* * * * *

A young artist in Picayune takes such perfect likenesses, that a lady married the portrait of her lover instead of the original.

* * * * *

PUNCH AND PEEL.

Arcades ambo.

READER.—­God bless us, Mr. PUNCH! who is that tall, fair-haired, somewhat parrot-faced gentleman, smiling like a schoolboy over a mess of treacle, and now kissing the tips of his five fingers as gingerly as if he were doomed to kiss a nettle?

PUNCH.—­That, Mr. Reader, is the great cotton-plant, Sir Robert Peel; and at this moment he has, in his own conceit, seized upon “the white wonder” of Victoria’s hand, and is kissing it with Saint James’s devotion.

READER.—­What for, Mr. PUNCH?

PUNCH.—­What for!  At court, Mr. Reader, you always kiss when you obtain an honour.  ’Tis a very old fashion, sir—­old as the court of King David.  Well do I recollect what a smack Uriah gave to his majesty when he was appointed to the post which made Bathsheba a widow.  Poor Uriah! as we say of the stag, that was when his horns were in the velvet.

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?