Caricatures and cartoons -- Great Britain; English wit and humor; English wit and humor, Pictorial
From returns into which the commissioners have allowed us to peep, it
appears that of the middle-aged population of these kingdoms, one in
three has grown five years younger since the date of the last census; one
in seven two years younger; one in twelve remains of the same age; one in
thirty-eight, is five years older than at the period referred to; and one
in five hundred and sixty has attained the full age that might have been
anticipated from the lapse of years. We believe it has been distinctly
ascertained by these returns that the highest age among the unmarried
ladies in this country is twenty-nine--the average age is twenty-one
and seven-eighths. The widows willing to marry again, are mostly quite
juvenile; and it is a remarkable fact that many are younger now, as
widows, than they appear to be in the previous return as wives. Indeed
the effect of the whole calculation is to show, perhaps in compliment to
our young Queen, that her subjects are the most decidedly juvenile people
in Christendom.
Nor was the designation of the respective professions and callings
of our fellow-countrymen a task of less difficulty. Commonplace and
even plebeian, as is the simple question "Who are you?" widely as the
interrogation was diffused a short time back by the _gamins_ of London,
it is a query we opine, in common with the cool audacious Mr. Dazzle,
that would puzzle half the world to answer properly. Some are all
profession--others are not any. Thousands live by their wits--thousands
more by the total absence of them; many whom the world gives credit to
for working hard in an industrious _état_ for their income, privately
lead the lives of gentlemen; and many gentlemen whom we envy on account
of their ostensible otiose existence, labour perchance in secret much
harder than ourselves. Numbers would shrink if their employment was
known, and numbers more would be extremely indignant if any other than
their own was assigned to them.
The schedule stated that the professions of wives, or sons and daughters,
living with and assisting their parents, needed not to be inserted.
There was no mention at all made of the professions of faithless lovers,
election candidates, and false friends; probably these were imagined to
be of so little value as to be utterly beneath notice.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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