are for ever being admitted into its circle. When
Lord Boodle meets Lord Coodle at the house of
the Duke of Doodle, he knows him of course, their
estates are contiguous, and so are their seats in
the House of Peers; but when I go out to dinner
and encounter on my host's hearth-rug a perfect
stranger, how am I to know that that stranger
is the eminent Mr. Piston the engineer, who has
just returned from India, where he is making a
railroad? I do not know it, and what is the
consequence? Before the dinner has got past the
entrée period, I have stigmatised, in the strongest
language which is permissible, a certain bridge
over the Thames which is one of Mr. Piston's
most celebrated performances. Now, if that
distinguished engineer and I had been introduced
to each other, this unlucky thing could not have
happened.

"No cards" is an announcement which is by
this time familiar to the eyes of all readers of the
public newspapers. It shows, now, at the end of
a large portion of the wedding advertisements
which appear in the Times. So, now our young
couples are no longer torn with doubts as to
whether it will be better to have their united
pasteboards secured together with a silver
cord, or simply placed in an envelope with a
silver edge, or even with no edge. All these
anxieties are taken from the minds of the young
people, and they are also relieved from the still
greater difficulty of settling to whom those cards,
when once they are deposited in their envelopes,
shall be sent. The bridegroom has a host of
bachelor friends who did very well for
companions in the days of celibacy, but to all and
each of whom he now devoutly wishes the
presentation of a lucrative appointment—admitting
of no holidays—in the Marquesas Islands; yet
before this happy new arrangement he was
obliged to send cards to those "lads of Cyprus,"
and take the consequences. "No cards" then
by all means.

And this change in our manners reminds one
of another of a more mournful character. In
that grim list of announcements which follows
the marriage advertisements, we now find that the
form of words "Friends will please receive this
notice" continually recurs. This, again, is a new
fashion, but there is little to be said about it,
except, perhaps, that it is somewhat supererogatory:
for if ever there was an announcement
which friends must receive, whether they please
or not, it is that of a death.

The advertisements in our newspapers often
give indications of the changes that are operating
in our manners and tastes. There is no
better way of finding out what are the habits
of all sorts of queer people in out-of-the-way
corners, with whom one never comes in contact,
than by studying the advertisement sheet. We
have already paid some attention to the
advertisements of Messrs. Pollaky and Co.; what do
we say to another of a different sort, in which the
public, or such part of the public as it concerns,
is respectfully informed that an unobliterated
Antigua postage-stamp will be given away to
purchasers of Nos.2 and 3 of the Stamp-Collectors'
Magazine? What a state of things does
such an advertisement as this reveal? In
the first place, here is evidence given of a desire
existing in certain human breasts to possess an
unobliterated Antigua postage-stamp; and, in
the second place, here is evidence of the existence
of a public interested in postage-stamps
generally, sufficiently large to support a journal
of that public's own. What do they want with
these stamps? What do they do with them?
I am told by credible witnesses that there are
persons who keep books by them, in which these
stamps are stuck as if they were beautiful works
of art, or specimens of natural history; and I
have even heard that a brisk competition goes on
among stamp-collectors, and that one of these
harmless maniacs will offer another, a stamp
of Antigua in exchange for one of Tobago, or
vice versâ; while others will languish in
unheard-of torments, because, mayhap, Van
Dieman's Land is unrepresented in an otherwise
"splendid collection."

Surely of all the similar developments of
frenzy with which we are acquainted, this is one
of the dreariest. We know that human beings
have existed who have given unheard-of sums
for what are called rare editions of particular
books, and this not because the editions were
more nearly complete or more legible than
others, but quite the reverse. We know that
other human beings—at least "in the catalogue
they go for such"—have wasted their substance
in securing, at any price, certain specimens of
engravings whose merit consisted in some small,
and wholly unimportant, variation in which this
particular print differed from the copies possessed
by other people. "Woman peeling turnips, early
proof, very rare, turnip standing by itself on edge
of table omitted." This would be a work of art
which in former times would have been worth
hundreds of guineas, while a print in all points
equally good, but with the turnip, would have
been comparatively worthless. Nay, such was
the madness of print-collectors once, that even a
defect would sometimes enhance the value of one
of these rare copies, and you would find a proof
of "Rembrandt's mother, with mark where the
graver has slipped on left eyelid," selling for
much more than would be realised by the same
print with that defect wanting.

The mania for collecting books and prints is
dying out fast, though doubtless there may still
be found, here and there, persons on whom it
still has a hold. People now collect postage-stamps
instead, and all sorts of terrific passions
are brought into play, through the yearnings of
mankind after certain little bits of coloured paper
barely an inch square.

By-the-by, talking of stamps, what has become
of the old bellman who, dressed in a red coat,
and carrying a large leather bag in one hand, and
a dinner-bell in the other, used to go the rounds
after five o'clock P.M. to collect the " too-late"