JENKINS IN AMBER. On the late visit of the EMPRESS EUGENIE, the sensitive JENKINS seized his lyre, "strung with his powdered hair," and broke forth into melodious verse and music. We cannot-we say it with heartfelt regret-give room to all the seven stanzas; but feel it incumbent upon us as a great human duty to enshrine at least eight Jenkinsonian lines in amber. Having compared EUGENIE to "MARY STUART again;' and then having corrected himself, saying she is "No, not MARY! Holier Bridal," he dashes his fingers amongst the chords, and ends thus: "Is this only flattered Glory. And a pageant's fair behest? Power and People! Rare alliance! In Strong Will, and Perfect Beauty." Nature being "on no serial duty," is-we would suppose-nature taking it easy. But we forbear; it is audacious to attempt to dissect the fire-fly verse; we, therefore, reverently preserve it in the amber of Punch's type. It is said that the EMPEROR sent to the Post office a new brass-headed cane for the poetic perpetrator. We trust the cane will be well used; for JENKINS's verse beats everything. Counter Propositions. Ir was expected that, if Russia refused the terms for limiting her powers in the Black Sea, she would make certain counter propositions. This expectation was as fallacious as it was unreasonable. Why should Russia have made counter propositions when she knew that propositions conceived in the counter-spirit would be made in our own quarter by the peaceImakers of the Manchester School? LORD RAGLAN'S ALMANACKS. Now that the line of telegraph is open all the way from the seat of war, we may expect to have a rapid supply of those interesting records of the weather in the Crimea for which LORD RAGLAN's despatches have already assumed a reputation second only to that of MURPHY of Almanack notoriety. We can anticipate the style of news of which we shall shortly be in receipt from the army before Sebastopol. The cries of "Sekkund Edishun" will be accompanied by shouts of "Heavy Shower by Electric Telegraph" or "Glorious Noose, Fine Weather at Sebastopol." LORD RAGLAN's despatches will henceforth keep us so completely au courant with the atmospheric changes that the columns cf the papers may as well be arranged in the form of barometers to be filled up according to the accounts received from the Crimea. So rapidly will facts be made known, that a telegraphic despatch informing us of a shower of rain may be dated fresh from "under the umbrella of LORD RAGLAN.” "EVERY SOLDIER HIS OWN SOYER." IN the course of the evidence before MR. ROEBUCK'S Committee, complaint has more than once been made of the cooking in the camp; or, speaking more correctly, we should say of the want of it. "Every Soldier his own Soyer," is, it appears, the military maxim; the consequence of it has been that, from the absence of knowledge and appliances, nearly all the raw recruits have been reduced to eat their rations in a similar condition; while even old campaigners have been discovered sometimes at a loss to cook themselves a meal without making a mess of it. THE SAME TO THE END OF THE CHAPTER. THE Court Newsman informs us, that at the Installation of the EMPEROR OF THE FRENCH as a Knight of the Garter, all the other Knights "wore their chains and collars." We scarcely know whether we ought to laugh or to grieve over the sight of a number of noblemen dressed up like so many dogs-rather lucky dogs they no doubt consider themselves-" in chains and collars,' ," for there is something degrading in the idea of a collar and chain, however costly the material of which the articles are composed. The official account of the ceremony seems to show that there was rather more than the usual difficulty in tying LOUIS NAPOLEON by the leg, for the SOVEREIGN had to be "assisted by HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS PRINCE ALBERT and HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS THE DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE" in buckling the garter on the left leg of his Imperial Majesty. The Chancellor of the Order, who was in attendance, is stated to have pronounced some "admonition," the purport of which perhaps was to advise the two Princes not to pull the garter so tight as to hurt the leg of LOUIS NAPOLEON. It is probably not etiquette for the Knight to give the "admonition" with his own lips, but we think he would be the best judge of where the pulling of the garter ought to stop, and a judicious exclamation of " Oh! that hurts!" would save the necessity for the attendance of the Chancellor, for the performance of such an absurd duty as that which has been specified. Lost, an Opportunity by the Lord Mayor. Ir cannot be said that the entertainment, given by the LORD MAYOR to the PREFECT OF THE SEINE at the Mansion House, was a mistake. But would it not have been more judicious on the part of the Civic Sovereign's advisers to have arranged that the feast should, notwithstanding the cold weather, have been given in the state-barge, during an excursion up the Thames? The King of the City can, of course, do no wrong, but his counsellors may do much; and they have made a perfect mess of that once noble river, whereof their Municipal Monarch is the conservator, and he might doubtless have obtained some suggestions for the better performance of his duty in that capacity, in the course of a jollification upon its turbid tide, in company with the presiding Genius of the Parisian stream. GRAMMAR FOR THE COURT OF BERLIN. His