Chapter XXVII: Book I: —DEFINITIONS. A point in politics is that which always has place (4)

It will hardly be credited that I counted no less than fourteen sheep hanging up in the shop I have alluded to, while there was a bullock being skinned in the back yard, and a countless quantity of liver and lights all over the premises. Knocking off the infant again for the sake of uniformity, you will perceive that the fourteen sheep would be one sheep each for every member of this family, including the mother, to whom we gave half the rolls and flour in the former case, and there still remains (to say nothing of the entire bullock for the baby of three weeks, which no one will deny to be sufficient) a large quantity of lights, et cetera, for the cat or dog, if there should be such a wilful extravagance in the family. With these facts I close my report, and I trust that you will see how thoroughly I have proved the assertion of the Duke of Wellingtonthat if there is distress, it must be in some way quite unconnected with a want of food, for there is plenty to eat in every part of the country.

I shall be happy to undertake further inquiries, and shall have no objection to consider myself regularly under Government.

Yours obediently, PUNCH.

THE TEA SERVICE ON SEA SERVICE. LORD JOCELYN, in his recent work upon China, while writing upon the pastimes and amusements of the people, expresses great satisfaction at the entertainment afforded travellers in their private assemblies; though he confesses, as a general principle, he should always avoid making one in the more promiscuous

A sea-going ship guns and sinks a junk. CHINESE JUNKETTING.

[pg 171] THE HEIR OF APPLEBITE. CHAPTER VII. CONTAINS A VERY FAIR BILL OF FARE. A vine-covered Simultaneously with the last chord of the last quadrille the important announcement was made that supper was readya piece of information that produced a visible commotion among the party. Young gentlemen who had incautiously engaged old or ugly partners evinced a decided desire to get rid of them, or, by the expression of their countenances, seemed to be inwardly cursing their unfortunate situation. Young ladies in whose bosoms the first slight predilection had taken up a residence, experienced, they knew not why, a mental and physical prostration at the absence of Orlando Sims or Tom Walker, who (how provoking!) were doing the gallant to some horrid disagreeable coquettes. Mamas, who really did like a good supper, and considered it an integral portion of their daily sustenance, crowded towards the door that led to the comestibles, fearing that they might not get eligible situations before the solids, but be placed among the bashful young gentlemen, who linger to the last to pull off their gloves in order to pull them on again, and look as though they considered they ought to be happy and were extremely surprised that they were not. The arrangement of the supper-table displayed the deep research of Mesdames Applebite and Waddledot in the mysteries of gastronomical architecture. Pagodas of barley-sugar glistened in the rays of thirty-six wax candles and four Argand lampsparterres of jellies, gravelled round with ratafias or valanced with lemon-peel, trembled as though in sympathy with the agitated bosoms of their delicate concocterscustards freckled with nutmeg clustered the crystal handles of their cups togethersarcophagi of pound cakes frowned, as it were, upon the sweetness which surrounded themwhilst fawn-coloured elephants (from the confectionary menagerie of the celebrated Simpson of the Strand) stood ready to be slaughtered. Huge stratified pies courted the inquiries of appetite. Chickens boiled and roast reposed on biers of blue china bedecked with sprigs of green parsley and slices of yellow lemon. Tanks of golden sherry and

A 'Pasha' smokes a pipe. FULL-BODIED PORTE

wooed the thirsty revellers; and never since the unlucky dessert of Mother Eve have temptations been so willingly embraced. The carnage commencedspoons dived into the jellyknives lacerated the poultry and the raised piesa colony of custards vanished in a momentthe elephants were demolished by ivories11. Anglicè, Teeth.THE one PIERCE.the sarcophagi were buriedand the glittering pagodas melted rapidly before the heat and the attacks of four little ladies in white muslin and pink sashes. The tanks of sherry and port were distributed by the young gentlemen into the glasses and over the dresses of the young ladies. The tipsy-cake, like the wreck of the Royal George, was rescued from the foaming ocean in which it had been imbedded. The diffident young gentlemen grew very red about the eyes, and very loquacious about the next set after supper; whilst the faces of the elderly ladies all over lie room looked like the red lamps on Westminster Bridge, and ought to have been beacons to warn the inexperienced that where they shone there was very little water. The violent clattering of the plates was at length succeeded by a succession of merry giggles and provoking little screams, occasioned by the rapid discharge of a park of bonbons.

Where the slight predilection was reciprocated, the Orlando Simses and the Tom Walkers were squeezing in beside the blushing idols of their worship and circling the waists of their divinities with their arms, in order to take up less room on the rout-stool.

Mamas were shaking heads at daughters who had ventured upon a tenth sip of a glass of sherry. Papas were getting extremely jocular about the probability of becoming grand-dittos. Everybody else was doing exactly what everybody pleased, when Mrs. Applebites uncle John emerged from behind an epergne, and vociferously commanded everybody to charge their glasses; a requisition which nobody was bold enough to dispute. Uncle John then wiped his lips in the table-cloth, and proceeded to inform the company of a fact that was universally understood, that they had met there to celebrate the first dental dawn of the heir of Applebite. I have only to refer you, said uncle John, to the floor of the next room for the response to my requestnamely, that you will drain your glasses; and, in the words of nephew Agamemnon Collumpsion Applebite, partake of our dental delight. This eloquent address was followed by immense cheering and a shower of sherry bottoms, which the gentlemen in their entusymusy scattered around them as Hesperus is reported to dispense his tee-total drops.

