very small measure of gratification. From all
these troubles we should at any rate be free.
No house-painting would be required auy
more. Every time there was a shower of rain
the outsides of our places of abode would be
washed from top to bottom; or, in default of
rain, they could be cleaned with infinite ease
by the application of a discharge of water from
a small engine.

It is to be hoped that no one will suppose,
that the suggestion hazarded in these lines is
put forward with a maniacal conviction that
the whole of London ought suddenly to be
rased to the ground, and a new town built up
with houses decorated in the manner here
advocated. All that it is intended to urge is that,
as occasion serves, it might be advisable to try
some experiments in connexion with this idea.
The building of houses is a process which is
going on, in and about London, every day, and
all day long, and even supposing that there
might be a difficulty in applying this system
of decoration to houses already built—though
even this does not seem very impracticable—it
might still be tried in the case of houses in the
course of erection, or yet to be built.

After all the attempt would not be a very
rash one; we have—as has been said above—
experience of a successful use of tiles,
somewhat analogous to that here proposed, on the
walls of certain dairies, and butchers' shops,
and the author of this paper has also seen them
employed in another way—to which he may
perhaps be excused for alluding a little more at
length—introduced, that is, shoulder-high as
a sort of facing to the walls of a staircase.
These walls had originally been painted, but
had got, in a short time, to be quite
disfigured with dirt and stains; the house being
full of children and servants, who were
constantly using the stairs, and bringing hands
which (the scene being laid in London), were
not always scrupulously clean, into contact with
the wall, not to speak of the deteriorating
effect produced by the continual bumping
against the paint of all those numerous objects
which have, in the course of the year to be
carried up from below stairs, or brought down
from above. The staircase at last under these
defiling influences got to look so dirty that
the proprietor of the house of which it formed
part, determined to try the experiment whether
a glazed surface would not defy the contact,
both of hands in a doubtful condition as to
cleanliness, of the dresses in which the servants
did their dirty work, and of all the other
polluting influences to which staircase walls are
liable, and gave orders that they should
incontinently be faced with tiles, to the height of
some five feet above the wainscot. Nothing
could be more entirely successful than the result.
The tiles after a year's contact with doubtful
hands, dirty work-dresses, and the rest, remaining
perfectly bright and speckless, and showing
no indication anywhere of having been touched
by any object that was in the slightest degree
uncleanly. The surface in short would not
receive dirt, or receiving, would not retain it.

Since the above was written, additional
corroboration of the theory that glazed tiles are
exceedingly well adapted for purposes of
external mural decoration, has come in the
writer's way, in the shape of an account of
Lisbon, published in a new magazine brought
out by the members of the Civil Service, and
called Under the Crown. In a description of
the Portuguese capital, which appears in the
notes referred to, mention is made of the use of
glazed tiles as a commonly-used facing to the
houses in Lisbon; and the effect is spoken of as
in every way most satisfactory, the bright look
of the houses and their extreme cleanliness being
especially enlarged on. Here, then, is evidence
of the fitness of these tiles for out-door service
which is surely of great value, and which might
encourage us to try them in our own metropolis,
where they would be even more
appropriate than in a city like Lisbon, which is so
much less subject than London to all sorts of
polluting influences. We Londoners should
indeed be—perhaps with the exception of
some of the manufacturing towns—the most
special gainers of all by such a change as the
employment of these tiles would effect. Our
town would be clean-looking and cheerful,
instead of being, as it is now, foul and dismal in
the extremest degree, and in place of the dark
and sooty structures which at present border
our streets, we should have rows of bright and
comely buildings all about us. In a word, we
might rationally hope at least to have pleasant
objects to look at as we walked along, instead
of unseemly ones —a white town to live in in
place of a black one—a clean town instead of
a dirty one.

OLD DICK PURSER.

"RICHARD PURSER, a farm labourer, lately died, in
the workhouse, aged one hundred and twelve. He
worked in the fields within seven years of his decease."
—COUNTRY PAPER.

WELL, it do seem a power of a time ago
Since old King Garge came here, you know;
But I remembr't by this zign—
That spring the beans were coming on vine.

I was twenty-four on the very day
That the Royal Garge went down, they say;
The admiral's money it still lies there—
'Tis eighty-eight years come next Stroud vair.

We drove to Gloucester a load of corn
That June the Prince of Wales was born;
I couldn't forgot it for all squire's wealth—
For they made me drunk a drinking his health.

The year I was courting my little May
Was the year of the fighting in 'Merikay;
'Twas all, as I've heard, about some tax
That government men put on their backs.

I had been married 'bout fifteen year,
When up went bread, and up went beer;
'Twas the Revolootion, as I understood,
The time we was felling Thorley Wood.

They cut off the French king's head, I heerd—
And many a better, as I'm afeared;
And then came Bony, that terrible Turk,
Just as I'd taken to hedging work.