MAJESTY you should not say of FRITZ, That King is neuter; so, for His, use Its. Ro "A DAINTY DISH TO SET BEFORE A QUEEN." THE newspapers inform us that "in return for the splendid tiara, value about 2,000,000 reals, recently presented to the POPE by the QUEEN OF SPAIN, his Holiness has sent Her Majesty the body of ST. FELIX the Martyr." The body of a martyr, or indeed any body, however illustrious, would seem to be but a poor equivalent for a tiara worth 2,000,000 of reals, and we can only presume that the POPE mistook the reals for shams when he made such a singular return to the QUEEN OF SPAIN'S generosity. We can imagine the consternation of Her Majesty when, upon the arrival of a tremendous parcel from the POPE, and amidst all the excitement of curiosity to see what the package contained, the discovery was made of the "body" of a deceased martyr. By the gift having been conferred on the QUEEN OF SPAIN, we are inclined to believe that the blessed FELIX may have been some relation to the celebrated Don Felix, who used to be known to playgoers as the hero of the comedy of The Wonder. If this is the mode in which the POPE acknowledges a favour received, we should be sorry to place his Holiness under an obligation, lest he might think himself called upon to send us a "body," by way of a graceful interchange of courtesy. The QUEEN OF SPAIN must have wished the present to be absent as soon as the parcel was unpacked; and we can only express our surprise that the POPE should have sent a carcase in preference to a card-case, or some other appropriate souvenir to a female sovereign. A SAGE REMARK.-Onion is Strength. OYAL ACADEMY, TRAFALGAR SQUARE.-The Seventy-Sixth Anniversary of the "Portrait of a Gentleman" will be held in, and on, the walls of the National Gallery, on the first Monday in May, when all the friends and relations of the "Gentleman" in question are invited to rush to admire him. He will be instantly recognised by the lofty intellectual look that will be stamped upon his manly brow, as well as for the very superior air of respectability that will be thrown about his Sunday coat and buttons. N.B. After the Anniversary, the "Gentleman" will still be kept on view for eight hours daily, (excepting on Sundays, when he undergoes a slight cleaning,) and the price charged for admiration will be only One Shilling. ROYAL ACAD OF ARTS SOYER has taken out with him a black servant to the Crimea. There is business, doubtlessly, in this move? It looks as if SOYER, since he has started on his travels, was anxious to push his researches into the Interior as far as he could, and see whether, with such a Guide, it will not be possible to discover the real Sauce of the Niger. LOUIS NAPOLEON'S GOOD GENIUS.-EU-GÉNIE. THE RETURN FROM VIENNA. H-r M―y. "NOW, SIR, WHAT A TIME YOU HAVE BEEN! WHAT'S THE ANSWER?" MAY 5, 1855.] [PUNCH, No. 721. THE PRUSSIAN STANDARD BEARER. (On the Presentation, by KING CLICQUOT, of the late CZAR's uniform to him, the resolution was negatived without a division. And then poor the 6th Regiment of the Prussian Cuirassiers.) tests which prevent the education of a large class of the community in our Universities and Public Schools, but being opposed by the Premier, the Peelites, and the Conservatives, and the Liberals not standing by MR. APSLEY PELLATT once more made an exposition of himself, and was obligingly apprised by the ATTORNEY GENERAL that he was merely acting as the tool of a discontented attorney. When MR. PELLATT'S name is mentioned in a report, one naturally looks for the "countout notice, and of course, one had not far to look-the House was counted out after one more speech. Wednesday. The Commons had a fight upon the second reading of the Bill for allowing MR. BROWN to marry MISS MARY JONES, after the death of her sister, MRS. SUSAN BROWN (née JONES), his first wife. There was the usual amount of nonsense on both sides, the opponents of the bill relying upon a Hebrew law which has nothing whatever to do with the question, and upon the hatred which a married lady would, it is supposed, entertain for the single sister, if there were any chance of the latter succeeding to her own teapot and husband. The supporters of the measure were sentimental upon the intense affection children have for their aunts, and upon the "intolerable tyranny" of preventing a man from taking a second girl out of a family which had supplied him with so good a wife in the first instance. The Scotch and Irish elements were of course introduced into the debate, and in answer to the statement that in Scotland such marriages were considered contrary to the law of nature, MR. COLLIER rather smartly protested against a law of nature which had only been revealed to the people north of the Tweed, while the remarkable virtue of the Irish women was brought forward as a reason why their superstitious horror of such unions should prevent the inhabitants of a civilised country from doing as they please. The debate was adjourned until the 9th of May. Thursday. In the Lords, the MARQUIS OF LANSDOWNE said that nothing could be announced as to the intentions of Austria in regard to the war until LORD JOHN RUSSELL came home. It is to be feared that the Lords do not study their Punch so attentively as they might do, or none of them would have thought of asking what he has told them a hundred times in the plainest language, namely, that Austria is only restrained from overt hostility to the Allies by the recollection