1

business is with bangs, not bungs. Besides, spirits are often above proof, but Mr. Punch has seldom heard of a policeman who was above proving anything that he was ordered to prove.

In the Commons, MAJOR REED asked LORD PALMERSTON a very proper question, namely, whether in the event of peace being made during the recess, he would call Parliament together before ratifying the terms. To which LORD PALMERSTON replied with one of his best pieces of courteous impertinence, namely, that if anything occurred rendering it necessary to call Parliament together, he should feel it his duty to do so.

An Education vote of £296,521, making, with a previous vote, about three hundred and eighty thousand pounds-all that England, with a collected national revenue of sixty millions, can afford to spend on the education of her children-was then taken, as was an Irish vote for the same purpose. There was a debate in which rather more sense was talked upon the subject than usual-which is perhaps not saying much, the locality being remembered.

Friday. In the Lords, BROUGHAM came out again in his old character of "our HENRY." He declared himself to be an attached friend of the Church of England, and an opponent of Dissenters, but he introduced a bill for sweeping away about 100 old penal acts against religionists of other convictions than his own.

In the Commons, MR. GLADSTONE renewed his attempt to embarrass the Government and insult our French Ally, in reference to the Turkish loan, but he was tackled by almost as subtle a logician as himself, the Solicitor General, and may, "in the language of the Schools" (in which he delights), be said to have cotched it rather. The desirability of a good understanding between ourselves and the French was further illustrated by the inability of the House of Commons to agree upon the meaning of the French word, by which it was intended to bind the allies severally." The Loan, however, met with no successful opposition.

The Committee on the Sunday Beer Bill having reported that it ought to be altered, the preparatory steps were taken for that purpose. This is Mr. Punch's doing.

THE COMPLAINT OF CHEMISTRY.

(To Mr. Punch.)

DANGER IN DOWNING STREET.

LOOK out, my PALMERSTON-look out, my CLARENDON,
Look out, my MOLESWORTH-clean-sweeping new broom-
Now that you've got your long session and barren done,
Now lungs have breathing-time, elbows have room-
Would you clap stoppers on out-of-door movements,
Take the wind from the sails of LOWE, LAYARD, AND CO. ?
There's an opening for work in Westminster improvements ---
Out with plumb-line and trowel-with pick-axe and crow.

Read the Report of the Commons' Committee,

The Report on the Downing Street Offices' Bill,-
And rotten as banks may turn out in the City,
You'll find public offices rottener still.

STRAHAN, PAUL, AND BATES may be Titans in robbery,
In private securities driving a trade;

But their row has been mild to what you'll have of bobbery,
Till public security surer be made.

First, the old Foreign Office is awfully tottery,
Its bottom a quicksand, its walls all awry:

Its standing or sinking an absolute lottery-
If the fall of the roof should ope that to the sky!
What piles of foul litter from basement to attic!

What dust, meant in JOHN BULL'S poor eyes to be thrown!-
What red-taped and docketted lies diplomatic,
Which, but for that smash, never daylight had known!
What ricketty tie-beams, now made to pass muster,
And clench British interests in critical case!
What under-pinned clerks' rooms-a tumble-down cluster,
By family buttressing scarce kept in place!
What cracks gaping wide, where the light should be shut out!
What windows brick'd up, where light should be let in!
What worm-eaten sleepers that ought to be cut out!

What veneering where good two-inch oak were too thin!

When all this is set right, if you've pluck to begin it,
The Colonial Office may next claim your care;
Come SIR WILLIAM, and show what a Mole's worth, this minute,
Burrow down to its roots, and let in light and air.
Your function, at once, one for DRACO and SOLON is,
In cutting out old work and putting up new,
For amateur builders have work'd at the Colonies,

Till a nice state of things they have brought matters to.
There's GREY 's been employing his rule of Procrustes,

Trusting, doctrinaire-like, more to measures than men-
"Twill be lucky for you too, if GREY's work the worst is-

If his building was rotten, his plans were meant well-
But take warning from him,-as at schemes architectural,
In your office you'll soon have to do what you can-
Trust no GREY-headed wisdom, sublimely conjectural,
Cut your coat by your cloth, and your cloth by your man.
Colonial ships, as RICARDO will tell you,

Are built of green wood, and so leak till they rot;
But Colonial officials,-for them friends will sell you
Stuff the boldest Colonial ship-builder would not.
Of used-up Town dandies and gaunt Irish cousins
You'll find, when you come to rebuild I'm afraid,
Uncommon bad lots on your hands thrown, by dozens,
Condemn'd as unfit for all use in home trade.