Nothing could be going on betterno woman could feel prouder than Mrs. Waddledot, whenwe hope you dont anticipate the catastrophewhen two of the Argand lamps gave olfactory demonstrations of dissolution. Sperm oil is a brilliant illuminator, but we never knew any one except an Esquimaux, or a Russian, who preferred it to lavender-water as a perfume. Old John was in a muddle of miseryevidently

A man looks down on a cradle with twin babies in it. LOOKING DOWN UPON HIS LUCK.

and was only relieved from his embarrassment by the following fortunate occurrence:

By-the-bye, we have just recollected that we have an invitation to dinner. Readerau revoir.

NEW WORKS NOW IN THE PRESS. An Abstract and Brief Chronicle of the Times. Very small duodecimo. By Mr. ROEBUCK.

A New Dissertation on the Anatomy of the Figures of the Multiplication Table. By JOSEPH HUME.

Outlines of the Late Ministry, after Ten Years (Teniers). By Lord MELBOURNE.

Recollections of Place. By Lord JOHN RUSSELL.

Mythological Tract upon the Heathen Deity Cupid. By Lord PALMERSTON.

Explanatory Annotations on the Abstruse Works of the late Joseph (vulgo Joe) Miller. With a humorous etching of his tombstone, and Original Epitaph. By Colonel SIBTHORP.

Also, by the same Author, an Ornithological Treatise on the various descriptions of Water-fowl; showing the difference between Russia and other Ducks, and why the former are invariably sold in pairs.

A few words on Indefinite Subjects, supposed to be Sir Robert Peels Future Intentions. By Mr. WAKLEY.

[pg 172] AMERICAN CONGRESS. We hasten to lay before our readers the following authentic reports of the latest debates in the United States Congress, which have been forwarded to us by our peculiarly and especially exclusive Reporters.

New York.The greatest possible excitement exists here, agitating alike the bosoms of the Whites, the Browns, and the Blacks; a universal sympathy appears to exist among all classes, the greater portion of whom are looking exceedingly blue. The all-absorbing question as to whether the war is to be or not to be, seems an exceedingly difficult one to answer. One party says Yes, and another party says No, and a third party says the above parties Lie in their teeth; and thereupon issue is joined, and bowie-knives are exchangedthe Yes walking away with Nos sheathed in the middle of his back, and the No making up for his loss by securing the Yess somewhere between his ribs. All the black porters are looking out for light jobs, and rushing about with shutters and cards of address, bearing high-minded Loco-focos and shot-down democrats to their respective surgeons and houses. This unusual bustle and activity gives the more political parts of the city an exceedingly brisk appearance, and has caused most of the eminent surgeons, not attached to either party, to be regularly retained by the principal speakers in these most interesting debates.

In Congress great attention is paid to the comfort of the various members, who are all provided with spittoons, though they are by no means compelled to tie themselves down to the exclusive use of those expectorant receptacles; on the contrary, much ingenuity is shown by some of the more practised in picking out other deposits; a vast majority of the Kentuckians will back themselves to shoot through the opposition members nose and eye-glass without touching flesh or flints.

The prevailing opinion appears to be, that should we come to a fight they will completely alter the costume of the country, and whop us into fits. Their style of elocution is masterly in the extreme, redolent with the sagest deductions, and overflowing with a magnificent and truly Eastern redundancy of the most poetical tropes. I will now proceed to give you an extract from the celebrated speaker on the war sidethe renowned Jonathan J. Twang.

I rather calculate that tarnal, pisoned, alligator of a ring-tailed, roaring, pestiferous, rattlesnake, that critter the Old Country, would jist about give up one half its skin, and wriggle itself slick out of the other, rayther than go for to put our dander up at this present identical out-and-out important critical crisis! I conceit their minstry have got jist about into as considerable a tarnation nasty fix, as a naked nigger in the stocks when the mosquitoes are steaming up a little beyond high pressure. I guess Prince Albert and the big uns dont find their seats quite as soft as buttered eels in a mud bank! Look hereisnt it considerable clear theyre all funking like burnt Cayenne in a clay pipe; or couldnt they have made a raise some how to get a ship of their own, or borrow one, to send after that caged-up coon of a Macleod? Its my notion, and pretty considerable clear to me, theyre all bounce, like bad chesnuts, very well to look at, but come to try them at the fire for a roast, and they turn out puff and shell. They talk of war as the boy did of whipping his father, but like him, they daresnt do it, and why not? why, for the following elegant reasons:Since they have been used to the advantages of doing their little retail trade with our own go-ahead and carry-all-before-it right slick-up-an-end double-distilled essence of a genuine fine and civilised country, the everlasting possums have become habituated to some of the manners of our enlightened inhabitants. We have nothing to do but refuse the supply of cottons, and leave them all with as little shirts to their backs as wool on a skinned eel. Isnt it the intercourse with this here country that enables them to speak their very language with something rayther like a leetle correctness, though theyre just about as far behind us as the last jint of the sea-sarpent is from his eye-tooth?

Doesnt all international law consist in keeping an everlasting bright look-out on your own side, and jamming all other varments slick through a stone wall, as the waggon-wheel used up the lame frog? (Hear, hear.) I sayand mind you Ill stick to it like a starved sloth to the back of a fat babbyI say, gentlemen, this country, the United States (particularly Kentucky, from which I come, and which will whip all the rest with out-straws and rotten bull-rushes agin pike, bagnet, mortars, and all their almighty fine artillery), I say, then, this country is considerable like a genuine fac-simile of the waggon-wheel, and the pretty oneasy busted-up old worn-out island of the bull-headed Britishers, aint nothing more than the tee-totally used-up frog. (Hear, hear.)

