addicted to the cultivation of the household
virtues, they are ready to sally forth, and do
terrific execution when they are wanted (which
they very seldom seem to be), and when
Dumbledowndeary and the rest of England expect
them to do their duty.

The architecture of Dumbledowndeary is
peculiar. Plumb-lines, levels, and squares
were unknown when it was built; and
the houses seem to have grown, rather like
pollard willows and gnarled oaks with
windows in them, than to have risen by the
legitimate agency of scaffold-poles, trowels, and
hods of mortar. Timber, lath and plaster,
thatch, and an anomalous composition, in
which mud, shingle, rushes, and fragments
of tile are visible to the naked eye,
appear to form the principal materials of
which the queer little houses—half
cottage, half barn—are composed. There is
no pavement, and the roadway itself is
distressingly eccentric, now sinking so low as to
require an embankment on either side for the
footway, now rising so pretentiously that the
houses seem to be in danger of being swallowed
up, causing the first floor fronts to be in the
area, and the soles of the by-passer's boots
nearly on a level with the garret windows.
Window sashes are unknown, and the
picturesque little lozenges of bottle glass,
fertile in bull's-eyes, are still in vogue.
Chimney pots sprout up indifferently, not
necessarily on the roof, but wherever it
has been found convenient to make a
fire-place and an aperture for the smoke. Knockers
to the doors there are none, and—seeing that
doors themselves are not numerous, and that
three-fourths of the male population and the
whole of the female and infant ditto are
always loitering in the doorways or sprawling
amicably in that part of the road where there
should be a gutter, but there is'nt—where
would be the use of knockers, I should like to
know? It is a pretty sight, on a fine afternoon,
to peep through one of these doorways,
and catch the Dumbledowndereans in the full
luxuriance of their ménage, which serves them
for "kitchen and parlour and all:" three
generations enjoying their family souchong or
serviceable bohea. A grizzled old
grandfather, eighty years old, perhaps, so bent and
twisted by the rheumatiz that he cannot have
seen his shoes or the ribbons at the knees of
his small clothes for a score of years; a hale
husband, the bread winner of the family, just
come home from the brickfield, very clayey
and strawy, enjoying a basin of tea and a
pipe of tobacco, an amalgamated refreshment
somewhat distasteful, it may be, to cockneys;
but than which country people and travellers
in Australia will tell you there are few things
more grateful and refreshing; a comely wife
(with the arm of Milo for cutting bread and
butter) and a whole tribe of ruddy children,
varying in size and stature like the row of
stew-pans ranged in a large kitchen. Talk
about political economy—what sort of
economy can it be that out of sorry and
precarious wages can give the grizzled old
grandfather his snuff and his beer, the sturdy
brickmaker his bacon, the tribe of little
children clean pinafores unconscious of tatters
and hobnailed shoes with whole soles, can fill
their little bellies with bread and butter, can
give them each the weekly twopence for their
instruction at school; can keep up the
subscription to the burial club and father's lodge
of Foresters, or Druids, or Shepherds; can
even, on high days and holidays enable
mother to astonish the Dumbledowndereans in
a bonnet—a marvellous bonnet of white chip,
with rainbow ribbons—and a parasol as green
as a gooseberry? All these things are done;
but how are they managed? What subtleties
of finance, what Machiavelic evolutions of
domestic diplomacy must be resorted to to
give all these young ravens their food, all
these little foxes their holes, all these babies
their raiment?To be sure, father has his
beer at home instead of going to the "Cross
Keys," the "Traveller's Joy," or the " olly
Brickmakers " for it, and water is good and
plentiful in Dumbledowndeary, and the inha-
bitants seem to be naturally fond of washing
themselves and each other; so there may be
something in that.

Dumbledowndeary does not possess a public
promenade, although its environs afford the
most beautiful walks to be found anywhere,
perhaps, in England. Within the walls the
lounger is confined to the common hard I
have named, and to a little quay commanding
at low water, and in calm weather, nothing
more picturesque in the way of a view
than a considerable expanse of mud, the flat
shores of the opposite Essex coast, the phantom
collier playing at loading ballast, and
one or two cutter yachts belonging to "city
men," who take an occasional holiday from
consols for account and bills payable, to run
social little matches for snuff-boxes and silver
mugs from Dumbledowndeary to the Nore,
and whose crews (one man and a boy I think
to each yacht) appear to me to have no duties
more arduous to perform than to scrape
carrots for their pot-au-feu, and to polish the
masts and bowsprit with beeswax. But at
high water, in fine weather, and above all,
in fresh breezy weather, you shall see a sight
from Dumbledowndeary's shabby little quay,
that I. for one, would not change for any
number of Panoramas of the Mississippi,
nay, nor for Venice, the Golden Horn, or
the Bay of Naples with Mr. Southby's moat
brilliant fireworks bursting from Vesuvius
in the background. For then you shall see the
highway of nations and of the world, thick
sown with winged carriages. The majestic
Indiaman bursting with live stock appertaining
to the Honourable Company; the great Canadian
timber-ship; the humble colliers, smacks,
and hoys, by fleets; the portly steamers bound
for Antwerp and Hamburgh, puffing and blowing
as though conscious of their importance in