Heavens! Mr. Rollin, I tremble with you. The plethora of prosperity increases, and will burst the sooner! We, eating, drinking, contented, trafficking, stupid, revolution-hating, spiritless, English people, “are undermining ourselves within.” We are gorging ourselves with National prosperity to bring on a National dyspepsia, and will soon fall asleep under the influence of a national nightmare! Horrible! the more so because “Alas! unconscious of their fate, The little victims play.” Now, Sir, I wish to ask you calmly and candidly, if there _is_ any fire at the bottom of your volumes of smoke? or have you read our records, and seen our country through a flaming pair of Red Spectacles, that has converted everything within their range into Raw-Head-and-Bloody-Bones? Indeed I hope it is so; for though I am very much obliged to you for putting us on our guard, you have made me very miserable. This is the worst shock of all. With my belief in “what is going to happen,” I have led but a dog-life of it, ever since I retired from that cat-and-dog life, the Law. First, the Reform Bill was to ruin us out of hand; then, the farmers threatened us with what was going to happen in consequence of Free Trade; and that was bad enough, for it was starvation—no less. What was going to happen if the Navigation Laws were repealed, I dare not recall. Now we are to be swept off the face of the earth if we allow letters to be sorted on a Sunday. But these are comparative trifles to what you, Mr. R., assert is going to happen, whatever we do or don’t do. However, I am resolved on one thing—_I_ won’t be in at the death, or rather _with_ the death. I shall pull up my little stake in Capel Court, and retire to some quiet corner of the world, such as the Faubourg St. Antoine, the foot of Mount Vesuvius, or Chinese Tartary. Yours truly, CHRISTOPHER SHRIMBLE. Paradise Row, Tooting. * * * * * Monthly Supplement of ‘HOUSEHOLD WORDS,’ Conducted by CHARLES DICKENS. _Price 2d., Stamped 3d._, THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE OF CURRENT EVENTS. _The Number, containing a history of the past month, was issued with the Magazines._ * * * * * Published at the Office, No 16, Wellington Street North, Strand. Printed by BRADBURY & EVANS, Whitefriars, London. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES