So, love to our ladies from Lapland to Cadiz, From the Tropics to Poles, (be the same more or less)-- But we know that in print they will ne'er take the hint Half as soft and as sweet as in perfumed _MS._ And we wish that we knew any fair one as true As to think all we're writing superb and divine, At her feet should we lay--not a word about pay-- Our work as her tribute on Saint Valentine. Yet why but to one should our homage be done? We pay it to all whose smiles lighten out art: To Edgeworth, to Morgan, to Baillie's deep organ, To Hall's Irish pathos, to Norton's soft heart, To the Countess so rare, to Costello the fair, To Miss L. E. L., to high-born Emmeline; But a truce to more names--Take this, darling dames, Sweet friends of the pen, as our first Valentine. W. M. OLIVER TWIST, OR, THE PARISH BOY'S PROGRESS. BY BOZ. ILLUSTRATED BY GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. CHAPTER THE FIRST TREATS OF THE PLACE WHERE OLIVER TWIST WAS BORN, AND OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES ATTENDING HIS BIRTH. Among other public buildings in the town of Mudfog, it boasts of one which is common to most towns great or small, to wit, a workhouse; and in this workhouse there was born on a day and date which I need not trouble myself to repeat, inasmuch as it can be of no possible consequence to the reader, in this stage of the business at all events, the item of mortality whose name is prefixed to the head of this chapter. For a long time after he was ushered into this world of sorrow and trouble, by the parish surgeon, it remained a matter of considerable doubt whether the child would survive to bear any name at all; in which case it is somewhat more than probable that these memoirs would never have appeared, or, if they had, being comprised within a couple of pages, they would have possessed the inestimable merit of being the most concise and faithful specimen of biography extant in the literature of any age or country. Although I am not disposed to maintain that the being born in a workhouse is in itself the most fortunate and enviable circumstance that can possibly befal a human being, I do mean to say that in this particular instance it was the best thing for Oliver Twist that could by possibility have occurred. The fact is, that there was considerable difficulty in inducing Oliver to take upon himself the office of respiration,--a troublesome practice, but one which custom has rendered necessary to our easy existence,--and for some time he lay gasping on a little flock mattress, rather unequally poised between this world and the next, the balance being decidedly in favour of the latter. Now, if during this brief period Oliver had been surrounded by careful grandmothers, anxious aunts, experienced nurses, and doctors