THE ARTIFICIAL FLOOR FOR SKATING. IF our grandfathers, and great-grandfathers, and great-grandmothers, and great-great-grandmothers, (who, depend upon it, were all very little people,) could only look down and see what is going on among us here below, how they would, as an Irish friend remarks, turn up their eyes! Those who were wont, while vegetaters in this world, to creep to bed with the lamb, for want of a light to sit up by, (before man 66 found out long-sixes,") must, upon peeping down now, be dazzled by the blaze of gas; yet what is gas compared to the Bude-light, already superseding it? Those who made their wills when they undertook a three-weeks journey from York to London, must be abundantly startled by our railroads ; yet what is railway-travelling now to the velocity with which we are hereafter to move-when, seated on a cannon-ball, we shall be shot into a distant city in less time than it would take us to stop at home. But of all the wonders that must make them their unsubstantial eyes, and rub their aerial spectacles, a Skating Assembly in a London drawingroom must assuredly take the lead. Balloons pilotable and walks under the Thames, iron ships and canals over carriage-ways, these are mere common-places. Earth, air, fire, and water, are old-fashioned things. Artificial Ice is the new element that shall astonish the other four. open In America they are boasting the construction of a railroad to convey ice to Charlestown, for the supply of the West Indies! Very well; but that is real ice. England has done something more; she has established her independence of winter. She can do without frost altogether, and yet go on skating all the year round. She has discovered more than Parry did at the Pole; she has found out-Artificial Ice! To Mr. Bradwell, whose ingenuity as a machinist has so long been signalized in Covent Garden theatre, the public will be indebted for the realization of this wonder. It is proposed that in what were once the nursery-grounds in the New Road the infant art shall be nursed and reared, and the New Road to Enjoyment be thrown open. Magnificent rooms, on a scale of extraordinary magnitude, will be laid with sheets of patent ice, upon which the common skate can be used with the same facility as upon the frozen Serpentine. There will be rooms for learners and private parties. The artificial ice has been put to the test of extreme heat, and is unaffected by it. It may be used in private houses, and be carpeted when skating is over. Such is the accredited statement; and our inference naturally is, that skating will soon become popular all over the world. The speculators who long ago sent out skates to India will now make their fortunes. With ourselves it will soon be the national pastime. People will get up in the dog-days, early, and go out for a morning's skating. They will enjoy the sport with advantages hitherto undreamed of; there will be no keen winter-wind to cut them in two-no "mobocracy" to mix withno rheumatisms to catch-no duckings to dread. The word "dangerous" will be as a term in the unknown tongue. They will not anticipate a drawback in the use of the drags, and though they mix in every society, P the "Humane” will be untroubled; there will be neither falling in nor falling out. MR. AND MRS. SLIPPERS Skating-floors will, of course, be laid down in the houses of all the affluent, and invites will be issued from Portland-place and Park-lane, after the fashion of the accompanying card. It will be the privilege of a gentleman to solicit the hand of a lady to beseech her to take part with him in the him in a true-lover's knot. Servants will skate in and out with real ice. The text of Milton will be altered in the next edition, and his couplet will be read— for the next figure-of-eight, date of the year, or to join "Come and trip it, long and late, On the light fantastic skate." But the skating-floor will be in equal request for family use as for company. On a wet morning, when it is impossible to go out, the gentleman will say "Here's a soaker! no ride, no walk; James, bring me my skates." Or perhaps the lady will cry-"What a horrid dry day! nothing but dust! Why don't they put an awning all over Hyde Park! Eustace, my skates!" What an immense saving will there be in families in the article of firing, when people are thus irresistibly moved to "stir their stumps," instead of the fire. But will the advantages end here? Certainly not. There can be no question but that the experiment will be tried in the new Houses of Parliament, where, should a skating-floor be laid down, notices of motion will be far less abundant than motions without notice. Changing sides will be a matter of constant practice; to cut figures, not to cultivate them, will be the order of the day; the noble lord will "feel great reluctance in reducing himself to the level of the honourable gentleman," and the honourable gentleman "will very unwillingly adopt the position of the noble lord." Supporting petitions will be of less consequence than supporting partitions; and the strong party measure that will be necessary, will be a strong party wall. Westminster-hall will of course be furnished with a floor for the use of the lawyers, and the juries in waiting; the counsel will show where an action may lie, the plaintiff will naturally go against the defendant, and the defendant will as naturally move for a new trial. The town-halls throughout the kingdom will be similarly supplied. But may not patentice pavements be laid down in our popular thoroughfares? We have asphalte promenades and wooden highways; but what are such inventions as these to the convenience of ice-pavements, and the luxury of skating down Cheapside to be early on 'Change! What a ninth of November will that be which shows us the two Sheriffs skating away to Guildhall after the new Lord Mayor, followed by the Court of Aldermen and the Companies. A procession on skates! the Cabinet Ministers, the Judges,-the sword-bearer, and the men in armour- all skating like Dutchmen ! [If herein we exaggerate, we have not exaggerated the ingenuity of Mr. Bradwell, to whom we wish a signal success.] DUNS DEMONSTRATED. BY EDWARD HOWARD, AUTHOR OF "RATTLIN THE REEFER." THE dark ages of barbarism are generally supposed to have been more prolific of monsters; but modern times,-the times of civilization and refinement-have far excelled them in this respect. What are your giants, your anthropophagi, and "men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders," as monsters, compared with that maximum of monstrosity, a dun? He is an iniquity, who may claim Impudence and Usury for his father and mother. He is a devouring Sin, a rampant atrocity, a thing unendurable. And then the double duplicity of the monster! He makes his first approaches towards his victim smiling-he actually smiles -he offers to lend you money, the angel! or bestow upon you his goods; and then he is nothing but the beneficent assister of the poor: for every man who condescends to be in debt must be poor-if in want, pitiably poor in fact; if not in want, poor in spirit beyond the approach of contempt. But when his meshes have once entangled his prey, this seraph stands forth in the sublimity of the horrible—THE DUN! Come, as we are in a free nation, let us talk about the chains of slavery, tyranny's oppression, the morgue of aristocracy, and the fierté of those in authority; shall we not rise in arms against them "Sblood! shall we not be rebels?" Stop. Let us first conquer a tyrant far stronger than any of these-a despot more despotic than any autocrat who ever existed. This persecutor violates all the sanctities of private life; he is with us at our meals, he penetrates the closet, even the bedchamber affords us no asylum. There is no sanctuary from the dun. Death? That may be, yet we know not. We should hesitate the accepting a grave gratis, even were it a mausoleum, near the "remains" of a dun. Nobody can answer for the force of habit. The ancients had very correct notions on this subject. There was a dun at the very entrance to their "shades below;" how could any place of torment be complete without one? There was Charon, with his skinny hand outstretched for a penny. It was not much, certainly; but it is a great deal more than dutiful sons, affectionate nephews, and disconsolate heirs, can now afford to bestow upon the illustrious departed. It is a good thing for the modern dead that all this about Styx and the ferry-boat is held to be fiction. Detestable as is the dun, there is something heroic about him. It has been matter of dispute among learned commentators whether the assertion respecting this right valourous Thomas Thumb should be construed literally or paraphrastically, "He made the giants first, and then he killed them." There can be no doubt about the deeds of the dun. He actually does “make his giants first, and then he kills them." Without him there would be no debtors to destroy. If debt be a crime, the creditor is more than particeps criminis. He is the originator of, and tempter to, the deed. Justice should really punish the dun for drawing his victim into debt. We deny not that lending money is glorious among the virtues: nobody can appreciate that more than ourselves. But to |