practise as long as I can get anything to expend; and while he is saving
at the spiggot, we will have it out of the bunghole."[73]

_Preparing for the Match, or the 2nd of May, 1816_, has reference to the
marriage of the Princess Charlotte of Wales, who, as we have already
seen, was on that day united to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. It had
been preceded by a well-designed but most indelicate satire, labelled
_Royal Nuptials_, published by J. Johnstone on the 1st of April, in
which the prince is seen landing on our shores in a state of
destitution, with a pitiable lack of certain necessary articles of
clothing, which are being handed to him by John Bull in the guise of a
countryman. The _dramatis personae_ are seven in number: Prince Leopold,
John Bull, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the gouty Regent, the
Princess Charlotte, old Queen Charlotte, with her snuff-box, and, behind
her, an old woman intended, I believe, for the poor old king himself.
The same year we find two other indelicate subjects: _A Bazaar_, a skit
upon the immorality and costume of the period, comprising thirty
figures; and another, in allusion to the marriage of the Princess Mary
with her cousin, the Duke of Gloucester, on the 22nd of July, 1816. To
those who have asserted that George Cruikshank "never pandered to
sensuality ... or raised a laugh at the expense of decency," that
"satire in his hands never degenerated into savagery or scurrility," I
would commend the serious consideration of the three satires I have last
named.

THE ELGIN MARBLES.

At the time Egypt was in the power of the French, during the early part
of the century, Lord Elgin had quitted England upon a mission to the
Ottoman Porte. A great change has taken place in the attitude and
bearing of the Turks towards other European nations during the last half
century; but even at this time the contempt and dislike which had
characterized them in their behaviour towards every denomination of
Christians still prevailed in full force. The success, however, of the
British arms in Egypt, and the expected restitution of that province to
the Porte, seem to have wrought a wonderful and instantaneous change in
the disposition of that power and its people towards ourselves;[74] and
Lord Elgin, availing himself of these favourable circumstances, obtained
in the summer of 1801, access to the Acropolis of Athens for general
purposes, with a concession to "make excavations and to take away