If a steamboat explodes her boiler, or the walls of a factory fall, burying hundreds in the ruins, their hearts--rendered callous by the constant stream of cold air pouring in through their _ever-open mouths_--are not shocked at the calamity, but they wonder if it was _insured_! The increase of population in this country affords a most prolific and inexhaustible fund for statistical astonishment, as an interlude to the entertainment, while something more appalling is being prepared. The portentous omens so often relied on by the credulous believers in signs, have so frequently proved 'dead failures,' that one would suppose these votaries would at length become disheartened. But this seems not to be the case--like a quack doctor when his patient dies, their audacity is equal to any emergency, and, with the elasticity of india rubber, they come out of a 'tight squeeze' with undiminished rotundity. With _stupid_ amazement, hair all erect, and ears likewise, they pass through life as through a museum, ready to exclaim with Dominie Sampson at all _they_ cannot understand, 'Pro--di--gi--ous!' It matters little, perhaps, in what form this principle is exhibited, while it exists and flourishes in undiminished exuberance. Thus says Glendower: 'At my nativity The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes, Of burning cressets; and, at my birth, The frame and huge foundation of the earth Shak'd like a coward. _Hotspur._ Why so it would have done At the same season, if your mother's cat had But kittened, though yourself had ne'er been born.' Glendower naturally enough flouts this rather impertinent comment, and 'repeats the story of his birth' with still greater improvements, till Hotspur gives him a piece of advice which will do for his whole race of the present day, viz., 'tell the truth, and shame the devil.' The English people of this generation are rather more phlegmatic than their explosive neighbors across the channel, and neither the injustice of black slavery abroad, nor the starvation of _white_ slaves at home, can shake them from their lop-sided neutrality, _so long as money goes into their pocket_. The excitable French, on the contrary, require an occasional _coup d'etat_ to arouse their conjectures as to the next imperial experiment in the art of international diplomacy. The press of the day teems with all sorts of provisions to satisfy the cravings of a depraved imagination, and even the most sedate of our daily papers are not above employing 'double-leaded Sensations,' and 'display Heads' as a part of their ordinary stock in trade; while from the hebdomadals, 'Thrilling Tales,' 'Awful Disclosures,' and 'Startling Discoveries,' succeed each other with truly fearful rapidity. Thus he who wastes the midnight kerosene, and spoils his weary eyes in poring over the pages of trashy productions, so well designed to murder sleep, may truly say with Macbeth, 'I have supp'd full with horrors.'