a fearful storm of thunder and lightning;
although, when in health, she would have
been greatly terrified by such a storm.

PRATTLETON'S MONDAY OUT.

I AM Isaac Prattleton, stonemason and
dealer in monumental effigies, at Sixteen,
Longshore Street, Lirnehouse. My wife was
Catherine Boroo, and we were married at
Poplar Church, on the sixteenth of March,
one thousand eight hundred and thirty-one.
My wife's mother, Widow Boroo, lives with
us, but pays her lodgings. I have one
daughter, Kitty, twenty-three years old, and
one boy, Albert, named after our gracious
prince, aged ten, surviving out of a family of
eight; but there is my son Jack at sea.

The object of my addressing myself to
your valuable journal—of which I have been
a subscriber since the commencement—is
because I see you wish to do good, and
I ask leave to place before the public and
my fellow workmen certain observations.
I had just completed an original design of
my own for a monument to Mrs. Alderman
Swallow—two angels weeping over the tureen
supposed to contain the defunct, and
inscribed with the one word Lucy Jane (the
sentiment was much admired)—when I
proposed to my good people a Monday out. I
will not trouble you, sir, with a description
of the interesting contents of the British
Museum, where we spent our morning, though
I could say something about the monumental
stones of the Egyptians. What premises the
mason must have had who turned out such
an article as Ramshackle the First!  But the
Egyptian masons clearly overdid the thing,
and what with Ramshackle here and
Ramshackle there, the public, I think, must have
been stoned to death. I will throw together
for you some remarks upon this subject at a
future day. We were all very much
interested with what we saw at the British
Museum, except Mrs. Boroo, who had saved
herself for the evening treat, and only joined
us at five p.m., near Hungerford Market,
where we had tea at a cake-shop, and bought
a large crab and a pint of shrimps, to take
home as a delicacy to my wife's sister, Mrs.
Starks, who is a great invalid. Mrs. Boroo
carried the crab in her large pocket, and my
son Albert put the shrimps into his jacket,
as I believe we are not allowed to carry
parcels in at the South Kensington Museum,
and I did not think it safe to trust a crab
with the officials at the door.

This museum, sir, was established after the
close of the Great Exhibition, 'fifty-one. Part
of it is what used to be at Marlborough
House for the help and support of those
Schools of Design which the Exhibition
showed to be a sort of food that English
manufactures needed. Part of it is gifts from
foreign governments of articles contributed
to that same exhibition in illustration of
their industries. Part of it was collected by
the Society of Arts through the help of
Professor Solly. Part of it is given or lent by
private persons, mercantile and royal. Part
of it is contributed by an association for the
advancement of architecture, part by an
association of the sculptors. Part is the
bequest of pictures left by Mr. Sheepshanks to
the nation, on condition that use should be
made of it in the education of the public
taste, through schools of design and by way
of exhibition. The whole stores of the
museum make an exhibition often varying. One
part, after travelling about the provinces to
diffuse the ideas that belong to it, comes
back into barracks at Kensington, to take the
place of another part that sets out in its
turn. Pictures shift in their frames. Statues
and casts from them constantly change, and
there is a rule that ensures a complete change
within every three years. Such is the
exhibition.  At seven it opens, sir, and till ten it
remains open, and fourpence is the fare from
Charing Cross by all the omnibuses.
Mondays and Tuesdays free, evening as well as
morning; also Saturdays. But, O! Mrs.
Boroo! We went in at the entrance, and I
gave up my stick, and she gave up her
umbrella, and my daughter Kitty gave up
her parasol to a civil person, and we went in
among the curiosities, when Mrs. Boroo, she
stood stock-still and crouched up at a wall as
if there was a spider coming.

"Prattleton," says she, "what's that?"

"Mrs. Boroo," says I, "that is a dustman.
He has washed his face, that's certain, and
has exchanged his shovel-hat for a four-and-
ninepenny silk; but them's dustman's boots,
them's dustman's corduroys, and that's a
dustman's gaberdine, with the dust still
powdered across the shoulders."

"Let us go home," Mrs. Boroo says; "this
is no fit place to bring your wife and daughter
to, to say nothing of me, who, when I was a
girl, refused a master baker doing one
hundred and eighty sacks a week."

"Well," says I, "he seems quiet like,
slouching about with his hands in his
pockets, and he looks this way and that with
as much of the air of admiring nothing, as if
he were a gentleman."

"Perhaps," says Kitty, "he's a lord in
disguise." He had just looked at Kitty with
the air of admiring something. "His coat's
wonderfully clean, though it is dusty on the
shoulders."

"Monday, child!" says grandmother
Boroo, with disgust. "See him on Saturday."

My daughter looked as if she wouldn't
mind, for certainly he was a proper fellow.
We soon found that among the throng in this
museum on Monday night a dustman was no
oddity. But I do say a line ought to be
drawn. I like improvement of the mind, and
I do try myself to elevate the taste of my own
family. But a line ought to be drawn somewhere
above dustmen. Is a respectable