We once were sufficiently credulous to believe in the honesty of LOUIS-PHILIPPE; we sympathised with him as a bold, able, high-principled man fighting the fight of good government against a faction of smoke-headed fools and scoundrel desperadoes.  He has out-lived our good opinion—­the good opinion of the world.  He is, after all, a lump of crowned vulgarity.  Pity it is that men, the trusting and the brave, are made the puppets, the martyrs, of such regality!

As for Queen CHRISTINA, her path, if she have any touch of conscience, must be dogged by the spectres of her dupes.  She is the Madame LAFFARGE of royalty; nay, worse—­the incarnation of Mrs. BROWNRIGG.  Indeed, what JOHNSON applied to another less criminal person may be justly dealt upon her:—­“Sir, she is not a woman, she is a speaking cat!”

Q.

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[Illustration:  PUNCH’S PENCILLINGS.—­No.  XX.

THE RECRUITING SERGEANT.

“LIST, WAKLEY!  LIST!—­“—­New Shaksperian Readings.]

* * * * *

HIS TURN NOW.

  “They say the owl was a baker’s daughter.” 
  “Oh, how the wheel becomes it.”—­SHAKSPEARE.

That immense cigar, our mild Cavannah, has at length met with his deserts, and left the sage savans of the fool’s hotbed, London, the undisturbed possession of the diligently-achieved fool’s-caps their extreme absurdity, egregious folly, and lout-like gullibility, have so splendidly qualified them to support.

This extraordinary and Heaven-gifted faster is at length laid by the heels.  The full blown imposition has exploded—­the wretched cheat is consigned to merited durance; while the trebly-gammoned and unexampled spoons who were his willing dupes are in full possession of the enviable notoriety necessarily attendant upon their extreme amount of unmitigated folly.

This egregious liar and finger-post for thrice inoculated fools set out upon a provincial “Starring and Starving Expedition,” issuing bills, announcing his wish to be open to public inspection, and delicately hinting the absolute necessity of shelling-out the browns, as though he, Bernard Cavanagh, did not eat, yet he had a brother “as did;” consequently, ways and means for the establishment and continuance of a small commissariat for the ungifted fraternal was delicately hinted at in the various documents containing the pressing invitations to “yokel population” to honour him with an inspection.

Numerous were the visitors and small the contributions attendant upon the circulation of these “documents in madness.”  Many men are rather notorious in our great metropolis for “living upon nothing,” that is, existing without the aid of such hard food as starved the ass-eared Midas; out these gentlemen of invisible ways and means have a very decent notion of employing four out of the twenty four hours in