“Whilst there was only the Princess Royal there were many hopes.  There was hope from severe teething—­hope from measles—­hope from hooping-cough—­but with the addition of a Prince of Wales, the hopes of Hanover are below par.”  But we pause.  We will no further invade the sanctity of the sorrows of a king; merely observing, that what makes his Majesty very savage, makes hundreds of thousands of Englishmen mighty glad.  There are now two cradles between the Crown of England and the White Horse of Hanover.

We have a Prince of Wales!  Whilst, however, England is throwing up its million caps in rapture at the advent, let it not be forgotten to whom we owe the royal baby.  In the clamourousness of our joy the fact would have escaped us, had we not received a letter from Colonel SIBTHORP, who assures us that we owe a Prince of Wales entirely to the present cabinet; had the Whigs remained in office, the infant would inevitably have been a girl.

For our own part—­but we confess we are sometimes apt to look too soberly at things—­we think her Majesty (may all good angels make her caudle!) is, inadvertently no doubt, treated in a questionable spirit of compliment by these uproarious rejoicings at the sex of the illustrious little boy, who has cast, if possible, a new dignity upon Lord Mayor’s day, and made the very giants of Guildhall shoot up an inch taller at the compliment he has paid them of visiting the world on the ninth of November.  In our playful enthusiasm, we have—­that is, the public We—­declared we must have a Prince of Wales—­we should be dreadfully in the dumps if the child were not a Prince—­the Queen must have a Prince—­a bouncing Prince—­and nothing but a Prince.  Now might not an ill-natured Philosopher (but all philosophers are ill-natured) interpret these yearnings for masculine royalty as something like pensive regrets that the throne should ever be filled by the feminine sex?  For own part we are perfectly satisfied that the Queen (may she live to see the Prince of Wales wrinkled and white-headed!) is a Queen, and think VICTORIA THE FIRST sounds quite as musically—­has in it as full a note of promise—­as if the regal name had run—­GEORGE THE FIFTH!  We think there is a positive want of gallantry at this unequivocally shouted preference of a Prince of Wales.  Nevertheless, we are happy to say, the pretty, good-tempered Princess Royal (she is not blind, as the Tories once averred; but then the Whigs were in) still laughs and chirrups as if nothing had happened.  Nay, as a proof of the happy nature of the infant (we beg to say that the fact is copyright, as we purchased it of the reporter of The Observer), whilst, on the ninth instant, the chimes of St. Martin’s were sounding merrily for the birth of the Prince, the Princess magnanimously shook her coral-bells in welcome of her dispossessing brother!