I expect theyd have just as much chance with us as a muzzled monkey with a hiccory-nut. Talk of their fleet! Ill bet six live niggers to a dead coon, our genuine Yankee clippers will whip them into as bad a fix as a flying-fish with a gull at his head and a shark at his tail. Theyre jist about as much out of their reckoning as the pig that took to swimming for his health and cut his throat trying it on.

Its everlasting strange to me if, to all future posterity coming after us, the word Macleod dont shut up their jaws from bragging of British valour just about as tight as the death-squeeze of a boa-constrictor round a smashed-up buffalo!

If it want for the distance and leaving my plantation, Id go over with any on you, and help to use up the lot myself! Let them come on, as the tiger said to the young kid, and see what Ill do for you. They talk of sending out their chaps here, do they; let them; theyll be just about as happy as a toad in hot tar, and thats a fact. Here Jonathan J. Twang sat down amid immense cheers; at the conclusion of which, Mr. Peter P. Pellican, from the back-woods, requestedhe, Peter P. Pellican, being from Orleansthat Mr. Jonathan J. Twang would retract certain words derogatory to the state represented by Peter P. Pellican. Mr. Jonathan J. Twang replied in the following determined refusal:I beg to inform the last speaker, Mr. Peter P. Pellican, from the back-woods, that Ill see him tee-totatiously tarred, feathered, and physicked with red-hot oil and fish-hooks, before Ill retract one eternal syllable of my pretty particular correct assertions.

This announcement created considerable confusion. The President behaved in the most impartial and manly manner, indiscriminately knocking down all such of both parties who came within reach of his mace, and not leaving the chair until he had received two black eyes and lost two front teeth. The general mêlée was carried on with immense spirit; the more violent members on either side pummelling each other with the most hearty and legislative determination. This exciting scene was continued for some time, until during a short cessation a member with a broken leg proposed an adjournment till the following day, when the further discussion could be carried on with Bowie-knives and pistols; this proposition was at once acceded to with immense delight by all parties. If well enough (as I have two broken ribs, my share of the row) I will forward you an authentic statement of this interesting proceeding.

EPITAPH ON A CANDLE. A wicked one lies buried here,

Who died in a decline;

He never rose in rank, I fear,

Though he was born to shine.

He once was fat, but now, indeed,

Hes thin as any griever;

He died,the Doctors all agreed,

Of a most burning fever.

One thing of him is said with truth,

With which Im much amused;

It isThat when he stood, forsooth,

A stick he always used.

Now winding-sheets he sometimes made,

But this was not enough,

For finding it a poorish trade,

He also dealt in snuff.

If eer you said Go out, I pray,

He much ill nature showd;

On such occasions he would say,

Vy, if I do, Im blowd.

In this his friends do all agree,

Although youll think Im joking,

When going out tis said that he

Was very fond of smoking.

Since all religion he despised,

Let these few words suffice,

Before he ever was baptized

They dippd him once or twice.

SIBTHORP ON BORTHWICK. Our Sibthorp, while speaking of the asinine qualities of Peter Borthwick, remarked, that in his opinion that respectable member of the Lower House must be indebted to the celebrated medicine promising extreme length of ears, and advertised as

A man canes a boy. PARRS SPECIFIC.

[pg 173] FIRE! FIRE! A REMONSTRANCE WITH THE NINTH OF NOVEMBER. How melancholy an object is a polished front, that vain-glorious and inhospitable array of cold steel and willow shavings, in which the emancipated hearth is annually constrained by careful housewives to signalise the return of summer, and its own consequent degradation from being a part of the family to become a piece of mere formal furniture. And truly in cold weather, which (thanks to the climate, for we love our country) is all the weather we get in England, the fire is a most important individual in a house: one who exercises a bland authority over the tempers of all the other inmatesfor who could quarrel with his feet on the fender? one with whom everybody is anxious to be wellfor who would fall out with its genial glow? one who submits with a graceful resignation to the caprices of every casual elbowand who has never poked a fire to death? one whose good offices have endeared him alike to the selfish and to the cultivated,at once a host, a mediator, and an occupation.

We have often had our doubts (but then we are partial) whether it be not possible to carry on a conversation with a fire. With the aid of an evening newspaper by way of interpreter, and in strict confidence, no third party being present, we feel that it can be done. Was there an interesting debate last night? were the ministers successful, or did the opposition carry it? In either case, did not the fire require a vigorous poke just as you came to the division? and did not its immediate flame, or, on the contrary, its dull, sullen glow, give you the idea that it entertained its own private opinions on the subject? And if those opinions seemed contrary to yours, did you not endeavour to betray the sparks into an untenable position, by submitting them to the gentle sophistry of a poker nicely insinuated between the bars? or did you not quench with a sudden retort of small coal its impertinent congratulation at an unfortunate result? until, when its cordial glow, penetrating that unseemly shroud, has given evidence of self-conviction, you felt that you had dealt too harshly with an old friend, and hastened to make it up with him again by a playful titillation, more in jest than earnest.

But this is all to come. Not yet (with us) have the kindly old bars, reverend in their attenuation, been restored to their time-honoured throne; not yet have the dingy festoons of pink and white paper disappeared from the garish mantel. Still desolate and cheerless shows the noble edifice. The gaunt chimney yawns still in sick anticipation of deferred smoke. The irons, innocent of coal, and polished to the tip, skulk and cower sympathetically into the extreme corner of the fender. The very rug seems ghastly and grim, wanting the kindly play of the excited flame. We have no comfort in the parlour yet: even the privileged kitten, wandering in vain in search of a resting-place, deems it but a chill dignity which has withdrawn her from the warm couch before the kitchen-fire. Things have become too real for home. We have no joy now in those delicious loiterings for the five minutes before dinnerthose casual snatches of Sterne, those scraps of Steele. We have left off smiling; we are impregnable even to a pun. What is the day of the month?

