressed and
well-to-do)--how you will scream with joy when banks break!--and how
consult the list of bankrupts as the very spirit and essence of the most
consummate fun. Insolvency shall henceforth be synonymous with
repartee--and compositions with creditors practical _bons mots_.
Oh! reader--(but mind, you _must_, we say, to be our reader, be
well-dressed and well-to-do; for though we owe the very paper beneath your
eye to rags, we trust we are sufficiently in the mode to laugh
contemptuously at such abominations)--oh! reader, quit your lighter
recreations; seek not for merriment in fictitious humour; it is a poor,
unsatisfactory diet, weak and watery; but find substantial drollery from
the fluttering of tatters--laugh, and with the crowing joy, grow sleek and
lusty at the writhings and the lamentations of want!
We have, however, a recent benevolent instance of the political and social
power of dress--an instance gathered from the Court of Spain. The organ
(or rather barrel-organ of Toryism, for it has only a set number of tunes)
which played our opening quotation, also grinds the following:--
"The Regent Espartero, and the tutor Arguelles, are doing all in their
power to keep the young Queen and the Infanta _in good humour_,
encouraging the Princesses in many little indulgences suitable to their
age and sex, _especially in the article of dress_, in which their royal
mother was more than inattentive.
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