READER.—­You recollect it, Mr. PUNCH!—­you at the court of King David!

PUNCH.—­I, Mr. Reader, I!—­and at every court, from the court of Cain in Mesopotamia to the court of Victoria in this present, flinty-hearted London; only the truth is, as I have travelled I have changed my name.  Bless you, half the Proverbs given to Solomon are mine.  What I have lost by keeping company with kings, not even Joseph Hume can calculate.

READER.—­And are you really in court confidence at this moment?

PUNCH.—­Am I?  What!  Hav’n’t you heard of the elections?  Have you not heard the shouts Io Punch?  Doesn’t my nose glow like coral—­ar’n’t my chops radiant as a rainbow—­hath not my hunch gone up at least two inches—­am I not, from crown to toe-nails, brightened, sublimated?  Like Alexander—­he was a particular friend of mine, that same Alexander, and therefore stole many of my best sayings—­I only know that I am mortal by two sensations—­a yearning for loaves and fishes, and a love for Judy.

READER.—­And you really take office under Peel?

PUNCH.—­Ha! ha! ha!  A good joke!  Peel takes office under me.  Ha! ha!  I’m only thinking what sport I shall have with the bedchamber women.  But out they must go.  The constitution gives a minister the selection of his own petticoats; and therefore there sha’n’t be a yard of Welsh flannel about her Majesty that isn’t of my choice.

READER.—­Do you really think that the royal bedchamber is in fact a third house of Parliament—­that the affairs of the state are always to be put in the feminine gender?

PUNCH.—­Most certainly:  the ropes of the state rudder are nothing more than cap-ribbons; if the minister hav’n’t hold of them, what can he do with the ship?  As for the debates in parliament, they have no more to do with the real affairs of the country than the gossip of the apple-women in Palace-yard.  They’re made, like the maccaroni in Naples, for the poor to swallow; and so that they gulp down length, they think, poor fellows, they get strength.  But for the real affairs of the country!  Who shall tell what correspondence can be conveyed in a warming-pan, what intelligence—­for

  “There may be wisdom in a papillote”—­

may be wrapt up in the curl-papers of the Crown?  What subtle, sinister advice may, by a crafty disposition of royal pins, be given on the royal pincushion?  What minister shall answer for the sound repose of Royalty, if he be not permitted to make Royalty’s bed?  How shall he answer for the comely appearance of Royalty, if he do not, by his own delegated hands, lace Royalty’s stays?  I shudder to think of it; but, without the key of the bedchamber, could my friend Peel be made responsible for the health of the Princess?  Instead of the very best and most scrupulously-aired diaper, might not—­by negligence or design, it matters not which—­the Princess Royal be rolled in an Act of Parliament, wet from Hansard’s press?