Surely were not October retrospectively associated (in April and glorious May) with the grateful magnificence of ale, none would be so unpopular as the chilly month. There is no period in which so much of what ladies call unpleasantness occurs, no season when that mysterious distemper known as warming is so epidemic, as in October. It is a time when, in default of being conventionally cold, every one becomes intensely cool. A general chill pervades the domestic virtues: hospitality is aguish, and charity becomes more than proverbially numb.

In twenty days how different an appearance will things wear! The magic circle round the hearth will be filled with beaming faces; a score of hands will be luxuriously chafing the palpable warmth dispensed by a social blaze; some more privileged feet may perchance be basking in the extraordinary recesses of the fender. We shall consult the thermometer to enjoy the cold weather by contrast with the glowing comfort within. We shall remark how time flies, and that it seems only yesterday since we had a fire before; forgetful of the hideous night and the troublous dreams that have intervened since those sweet memories. And all thisin twenty days.

We are no innovators: we respect all things for their age, and some for their youth. But we would hope that, in humbly looking for a fire in the cold weather, even though November be still in the store of time, we should be exhibiting no dangerous propensities. If, as we are inclined to believe, fires were discovered previously to the invention of lord mayors, wherefore should we defer our accession to them until he is welcomed by those frigid antiquities Gog and Magog? Wherefore not let fires go out with the old lord mayor, if they needs must come in with the new? Wherefore not do without lord mayors altogether, and elect an annual grate to judge the prisoners at the bar in the Mansion House, and to listen to the quirks of the facetious Mr. Hob-ler?

AN APPROPRIATE GIFT. We perceive that the fair dames of Nottingham have, with compassionate liberality, presented to Mr. Walter, one of the Tory candidates at the late election, a silver salver. What a delicate and appropriate gift for a man so beaten as Master Walter!the pretty dears knew where he was hurt, and applied a silver salvewe beg pardon, salverto his wounds. We trust the remedy may prove consolatory to the poor gentleman.

NOT A STEP FA(R)THER. The diminutive chroniclers of Animalcula-Chatter, called small-talk, have been giving a minute description of the goings on of His Grace of Wellington at Walmer. They hint that he sleeps and wakes by clock-work, eats by the ounce, and drinks and walks by measure. During the latter recreation, it is his pleasure, they tell us, to use one of Paynes pedometers to regulate his march. Thus it is quite clear the great Captain will never become a

A man walks with a girl and a baby. SOLDIER TIRED.

A MALE DUE. The Post-office in Downing-street has been besieged by various inquirers, who are anxiously seeking for some information as to the expected arrival of the Royal Male.

CURIOUS SYNONYMS. Sir Peter Laurie discovered during his residence in Boulogne that veau is the French for veal. On his return to England, being at a public dinner, he exhibited his knowledge of the tongues by asking a brother alderman for a slice of his weal or woe.

HAPPY LAND! Six young girls, inmates of the Lambeth workhouse, were brought up at Union Hall, charged with breaking several squares of glass. In their defence, they complained that they had been treated worse in the workhouse than they would be in prison, and said that it was to cause their committal to the latter place they committed the mischief. What a beautiful picture of moral England this little anecdote exhibits! What must be the state of society in a country where crime is punished less severely than poverty?

Old England, blessd and favourd clime!

Where paupers to thy prisons run;

Where povertys the only crime

That angry justice frowns upon.

THE NEW STATE STRETCHER. What an uncomfortable bed Peel has made for himself! observed Normanby to Palmerston. Thats not very clear to me, I confess, replied the Downing-street Cupid, as it is acknowledged he sleeps on a bolstered cabinet. The pacificator of Ireland closed his face for the remainder of the day.

The latest case of monomania, from our own specially-raised American correspondent:A gentleman who fancied himself a pendulum always went upon tick, and never discovered his delusion until he was carefully wound up in the Queens Bench.

VERY LIKE A WHALE. The first of all the royal infant males

Should take the title of the Prince of Wales;

Because tis clear to seaman and to lubber,

Babies and whales are both inclined to blubber.

ARRIVED AT LAST. We perceived by a paragraph copied from the John oGroats Journal, that an immense Whale, upwards of seventy-six feet in length, was captured a few days since at Wick. Sir Peter Laurie and Alderman Humphrey on reading this announcement naturally concluded that the Wick referred to was our gracious Queen Wic, and rushed off to Buckingham-palace to pay their united tribute of loyalty to the long- expected Prince of Wales.

EPIGRAM. Im going to seal a letter, Dick,

Some wax pray give to me.

I have not got a single stick,

Or whacks Id give to thee.

