Innocent Mr. Bruce! While the great historical records of this land are “preserved” over tons of gunpowder in the White Tower of the Tower in London; while the Chancery records are feeding a fine, fat, historical, and uncommonly numerous breed of rats in the cellars of the Rolls Chapel; while some of the most important muniments existing (including William the Conqueror’s Domesday Book) are being dried up in the Chapter-House of Westminster Abbey, by the united heats of a contiguous brew-house and an adjacent wash-house; and while heaps of monastic charters and their surrenders to Henry the Eighth, with piles of inestimable historical treasures, are huddled together upon scaffolds in the interior of the dilapidated Riding-School in Carlton Ride—can Mr. Bruce or any other man of common sense, suppose that any attention whatever will be paid by any person in power to his very modest suggestion? FROM MR. T. OLDCASTLE CONCERNING THE COAL EXCHANGE. “SIR, Blue Dragon Arms, South Shields. “I have just read in your ‘Household Words’ a pleasant enough account of the ‘Coal Exchange of London,’ in which my name is mentioned. I suppose I ought—and therefore I do—consider it a great honour; and what Captain of a collier-brig would not? So, no more about that, except to thank you. Same time, mayhap, there may be a trifle or two in the paper to which I don’t quite subscribe; and, as I seem to be towed astern of the writer as he works his way on, it seems only fair that I should overhaul his log in such matters as I don’t agree to, whether so be in respect of his remarks or reckoning. “In the first place, the writer says the Coal Exchange is painted as bright as a coffee-garden or dancing-place on the continent. Well—belike it is. And what o’ that? Did he wish it to be painted in coal-tar? as if we didn’t see enough of this at home—whether collier-men or coal-merchants! I make no doubt he wanted to see all the inside just of the same colour as your London buildings are on th’ outside—walls, and towers, and spires, like so many great smoke-jacks. Then as to his taste in female beauty, he seems more disposed to the pale faces of novel-writers’ young ladies than such sort of brown and ruddy skins as some of us think more mettlesome. I confess I do; and so he may rig me out on this matter as he pleases. Howsomever, I must say that I believe most people will prefer both the bright ladies, and the bright adornment of the building, to any mixture of soot and blacking, which has, hitherto, characterised the taste of my old friends the Londoners. And it is my advice to the artist, Mr. Sang, just to snap his fingers at the opposite taste of your writer, which is exactly what I do myself, for his comparing my ‘hard weather-beaten face’ to the wooden figure of a ship’s head.