Our illumination on the christening of the Prince of Wales—­we at once, and in the most liberal manner, give the child his title—­has been generally scouted, save and except by a few public-spirited oil and tallow-merchants.  It has been thought better to give away legs of mutton on the occasion, than to waste any of the sheep in candles.  This proposition—­it is known—­has our heartiest concurrence.  Here, however, comes in the wisdom of our dear Sir Peter.  He, taking the hint from the Mogul Country, proposes that the Prince of Wales should be weighed in scales—­weighed, naked as he was born, without the purple velvet and ermine robe in which his Highness is ordinarily shown in, not that Sir PETER would sink that “as offal”—­against his royal weight in beef and pudding; the said beef and pudding to be distributed to every poor family (if the family count a certain number of mouths, his Royal Highness to be weighed twice or thrice, as it may be) to celebrate the day on which his Royal Highness shall enter the pale of the Christian Church.

We have all heard what a remarkably fine child his Royal Babyhood is; but would not this distribution of beef and pudding convince the country of the fact?  How folks would rejoice at the chubbiness of the Prince, when they saw a evidence of his bare dimensions smoking on their table!  How their hearts would leap up at his fat, when they beheld it typified upon their platters!  How they would be gladdened by prize royalty, while their mouths watered at prize beef!  And how, with all their admiration of the exceeding lustihood of the Prince of Wales,—­how, from the very depths of their stomachs, would they wish His Royal Highness twice as big!

Is not this a way to disarm Chartism of its sword and pike, making even O’CONNOR, VINCENT, and PINKETHLIE, throw away their weapons for a knife and fork?  Is not this the way to make the weight of royalty easy—­oh, most easy!—­to a burthened people?  The beef-and-pudding representatives of His Royal Highness, preaching upon every poor man’s table, would carry the consolations of loyalty to every poor man’s stomach.  When the children of the needy lisped “plum pudding,” would they not think of the Prince?

(Now, then, our readers know the obligation of the country to Sir PETER LAURIE—­an obligation which we are happy to state will be duly acknowledged by the Common Council, that grateful body having already petitioned the Government for the waste leaden pipes preserved from the fire at the Tower, that a statue of Sir Peter may be cast from the metal, and placed in some convenient nook of the Mansion-House, where the Lord Mayor for the time being may, it is hoped, behold it at least once a-day.)