[pg 174] THE PICTORIAL HISTORY OF PARLIAMENT. In our last we briefly adverted to the gratifying fact that Mr. Barry had at least a thousand superficial feet on the walls of the new Houses of Parliament at the services of the historical painters of England; and we also, in a passing manner, suggested a few compositions worthy of their pencils. A reconsideration of the matter convinces us that the subject is too importanttoo national, to be adopted as merely the fringe of our article; and we have therefore determined within ourselves to devote our present essay to a serious discussion of the various pictures that are, or ought, to decorate the interior of the new House of Commons. As for the House of Lords, we see no necessity whatever for lavishing the fine inspirations of art on that temple of wisdom; inasmuch as the sages who deliberate there are, for the most part, born legislators, coming into the world with all the rudiments of government in embryo in their baby heads, and, on the twenty-first anniversary of their birthday, putting their legs out of bed adult, full-grown law-makers. It would be the height of democratic insolence to attempt to teach these chosen few: it would, in fact, be a misprision of treason against the sovereignty of Nature, who, when making the pia mater of a future peer of England, knows very well the delicate work she has in hand, and takes pains accordingly. It is different when she manufactures a mob of skulls which, by a jumble of worldly accidents, or by the satire of Fortune in her bitterest mood, may ultimately belong to Members of the House of Commons. These she makes, as they make blocks in Portsmouth-yard, a hundred a minute. All she has to do is to fulfil her contract with the world, taking care that there shall be no want of the raw material for Members of Parliament, leaving it to Destiny to work it up as she may. We have not the slightest doubt, by-the-by, that poor Nature is often very much confounded by the ultimate application of her own handiwork. We can fancy the venerable old gossip at her business, patting up skulls as serenely as our lamented great grandmother (she wrote a very pretty book on the beauties of population, and illustrated the work, too, with portraits from her own hand) was wont to pat up apple-dumplings:we can imagine Naturegood old soul!looking over her spectacles at the infant dough, and saying to herself as she finishes skull by skullHa! that will do for a pawnbroker;That, as its rather low and narrow, for a sharp attorney;That for a parish constable;That for a clown at a fair,and so on. And we can well imagine the astonishment of simple- hearted old Nature on getting a ticket for the gallery of the House of Commons (for very seldom, indeed, has she been known to show herself on the floor), to see her skull of a pawnbroker on the shoulders of a Chancellor of the Exchequer; her caput of the sharp attorney belonging to a Minister of the Home Department; her head of a parish constable as a Paymaster of the Forces; and the dough she had intended to swallow knives and eat fire at wakes and fairs gravely responded to as an honourable and gallant member! Whereupon, who can wonder at the amazement and indignation of Mother Nature, and that, with a keen sense of the misapplication of her skulls, she sometimes abuses Mother Fortune in good set terms, mingling with her reproaches the strongest reflections on her chastity?

We have thought it due to the full consideration of our subject so far, to dwell upon the natural difference between the skull of a Peer and the skull of a Commoner. The skull of the noble, as we have shown, is a thing made to orderfitted up, like Mr. MECHIS pocket-dressing-case, with the ornamental and useful: no instrument can be added to itthe thing is complete. Hence, to employ historical painters for the education of the House of Lords would be a useless and profligate expenditure of art and money. It would be to paint the lily LONDONDERRYto add a perfume to the violet ELLENBOROUGH. All Peers being from the firstindeed, even in uteroordained law-makers, statute-making comes to them by nature. How much history goes to prove this, showing that the House of Lordslike the Solomons of the fleur-de-lishave learned nothing, and forgotten nothing! To attempt to instruct a Peer would be as gross an impertinence to the instinct of his order as to present MINERVAwho no doubt came from the head of JOVE a Peeress in her own rightwith a toy alphabet or horn-book.

For the skulls of the House of Commons,that is, indeed, another question! We are so far utilitarian that we would have the pictures for which Mr. BARRY offers a thousand feet selected solely with a view to the dissemination of knowledge amongst the many benighted members of the House of Commons. We would have the subjects so chosen that they should entirely supersede Oldfields Representative History; never forgetting the wants of the most illiterate. For instance, for the politicians on the fifth form, the SIBTHORPS and PLUMPTRES, whose education in their youth has been shamefully neglected, we would have a nice pictorial political alphabet. We do not pride ourselves, be it understood, upon writing unwrinkled verse; we only present the subjoined as a crude idea of our plan, taken we confess, from certain variegated volumes, to be had either of Mr. SOUTER, St. Pauls Churchyard, or Messrs. DARTON and HARVEY, Holborn.

A was King ALFRED, a monarch of note;

B is BURDETT, who can well turn a coat.

Here we would have the chief incidents of Alfreds life nicely painted, with BURDETT, late Old Glory, and now Old Corruption. As for the poetry, when we consider the capacities of the learners, that cannot be too simple, too homely. The House, however, may order a Committee of Versification, if it please; all that we protest against is DISRAELI being of the number.

C is the CORN-LAWS, that famishd the poor;

D is the DEBT, that will famish them more.

Here, for the imaginative artist, is an opportunity! To paint the wholesale wickedness and small villanies of the Corn-laws! What a contrast of scene and character! Squalid hovels, and princely residencespurse-proud, plethoric injustice, big and bloated with, its iniquitous gains, and gaunt, famine-stricken multitudes! Then for the Debtthat hideous thing begotten by war and corruption; what a tremendous moral lesson might be learned from a nightly conning of the terrific theme!

We have neither poetic genius nor space of paper to go through the whole of the alphabet; we merely throw out the above four linesand were we not assured that they are better lines, far more musical, than any to be found in BULWERS SIAMESE TWINS, we should blush much nearer scarlet than we doto give an idea of the utility and beautiful comprehensiveness of our plan.

The great difficulty, however, will be to compress the subjectsso multitudinous are theywithin the thousand feet allowed by the architect. To begin with the Wittenagemot, or meeting of the wise men, and to end with portraits of Mr. Roebucks ancestorsto say nothing of the fine imaginative sketch of the Member for Bath tilting, in the mode of Quixote with the steam-press of Printing-house-squarewill require the most extraordinary powers of condensation on the parts of the artists. Nevertheless, if the undertaking be even creditably executed, it will be a monument of national wisdom and national utility to unborn generations of Members. What crowds of subjects press upon us! The History of Bribery might make a sort of Parliamentary Rakes Progress, if we could but hit upon the artist to portray its manifold beauties. The Windsor Stables and the Education of the Poor would form admirable companion-pictures, in which the superiority of the horse over the human animal could be most satisfactorily delineatedthe quadruped having considerably more than three times the amount voted to him for snug lodging, hay, beans, and oats, that the English pauper obtained from Parliament for that manure of the soilas congregated piety at Exeter Hall denominates ita Christian education!

