A taxgatherer, calling upon the editor for the Queen’s taxes, could get nothing out of our respected friend, but “Ride a cock-horse to Bamberry Cross!” If taxgatherers were not at once the most vindictive and the most stupid of men (it is said Sir ROBERT has ordered them to be very carnivorous this Christmas), the fellow would never have called in a broker to alarm our excellent coadjutor, but would at once have seen that the genius of the Athenaeum was taking his turn in Buckingham Palace, singing a nursery canzonetta to the Duke of CORNWALL!

And is it for these, to us beautiful evidences of an absorbing loyalty—­of a feeling that is true as truth, for if it was a mere conventional flame we should take no note of it—­that the editor of the Athenaeum, a most grave, considerate gentleman, should be cited to Gray’s-inn Coffee-house, and by an ignorant and unimaginative mob of jurymen voted incapable of writing reviews upon his own books, or the books of other people?

The question that we would here open is one of great and social political importance.  There is an end of personal liberty if the enthusiasm of loyalty is to be visited as madness.  For our part, we have the fullest belief in the avowal of the poor man of the Athenaeum, that for half a day he is—­in fancy—­watching the little Prince in Buckingham nursery; and yet we see that men are deprived of enormous fortunes (we tremble for the copyright of the Athenaeum) for indulging in stories, with equal probability on the face of them.  For instance, a few days since WEEKS, a Greenwich pensioner, (being suddenly rich, the reporters call him Mister WEEKS,) was fobbed out of 120,000l. for having boasted (among other things) that he had had children by Queen ELIZABETH (by the way, the virginity of Royal BETSY has before been questioned)—­that he intended to marry Queen VICTORIA, and that, in fact, not GEORGE THE THIRD but WEEKS THE FIRST was the father of Queen CHARLOTTE’S offspring.  Now, what is all this, but loyalty in excess?  Is it not precisely the same feeling that takes the editor of the Athenaeum half of every day from his family, spellbinding him at the cradle of the Duke of CORNWALL?  Cannot our readers just as easily believe the pensioner as the editor?  We can.

“He told me he was going to marry the Queen” (thus speaks Sir R. DOBSON, chief medical officer of Greenwich Hospital, of poor WEEKS), “and I had him cupped and treated as an insane patient!” Can the editor hope to escape blood-letting and a shaven head?  “He told me he was going to dine to-day at Buckingham Palace.”  Thus spoke WEEKS.  “Half the day at least we are in fancy at the Palace;” thus boasteth the Athenaeum.  The pensioner is found “incapable of managing himself or his affairs:”  the editor continues to review books and write articles!  “He (WEEKS) also said he had once horse-whipped a lion until it became afraid of him!” Where is CARTER—­where VAN AMBURGH, if not in Bedlam?  Lucky, indeed, is it for the editor of the Athenaeum that his weekly miscellany (wherein he thinks he sometimes horse-whips lions) is not quite worth 120,000l.  Otherwise, certain would be his summons to Gray’s-inn.