and not the formal, pedantic noises, an affectation of skill in which is now-a-days the ruin of half the young couples in the middle rank of life.  Let any man observe, as I so frequently have, with delight, the excessive fondness of the labouring people for their children.  Let him observe with what pride they dress them out on a Sunday, with means deducted from their own scanty meals.  Let him observe the husband, who has toiled all the week like a horse, nursing the baby, while the wife is preparing the bit of dinner.  Let him observe them both abstaining from a sufficiency, lest the children should feel the pinchings of hunger.  Let him observe, in short, the whole of their demeanour, the real mutual affection, evinced, not in words, but in unequivocal deeds.  Let him observe these things, and, having then cast a look at the lives of the great and wealthy, he will say, with me, that, when a man is choosing his partner for life, the dread of poverty ought to be cast to the winds.  A labourer’s cottage, on a Sunday; the husband or wife having a baby in arms, looking at two or three older ones playing between the flower-borders going from the wicket to the door, is, according to my taste, the most interesting object that eyes ever beheld; and, it is an object to be beheld in no country upon earth but England.  In France, a labourer’s cottage means a shed with a dung-heap before the door; and it means much about the same in America, where it is wholly inexcusable.  In riding once, about five years ago, from Petworth to Horsham, on a Sunday in the afternoon, I came to a solitary cottage which stood at about twenty yards distance from the road.  There was the wife with the baby in her arms, the husband teaching another child to walk, while four more were at play before them.  I stopped and looked at them for some time, and then, turning my horse, rode up to the wicket, getting into talk by asking the distance to Horsham.  I found that the man worked chiefly in the woods, and that he was doing pretty well.  The wife was then only twenty-two, and the man only twenty-five.  She was a pretty woman, even for Sussex, which, not excepting Lancashire, contains the prettiest women in England.  He was a very fine and stout young man.  ‘Why,’ said I, ’how many children do you reckon to have at last?’ ‘I do not care how many,’ said the man:  ’God never sends mouths without sending meat.’  ‘Did you ever hear,’ said I, ‘of one PARSON MALTHUS?’ ‘No, sir.’  ’Why, if he were to hear of your works, he would be outrageous; for he wants an act of parliament to prevent poor people from marrying young, and from having such lots of children.’  ‘Oh! the brute!’ exclaimed the wife; while the husband laughed, thinking that I was joking.  I asked the man whether he had ever had relief from the parish; and upon his answering in the negative, I took out my purse, took from it enough to bait my horse at Horsham, and to clear my turnpikes