What a beautiful arabesque border might be conceived from a perusal of the late Lord Castlereaghs speeches! We should here have Parliamentary eloquence under a most fantastic yet captivating phase. Who, for instance, but the artist to PUNCH could paint CASTLEREAGHS figure of a smug, contented, selfish traitor, the crocodile with his hand in his breeches pocket? Again, does not the reader recollect that extraordinary person who, according to the North Cray Demosthenes, turned his back upon himself? There would be a portrait!one, too, presenting food for the most sweet and bitter melancholy to the GRAHAMS and the STANLEYS. There is also that immortal Parliamentary metaphor, emanating from the same mysterious source,The feature upon which the question hinges! The only man who could have properly painted this was the enthusiastic BLAKE, who so successfully limned the ghost of a flea! These matters, however, are to be considered as merely supplementary ornaments to great themes. The grand subjects are to be sought for in Hansards Reports, in petitions against returns of members, in the evidence that comes out in the committee-rooms, in the abstract principles of right and wrong, that make members honest patriots, or that make them give the harlot ay and no, as dictated by the foul spirit gibbering in their breeches pockets.

That we may have painted all these things, Mr. BARRY offers up one thousand feet. Oh! Mr. B. cant you make it ten!

Q.

[pg 175] PUNCHs PENCILLINGS.No. XV.

A sad-looking man regards a portrait of a kingly-looking man. REFLECTION.

FAREWELL, A LONG FAREWELL, TO ALL MY GREATNESS.King Henry VIII.

[pg 177] THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE LONDON MEDICAL STUDENT. 4.OF THE MANNER IN WHICH THE FIRST SEASON PASSES. From the period of our last Chapter our friend commences to adopt the attributes of the mature student. His notes are taken as before at each lecture he attends, but the lectures are fewer, and the notes are never fairly transcribed; at the same time they are interspersed with a larger proportion of portraits of the lecturer, and other humorous conceits. He proposes at lunch-time every day that he and his companions should go the odd man for a pot; and the determination he had formed at his entry to the school, of working the last session for all the prizes, and going up to the Hall on the Thursday and the College on the Friday without grinding, appears somewhat difficult of being carried into execution.

It is at this point of his studies that the student commences a steady course of imaginary dissection: that is to say, he keeps a chimerical account of extremities whose minute structure he has deeply investigated (in his head), and received in return various sums of money from home for the avowed purpose of paying for them. If he really has put his name down for any heads and necks or pelvic viscera at the commencement of the season, when he had imbibed and cherished some lunatic idea that dissection was the sheet-anchor of safety at the College, he becomes a trafficker in human flesh, and disposes of them as quickly as he can to any hard-working man who has his examination in perspective.

He now assumes a more independent air, and even ventures to chalk odd figures on the black board in the theatre. He has been known, previously to the lecture, to let down the skeleton that hangs by a balance weight from the ceiling, and, inserting its thumb in the cavity of its nose, has there secured it with a piece of thread, and then, placing a short pipe in its jaws, has pulled it up again. His inventive faculties are likewise shown by various diverting objects and allusions cut with his knife upon the ledge before him in the lecture-room, whereon the new men rest their note-books and the old ones go to sleep. In vain do the directors of the school order the ledge to be coated with paint and sand mixed togethernothing is proof against his knife; were it adamant he would cut his name upon it. His favourite position at lecture is now the extremity of the bench, where its horse-shoe form places him rather out of the range of the lecturers vision; and, ten to one, it is here that he has cut a cribbage-board on the seat, at which he and his neighbour play during the lecture on Surgery, concealing their game from common eyes by spreading a mackintosh cape on the desk before them. His conversation also gradually changes its tone, and instead of mildly inquiring of the porter, on his entering the school of a morning, what is for the days anatomical demonstration, he talks of the regular lark he had last night at the Eagle, and how jolly screwed he got!a frank admission, which bespeaks the candour of his disposition.

Careful statistics show us that it is about the end of November the new man first makes the acquaintance of his uncle; and observant people have remarked, as worthy of insertion in the Medical Almanack amongst the usual phenomena of the calendarAbout this time dissecting cases and tooth-instruments appear in the windows, and we may look for watches towards the beginning of December. Although this is his first transaction on his own account, yet his property has before ascended the spout, when some unprincipled student, at the beginning of the season, picked his pocket of a big silver lancet-case, which he had brought up with him from the country; and having, pledged it at the nearest money- lenders, sent him the duplicate in a polite note, and spent the money with some other dishonest young men, in drinking their victims health in his absence. And, by the way, it is a general rule that most new men delight to carry big lancet-cases, although they have about as much use for them as a lecturer upon practice of physic has for top boots.

