When the day's labors are over, and he sits in slippered ease 'by his own fireside,' what greater enjoyment can he have than to abandon himself in true Barmecidal fashion to the tempting dainties which the last page of the supplement to the _Times_ offers to his keen appetite! How he revels in the luscious descriptions of 'noble parks,' 'swelling lawns,' 'ancestral woods,' 'silver lakes,' and 'endless panoramas of scenery unequalled in the world'! How proudly he lingers over the pictures of 'baronial castles,' and 'time-honored manorial residences, indissolubly linked with the proudest names and proudest deeds of England's history'! If he be a sportsman--and what Englishman is not, more or less?--how intoxicating to him is the enumeration of 'game of all sorts, and countless myriads of wild fowl,' only waiting his advent to fall victims to his prowess! If he be a philanthropist, what visions of model farms, model cottages and model schools, of a happy and contented peasantry, of comely, smiling matrons, and troops of ruddy-cheeked children may he not conjure up! If he be ambitious, what dreams of greatness crowd upon him--the revered benefactor of the parish, the respected chairman of the bench of magistrates, nay, even the county member returned to Parliament without a dis-sentient voice! His fancy runs riot, and there is no limit to the bright future which the skilful hand of the cunning knight of the hammer unfolds before his enraptured gaze. To the energetic, enterprising man, how tempting must be those prospectuses of schemes for the development of the vast and in many cases untried natural, industrial, and commercial resources of the country, which, combining in an eminent degree both pleasure and profit, invite his cooeperation upon the joint-stock principle! How delightful to him must be those announcements of wonderful inventions--secured by a patent--and of old-established business firms, which offer a safe investment for his spare hundreds and thousands by way of partnership, with the certainty of immediate and enormous returns! To the invalid and the valetudinarian, how cheering must be those modest and disinterested encomiums upon the virtues of certain nostrums and specifics, which cannot but carry conviction to his mind that there is a certain cure for 'all the ills that flesh is heir to!' And lastly, not to enlarge the list any further, what a glow of heartfelt pleasure and gratitude must the really good and benevolent man experience when he peruses the reports of charitable societies, with their statistics of poverty, misery, and privation, which afford him a channel for the dispensation in works of mercy of the superfluous wealth with which a bountiful Providence has blessed him!