thinks white; whether her father who begot her voted with the Marquis of Londonderry or Earl Grey—­that is the grand question to be solved, before my friend Sir Robert can condescend to be the saviour of his country.  To have the privilege of making a batch of peers, or a handful of bishops is nothing, positively nothing—­no, the crowning work is to manufacture a lady’s maid.  What’s a mitre to a mob-cap—­what the garters of a peer to the garters of the Lady Adeliza?

READER.—­You are getting warm, Mr. PUNCH—­very warm.

PUNCH.—­I always do get warm when I talk of the delicious sex:  for though now and then I thrash my wife before company, who shall imagine how cosy we are when we’re alone?  Do you not remember that great axiom of Sir Robert’s—­an axiom that should make Machiavelli howl with envy—­that “the battle of the Constitution is to fought in the bedchamber.”

READER.—­I remember it.

PUNCH.—­That was a great sentence.  Had Sir Robert known his true fame, he would never after have opened his mouth.

READER.—­Has the Queen sent for Sir Robert yet?

PUNCH.—­No:  though I know he has staid at home these ten days, and answers every knock at the door himself, in expectation of a message.

READER.—­They say the Queen doesn’t like Sir Robert.

PUNCH.—­I’m also told that her Majesty has a great antipathy to physic—­yet when the Constitution requires medicine, why—­

READER.—­Sir Robert must be swallowed.

PUNCH.—­Exactly so.  We shall have warm work of it, no doubt—­but I fear nothing, when we have once got rid of the women.  And then, we have a few such nice wenches of our own to place about her Majesty; the Queen shall take Conservatism as she might take measles—­without knowing it.

READER.—­And when, Mr. PUNCH—­when you have got rid of the women, what do you and Sir Robert purpose then?

PUNCH.—­I beg your pardon:  we shall meet again next week:  it’s now two o’clock.  I have an appointment with half-a-dozen of my godsons; I have promised them all places in the new government, and they’re come to take their choice.

READER.—­Do tell me this:  Who has Peel selected for Commander of the Forces?

PUNCH.—­Who?  Colonel Sibthorp.

READER.—­And who for Chancellor of the Exchequer?

PUNCH.—­Mr. Henry Moreton Dyer!

* * * * *

PUNCH’S PENCILLINGS.—­No.  II.

[Illustration:  HERCULES TEARING THESEUS FROM THE ROCK TO WHICH HE HAD GROWN.

(MODERNIZED.)

APOLLODORUS relates that THESEUS sat so long on a rock, that at length he grew to it, so that when HERCULES tore him forcibly away, he left all the nether part of the man behind him.]

* * * * *

THE ELECTION OF BALLINAFAD.

(FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.)