PUNCH.—­As one best knowing all the intricacies, from the Royal bed-chamber to the scullery, of Buckingham Palace.  Besides he will drive a donkey-cart.  Go on.

PEEL.—­“Ambassador at Paris—­Alfred Bunn, or any other translator of
French Operas.”

PUNCH.—­A person who will have a continual sense of the necessities of his country at home; and therefore, by his position, be enabled to send us the earliest copies of M. Scribe’s printed dramas; or, in cases of exigency, the manuscripts themselves.  And now, Bobby, what think you of Punch’s Cabinet?

PEEL.—­Why, really, I did not think the country contained so much state talent.

PUNCH.—­That’s the narrowness of your philosophy; if you were to look with an enlarged, a thinking mind, you’d soon perceive that the distance was not so great from St. James’s to St. Giles’s—­from the House of Commons to the House of Correction.  Well, do you accept my list?

PEEL.—­Excuse me, my dear Punch, I must first try my own; when if that fails—­

PUNCH.—­You’ll try mine?  That’s a bargain.

* * * * *

PUNCH’S PENCILLINGS.—­No.  III.

[Illustration:  THE EVENING PARTY.

  PREPARATION.  DECORATION.

  REALIZATION.  TERMINATION.]

* * * * *

A FAIR OFFER

In compliance with my usual practice, I send you this letter, containing a trifling biographical sketch, and an offer of my literary services.  I don’t suppose you will accept them, treating me as for forty-three years past all the journals of this empire have done; for I have offered my contributions to them all—­all.  It was in the year 1798, that escaping from a French prison (that of Toulon, where I had been condemned to the hulks for forgery)—­I say, from a French prison, but to find myself incarcerated in an English dungeon (fraudulent bankruptcy, implicated in swindling transactions, falsification of accounts, and contempt of court), I began to amuse my hours of imprisonment by literary composition.

I sent in that year my “Apology for the Corsican,” relative to die murder of Captain Wright, to the late Mr. Perry, of the Morning Chronicle, preparing an answer to the same in the Times journal; but as the apology was not accepted (though the argument of it was quite clear, and much to my credit), so neither was the answer received—­a sublime piece, Mr. PUNCH, an unanswerable answer.

In the year 1799, I made an attempt on the journal of the late Reverend Mr. Thomas Hill, then fast sinking in years; but he had ill-treated my father, pursuing him before Mr. Justice Fielding for robbing him of a snuff-box, in the year 1740; and he continued his resentment towards my father’s unoffending son.  I was cruelly rebuffed by Mr. Hill, as indeed I have been by every other newspaper proprietor.