"ONE TOUCH OF NATURE MAKES THE WHOLE WORLD KIN."
NATURE, with prodigal exuberance, strews flowers "to waste their sweetness on the desert air." In the same lavish spirit, she infuses sentiments which might be imagined exclusively charac- teristic of the higher classes into those of obscure station. At a recent meeting of the conscript fathers of Hammersmith, Mr. Frond, grocer, astutely argued, that wherever railways are intro- duced the trade of the district suffers. "He might advance as an illustration, the fact that, in the event of his giving a dinner- party, he might by means of railway comraumcation run up to London and buy a salmon at a half less price than he could get it from the person who usually supplied him at Hammersmith." The Duke of Richmond himself could not have expressed the ree: son for opposing Corn-law repeal with more clearness and at the same lame with more delicacy. Mr. Frond, grocer, knows that residents along the Greenwich and Croydon and Blackwell lines of railway, are in the habit of stepping into Twining's or Dakin's on their way homeward, and purchasing half a pound or it may be a pound of tea, instead of paying a higher price for an inferior article to the tradesman in their neighbourhood. Nay, Mr. Froud, grocer, has reason to suspect that individuals who travel by omnibus to and from Hammersmith indulge in the same unpatriotic pract,ice. This moves not Mr. Froud : but he is aware that human nature is weak—he distrusts himself—he is not certain that opportunity might not tempt him, L0 when he gives a dinner- party," to forget the claims of his neighbour the fishmonger, and buy a nice cheap salmon at Billingsgate. Such things have been done ere now: Mr. —, who has an office in the Tower, is shrewdly suspected of smuggling Billingsgate cods' heads and shoulders into Hammersmith ; and Mr. Froud, grocer, is himself a mere fallible mortal. He entreats that he may not be led into tempta- tion by railway facilities. So Lords and Knights and Gentlemen resist Corn-law repeal, although it might lower their rents, solely because it would throw labourers out of employment, reduce wages, and deprive country shopkeepers of custom. It is a pleasing surprise to find-the true spirit of a nobleman enshrined in the bosom of an humble grocer in the obscure suburb of Ham- mersmith. Mr. Froud is one of " Nature's gentlemen."
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