Thus gradually approaching step by step towards the perfection of his state, the new mans first winter-session passes; and it is not unlikely that, at the close of the course, he may enter to compete for the anatomical prize, which he sometimes gets by stealth, cribbing his answers from a tiny manual of knowledge, two inches by one-and-a-half in size, which he hides under his blotting-paper. This triumph achieved, he devotes the short period which intervenes before the commencement of the summer botanical course to various hilarious pastimes; and as the watch and dissecting-case are both gone, he writes the following despatch to his governor

LETTER No. II.(Copy.) MY DEAR FATHER,You will, I am sure, be delighted to learn that I have gained the twenty-ninth honorary certificate for proficiency in anatomy which you will allow is a very high number when I tell you that only thirty are given. I have also the satisfaction of informing you that the various professors have given me certificates of having attended their lectures very diligently during the past courses.

I work very hard, but I need not inform you that, with all my economy, I am at some expense for good books and instruments. I have purchased Listons Surgery, Anthony Thompsons Materia Medica, Burns and Merrimans Midwifery, Grahams Chemistry, Astley Coopers Dislocations, and Quains Anatomy, all of which I have read carefully through twice. I also pay a private demonstrator to go over the bones with me of a night; and I have bought a skeleton at Alexandersa great bargain. This, when I pass, I think of presenting to the museum of the hospital, as I am under great obligations to the surgeons. I think a ten-pound note willl clear my expenses, although I wish to enter to a summer course of dissections, and take some lessons in practical chemistry in the laboratories with Professor Carbon, but these I will endeavour to pay for out of my own pocket. With my best regards to all at home, believe me,

Your affectionate son, JOSEPH MUFF.

As soon as the summer course begins, the Botanical Lectures commence with it, and the polite Company of Apothecaries courteously request the students acceptance of a ticket of admission to the lectures, at their garden at Chelsea. As these commence somewhere about eight in the morning, of course he must get up in the middle of the night to be there; and consequently he attends very often, of course. But the botanical excursions that take place every Saturday from his own school are his especial delight. He buys a candle-box to contain all the chickweed, chamomiles, and dandelions he may collect, and slinging it over his shoulder with his pocket-handkerchief, he starts off in company with the Professor and his fellow-herbalists to Wandsworth Common, Battersea Fields, Hampstead Heath, or any other favourite spot which the cockney Flora embellishes with her offspring.

The conduct of medical students on botanical excursions generally appears in various phases. Some real lovers of the study, pale men in spectacles, who wear shoes and can walk for ever, collect every weed they drop upon, to which they assign a most extraordinary name, and display it at their lodgings upon cartridge paper, with penny pieces to keep the leaves in their places as they dry. Others limit their collections to stinging-nettles, which they slyly insert into their companions pockets, or long bulrushes, which they tuck under the collars of their coats; and the remainder turn into the first house of public entertainment they arrive at on emerging from the smoke of London to the rural districts, and remain all day absorbed in the mysteries of ground billiards and knock-em-downs, their principal vegetable studies being confined to lettuces, spring onions, and water-cresses. But all this is very properwe mean the botanical part of the storyfor the knowledge of the natural class and order of a buttercup must be of the greatest service to a practitioner in after-life in treating a case of typhus fever or ruptured blood-vessel. At some of the Continental Hospitals, the pupils time is wasted at the bedside of the patient, from which he can only get practical information. How much better is the primrose-investigating curriculum of study observed at our own medical schools!

SOME THINGS TO WHICH THE IRISH WOULD NOT SWEAR. MR. GROVE.This insufferably ignorant, and, therefore, insolent magisterial cur, who has recently made himself an object of unenviable notoriety, by asserting that the Irish would swear anything, has shown himself to be as stupid as he is malignant. Would, for instance, the most hard-mouthed Irishman in existence venture to swear that

Mr. Grove is a gentleman; or that Sir Francis Burdett has brought honour to his grey hairs; or that Colonel Sibthorp has more brains than beard; or that Sir Robert Peel feels for anybody but himself; or that Peter Borthwick was listened to with attention; or that Sir Peter Lauries wisdom cannot be estimated; or that Sir Edward George Erle Lytton Bulwer thinks very small beer of himself; or that The Earl of Coventry carries a vast deal of sense under his hat; or that Mr. Roebuck is the pet of the Times; or, in short, that The Tories are the best and most popular governors that England ever had. If the Irish would swear to the above, we confess they would swear anything.

COMING EVENTS CAST THEIR SHADOWS BEFORE THEM. SIR JAMES CLARK is in daily attendance at the Palace. We suppose that he is looking out for a new berth under Government.

[pg 178] HOSTILITIES IN PRIVATE LIFE. We have just heard of an event which has shaken the peace of a highly respectable house in St. Martins Court, from the chimney-pots to the coal-cellar. Mrs. Brown, the occupier of the first floor, happened, on last Sunday, to borrow of Mrs. Smith, who lived a pair higher in the world, a German silver teapot, on the occasion of her giving a small twankey party to a few select friends. But though she availed herself of Mrs. Smiths German-silver, to add respectability to her soirée, she wholly overlooked Mrs. Smith, who was not invited to partake of the festivities. This was a slight that no woman of spirit could endure; and though Mrs. Smiths teapot was German-silver, she resolved to let Mrs. Brown see that she had herself some real Britannia mettle in her composition. Accordingly when the teapot was sent up the following morning to Mrs. Smiths apartments, with Mrs. Browns compliments and thanks, Mrs. Smith discovered or affected to discover, a serious contusion on the lid of the article, and despatched it by her own servant back to Mrs. Brown, accompanied by the subjoined note:

Mrs. Smiths compliments to Mrs. Brown, begs to return the teapott to the latterin consequence of the ill-usage it has received in her hands.

Mrs. Brown, being a woman who piques herself upon her talent at epistolary writing, immediately replied in the following terms:

Mrs. Browns compliments to Mrs. Smith, begs to say that her paltry teapot received no ill usage from Mrs. Brown.Mrs. B. will thank Mrs. S. not to put two ts at the end of teapot in future.

