t
unprovoked calumny; and to render the repetition of any obnoxious remarks
from the same source altogether 'of none effect' and unworthy of heed.
This he accomplished by his 'Defence' and the 'terrors of the law,' which
speedily produced a satisfactory sample of wholesale word-eating. . . . OF
all the Polichinellos we have ever encountered, we consider '_Punch, or
the London Charivari_,' the best. His fun is exhaustless. He ought to be
knighted and appointed court-jester to King ENNUI. 'Laughter,' he tells
us, 'is a divine faculty. It is one of the few, nay, the only one
redeeming grace in that thunder-cased, profligate old scoundrel JUPITER,
that he sometimes laughs: he is saved from the disgust of all respectable
people by the amenity of a broad grin.' We ourselves hold with the
pleasant LINCOLN RAMBLE: 'I love a hearty laugh; I love to _hear_ a hearty
laugh above all other sounds. It is the music of the heart; the thrills of
those chords which vibrate from no bad touch; the language Heaven has
given us to carry on the exchange of sincere and disinterested
sympathies.' And to the end that 'laughter free and silvery from the heart
may escape the reader, doing rightful honor to PUNCH, and bestowing
cheerfulness and health upon the laughter,' we proceed to present a few
excerpta which arrested our attention in looking over late files. We
suspect that the annexed report of the 'doings of Royalty' in the country
have more than once had a precedent. PRINCE ALBERT is here at
Dayton-Manor, the seat of Sir ROBERT PEEL: 'Her Majesty slept extremely
well; but whether it was the air of Dayton, or the conversation of the
host, did not transpire. At eleven o'clock in the morning, Prince Albert
went out to shoot. The guns were ordered at ten and the game was desired
to be in attendance at half-past. The Prince first went in a boat on the
water, where several ducks were appointed to be in waiting. Having granted
an audience to the whole of them, and unintentionally honored two by
shooting them, though it was another duck who had the distinguished
gratification of being aimed at and missed, his Royal Highness landed. A
numerous meeting of hares and pheasants having been called to pay their
respects to the Prince, the game-keepers forming an outer circle, with
their guns pointed to keep the game well up to the mark, His Royal
Highness shot sixty pheasants, twenty-five head of hares, eight rabbits
and one wood-cock, who would cock his bi