that an interview of ten minutes between three individuals, named, respectively, MAZZINI, KOSSUTH, and CLARENDON, would be a sufficient reason for the respected MIVART'S preparing apartments, about four months later, for a certain young married couple and their first baby, late from Vienna. In the Commons, LORD PALMERSTON stated that the electric telegraph between Raglania and Downing Street was so nearly complete, that the Field-Marshal could transmit his valuable contributions to the Meteorological Society's journals in twenty-four hours; and that his Lordship had been desired to send word, every day, what he was doing. Another step was taken in the imposition of the new sugar, coffee, and spirit taxes; and Mr. GLADSTONE expressed his regret that one of these days the House would probably have to go back to the system of Protection. COLONEL SIBTHORP'S ecstasy at this announcement prevented the honourable and gallant Member from uttering a word. A batch of lawyers then squabbled over the bill for abolishing the jurisdiction of the Ecclesiastical Courts in regard to Wills; but the only value of the debate was its affording fresh evidence, out of the mouths of unconscious witnesses, that the Ecclesiastical Courts are a frightful nuisance, and the Courts of Chancery a frightfuller. This debate was adjourned, Mr. Punch supposes, in order that fresh criminatory testimony may be obtained against both sets of national institutions. PUNCH'S ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT. April 23rd. Monday. In the Commons, LORD PALMERSTON explained that the Viennese humbug was over, and that LORD JOHN RUSSELL was on his way home. It occurs to Mr. Punch that, bad as is the taste of playing out a farce at such a time as this, matters would have been far more serious had the "proposals" which LORD JOHN RUSSELL was instructed to put forward, been accepted by Russia. Our army has been nearly destroyed before Sebastopol, but nobody need suppose that this is the least proof that our Government was in earnest about Friday. By a very curious coincidence, the merits of British Officers disabling Russia, for our representative was directed to be satisfied if and Gentlemen were the subject of discussion in both Houses of ParliaRussia would only promise not to keep, for the future, more than a ment. LORD PALMERSTON's relative, the EARL OF SHAFTESBURY, took certain number of ships in the Black Sea. Luckily for the jaunty the principal part in the Lords, the PREMIER himself in the Commons. War-Minister and his cabinet of Lords, Russia was too proud, in the LORD SHAFTESBURY called attention to the conduct of certain Officers consciousness of her strength and success, to listen even to so mild a and Gentlemen who have been emulating the achievements of the other proposition, and war goes on. MR. GOULBURN then expressed some Officers and Gentlemen who persecuted MR. PERRY, and indeed have very unnecessary discontent at the provision for paying off the new evidenced the progress which might be expected from military intellect, loan by certain instalments, as if there was the least chance of such a for the behaviour of the Canterbury batch of heroes was even more thing being ever done, and MR. GLADSTONE displayed a touch of his vulgar, dirty, and cowardly than that of their models. LORD HARDINGE occasional touchiness, at an observation by MR. BARING, and called spoke severely on the subject, as did LORD HARDWICKE, who declared upon him to "explain his meaning." The Commons next assented to that the Colonels ought to be made responsible. While the "Officers SIR CORNEWALL LEWIS's resolutions for increasing the duty on tea and and Gentlemen" question was being thus unceremoniously handled by coffee, fought over the newspaper postage, and discussed whether a new the real aristocracy in the Lords, the sham aristocracy in the Commons member should be added to the Sebastopol Committee, or which approached the same subject, but, as might be expected, in a more question LORD PALMERSTON joked himself out of a dilemma, declaring servile spirit. MR. LAYARD, who had given notice of a motion in which that it was a matter of "perfect indifference" to the Government the feelings of the nation are expressed upon our present system of whether another judge of official misdeeds was or was not appointed. Public Appointments, was made the subject of a series of attacks for Tuesday. It is not often that Mr. Punch has the misfortune to agree with LORD MALMESBURY (to whose inveterate habit of chattering upon all occasions the country owes the announcements which have disbanded the Militia) but MALMESBURY contrived for once to echo the statements of wiser men upon the miserable "proposals " at Vienna. In the Commons, MR. DISRAELI asked a very important question about the Indian Loan, but of course, MR. VERNON SMITH was unable to answer it. MR. HEYWOOD endeavoured to get rid of the religious some observations he offered, in a speech at Liverpool, upon divers military promotions. His accuracy was impugned in very offensive language, and his explanations were interrupted (as the organ of his opponents admits) by "jeers." One of his critics was ordered by the Speaker to retract his unparliamentary language. The irritation which Mr. LAYARD causes by his unsparing exposures of our system, fully accounts for these unseemly exhibitions. As regards his accuracy in certain details, various letters have been published, and Mr. Punch has |