This note and the teapot were forthwith sent upstairs to Mrs. Smith, whose indignation being very naturally roused, she again returned the battered affair, with this spirited missive:

Mrs. Smith begs to inform Mrs. Brown, that she despises her insinuations, and to say, that she will put as many ts as she pleases in her teapot.

P.S.Mrs. S. expects to be paid 10s. for the injured article.

Again the teapot was sent upstairs, with the following reply from Mrs. Brown:

Mrs. Brown thinks Mrs. Smith a low creature.

P.S.Mrs. B. wont pay a farthing.

The correspondence terminated here, the German-silver teapot remaining in statu quo on the lobby window, between the territories of the hostile powers; and there it might have remained until the present moment, if Mrs. Brown had not declared, in an audible voice, at the foot of the stairs, that Mrs. Smith was acting under the influence of gin, which reaching the ears of the calumniated lady, she rushed down to the landing-place, and seizing the teapot, discharged it at Mrs. Browns head, which it fortunately missed, but totally annihilated a plaster figure of Napoleon, which stood in the hall, and materially damaged its own spout. Mrs. Brown, being wholly unsupported at the time, retired hastily within the defences of her own apartments, which Mrs. Smith cannonaded vigorously for upwards of ten minutes with a broom handle; and there is every reason to believe she would shortly have effected a practicable breach, if a reinforcement from the kitchen had not arrived to aid the besieged, and forced the assailant back to her second-floor entrenchments. Mrs. Smith then demanded a truce until evening, which was granted by Mrs. Brown; notwithstanding which the former lady was detected, in defiance of this arrangement, endeavouring to blow up Mrs. Brown through the keyhole.

There is no telling how this unhappy difference will terminate; for though at present matters appear tolerably quiet, we know not (as in the case of the Canadas) at what moment we may have to inform our readers that

A grumpy woman sits near a smoky candle. THE BORDERS ARE IN A FLAME.

GEOLOGY OF SOCIETY. SECTION II. We last week described the different strata of society comprehended in the INFERIOR SERIES, and the lower portion of the Clapham Group. We now beg to call the attention of our readers to a most important division in the next great formationwhich has been termed the TRANSITION CLASSbecause the individuals composing it are in a gradual state of elevation, and have a tendency to mix with the superior strata. By referring to the scale which we gave in our first section, it will be seen that the lowest layer in this class is formed by the people who keep shops and one-horse shays, and go to Ramsgate for three weeks in the dog-days. They all exhibit evidences of having been thrown up from a low to a high level. The elevating causes are numerous, but the most remarkable are those which arise from the action of unexpected legacies. Lotteries were formerly the cause of remarkable elevations; and speculation in the funds may be still considered as amongst the elevating causes, though their effect is frequently to cause a sudden sinking. Lying immediately above the shop and shay people, we find the old substantial merchant, who every day precisely as the clock strikes ten is in the act of hanging up his hat in his little back counting-house in Fenchurch-street. His private house, however, is at Brixton-hill, where the gentility of the family is supported by his wife, two daughters, a piano, and a servant in livery. The best and finest specimens of this strata are susceptible of a slight polish; they are found very useful in the construction of joint stock banks, railroads, and other speculations where a good foundation is required. We now come to the Russell-square group, which comprehends all those people who live private, and aim at being thought fashionable and independent. Many individuals of this group are nevertheless supposed by many to be privately connected with some trading concern in the City. It is a distinguishing characteristic of the second layer in this group to have a tendency to give dinners to the superior series, while the specimens of the upper stratum are always found in close proximity to a carriage. Family descent, which is a marked peculiarity of the SUPERIOR CLASS, is rarely to be met with in the Russell-square group. The fossil animals which exist in this group are not numerous: they are for the most part decayed barristers and superannuated doctors. Of the ST. JAMESS SERIES it is sufficient to say that it consists of four strata, of which the superior specimens are usually found attached to coronets. Most of the precious stones, as diamonds, rubies, emeralds, are also to be found in this layer. The materials of which it is composed are various, and appear originally to have belonged to the inferior classes; and the only use to which it can be applied is in the construction of peers. Throughout all the classes there occur what are called veins, containing diverse substances. The larking vein is extremely abundant in the superior classesit is rich in brass knockers, bell handles, and policemens rattles; this vein descends through all the lower strata, the specimens in each differing according to the situation in which they are found; the middle classes being generally discovered deposited in the Coal-hole Tavern or the Cider-cellars, while the individuals of the very inferior order are usually discovered in gin-shops and low pot-houses, and not unfrequently

A drunk lays on the floor surrounded by pitchers and pours the contents of one on his head. EMBEDDED IN QUARTS(Z).

THE WAPPING DELUGE. Father Thames, not content with his customary course, has been swelling it in the course of the week, through some of the streets of the metropolis. As if to inculcate temperance, he walked himself down into public-house cellars, filling all the empty casks with water, and adulterating all the beer and spirits that came in his way; turning also every bodys fixed into floating capital. Half empty butts, whose place was below, came sailing up into the bar through the ceiling of the cellar; saucepans were elevated from beneath the dresser to the dresser itself; while cups were made to pop off the hooks with surprising rapidity.

But the greatest consternation that prevailed was among the rats, particularly those in the neighbourhood of Downing-street, who were driven out of the sewers they inhabit with astounding violence.

The dairies on the banks of the Thames were obliged to lay aside their customary practice of inundating the milk; for such a meeting of the waters as would otherwise have ensued must have proved rather too much, even for the regular customers.