ves. And now, Bobby, what think you of Punch's
Cabinet?

PEEL.--Why, really, I did not think the country contained so much state
talent.

PUNCH.--That's the narrowness of your philosophy; if you were to look with
an enlarged, a thinking mind, you'd soon perceive that the distance was not
so great from St. James's to St. Giles's--from the House of Commons to the
House of Correction. Well, do you accept my list?

PEEL.--Excuse me, my dear Punch, I must first try my own; when if that
fails--

PUNCH.--You'll try mine? That's a bargain.

* * * * *

PUNCH'S PENCILLINGS.--No. III.

[Illustration: THE EVENING PARTY.

PREPARATION. DECORATION.

REALIZATION. TERMINATION.]

* * * * *

A FAIR OFFER

In compliance with my usual practice, I send you this letter, containing a
trifling biographical sketch, and an offer of my literary services. I don't
suppose you will accept them, treating me as for forty-three years past all
the journals of this empire have done; for I have offered my contributions
to them all--all. It was in the year 1798, that escaping from a French
prison (that of Toulon, where I had been condemned to the hulks for
forgery)--I say, from a French prison, but to find myself incarcerated in
an English dungeon (fraudulent bankruptcy, implicated in swindling
transactions, falsification of accounts, and contempt of court), I began to
amuse my hours of imprisonment by literary composition.

I sent in that year my "Apology for the Corsican," relative to die murder
of Captain Wright, to the late Mr. Perry, of the _Morning Chronicle_,
preparing an answer to the same in the _Times_ journal; but as the apology
was not accepted (though the argument of it was quite clear, and much to my
credit), so neither was the answer received--a sublime piece, Mr. PUNCH, an
unanswerable answer.

In the year 1799, I made an attempt on the journal of the late Reverend Mr.
Thomas Hill, then fast sinking in years; but he had ill-treated my father,
pursuing him before Mr. Justice Fielding for robbing him of a snuff-box, in
the year 1740; and he continued his resentment towards my father's
unoffending son. I was cruelly rebuffed by Mr. Hill, as indeed I have been
by every other newspaper proprietor.

No; there is not a single periodical print which has appeared for
forty-three years since, to which I did not make some application. I have
by me essays and fugit