IR,-I am a young female, being a science of recent origin: the sciences, you know, are all sisters, and invested with petticoats. You behold in me, Mr. Punch, a case of beauty in distress: for I am beautiful, though I say it: ask PROFESSOR FARADAY if he does not think so. My unhappiness arises from the circumstance of being compelled to be subservient to the designs of an odious and brutal tyrant and his thralls, whilst by the noble and the brave, the champions of liberty, to whose assistance I would devote myself with all my heart and soul, I am coldly neglected. The Russian Government has established a commission at St. Petersburg, with a view to extort from me all the destructive devices they possibly can-to be employed against the Allies. My chlorate of potash, my sulphuric acid, my galvanism, they press into their abominable service, using their utmost efforts to render me ancillary to the subjugation and the degradation of mankind. Byand-by they will arrive at the power of wielding my fulminating silver, and my chloride and iodide of nitrogen-and then what will become of civilisation! I am arming savages with thunderbolts. I cannot help myself. Those who choose can win me, and will wear me. That horrid man JACOBI, or JACOBS, was encouraged to apply me to the construction of his infernal machines, and you have only to thank his imperfect knowledge of me, and my sister, MECHANICS, that a considerable portion of the Baltic Fleet has not been blown out of the water. Has the A Turk's Head Broom for a Vatican Spider. British Government ever consulted, even, with FARADAY, or any of my SCARCELY delivered from Russian aggression, the unfortunate Sultan other wooers, to the intent of employing me against the common is to be exposed to aggression from Rome. The POPE is about to enemy? Try me, ply me," as the song says; you won't know what appoint an Italian Bishop to the vacant see of Constantinople." There I am capable of till you do: indeed, I don't know that myself, exactly. is another vacant see close to Constantinople, called, in maps, the Sea But I do know that I possess tremendous powers of destruction, re- of Marmora; and if the intruding priest should, on his arrival, be inquiring only to be developed, and I wish that those could be employed ducted thereinto by the Turkish hierarchy, we trust Holy FATHER by generous and gentle freemen for the extermination of ferocious and PIUS will not be severe on a mere clerical error. cruel slaves, I would, my dear Mr. Punch, wish to be, "Your faithful Handmaid,

"Albemarle Street, July, 1855.

Then to work with you, PALMERSTON, CLARENDON, MOLESWORTH ;
In modelling Downing Street use the recess-
'Tis the desperate task shows the strenuous soul's worth;
Think how HERCULES dealt with the Augean mess.
Then when new Downing Street challenges censure,
Colonial Office, and Foreign, and all-
Grown bold by experience, next year you may venture
On like work in Parliament Street and Whitehall.

CORRECT MEASUREMENT.-Tell me how many Ladies'-maids a Lady has had, and I will tell you her temper.

WHAT TO EAT, DRINK AND AVOID.

LINES BY A SCOTCHMAN,

E fancy this question On reading the following startling announcement in a weekly which has often been

put through the medium of an advertisement, seems to admit of an easy answer; for we ought to eat nothing, drink nothing, and avoid everything in the shape of meat or drink, while the present state of things exists. The evidence being taken before a Committee of the House of Commons, discloses some startling facts; and, indeed, it will be impossible for anyone who reads it to enjoy a single morsel of any sort of food. Such is the extent to which adulteration is carried, that we cannot get even our drugs in a pure state, and it is almost as difficult to get an honest black dose, as an honest glass of port. It is horrible to think that

we cannot even make sure of a "cup of cold pison" in a sound condition, for our prussic acid is diluted, and our laudanum is deprived of a large per centage of its strength. Our bread, which is commonly considered the staff of life, has often more life about it than is either wholesome or agreeable, for it is sometimes a mass of animal matter; and we need scarcely be surprised at meeting a loaf which has made its way out of the bread-pan, which might easily be the case, if there were anything like unity of movement among the insects of which it is composed. Among other expedients to increase the bulk of flour, is the mixture of a quantity of chalk, so that it really requires a knowledge of chemistry to distinguish one from the other; and, if we mix up our crust with our slice of Cheshire, we may be literally unable to tell the chalk from the cheese.

We were never very partial to sausages; nor is our appetite for them at all increased by the discovery, that most of them are made of horses' tongues. It seems from the evidence of DOCTOR THOMSON, Professor of Chemistry at St. Thomas's Hospital, that the ultimate destination of every horse's tongue is, that it shall be in some form or other passed down a human throat. All of us have a tongue in our heads, but we little thought we have taken, perhaps, three or four horses' tongues into our system, in the deceitful guise of sausage-meat. We feel seriously disposed after reading the evidence before the Committee, to turn vegetarians, or total abstainers from everything in the shape of food. Even our tea, which we thought was at the most a compound of sloe and birch-broom, is said to consist of iron filings, and some stuff called catechu, which is more fit for a cat to chew, than for a human being to swallow. We wonder what the teatotallers will think of the fact, that they have been consuming tons of iron, to say nothing of the catechû and the other messes, of which the cup that queers but not inebriates is found to be composed.

A CHINESE INUNDATION.

paper.

Whitebait dinner at Greenwich on, Wednesday."

"The Liberal Scotch Members entertained the LORD ADVOCATE at a

DID they sae? I'm recht wae to hear o't:
I'd like to ken their names-the noddies!
I' se wad, though, oor M.P. was clear o't:
He's nane o' siccan thriftless bodies.
The Leeberal cause I'se huld the main thing
That keeps us thack and rape thegither;
But leeberal in opinion's ane thing,

And leeberal in bawbees anither.

Scotch Members, at a Greenwich dinner,

Whose cost sets e'en pock-puddings grumbling!-
It maun be Hastie-the auld sinner-

That man a Scotchman!-it's just humbling!
Starting aff Scots-like wud sky-rockets-
To sinfu' feastings doon the river,
To the sair emptying o' their pockets,
Forbye derangements o' the liver.

Yet the backsliding's no that utter,

When ye tak tent o' the chief dishes.
Whitebait to kitchen bread-and-butter-
It's teepical o' loaves an' fishes.

That thocht a' my objections closes

An' the fac' reads like a description,
How leeberal Israel dined auld Moses
After his spoilin' the Egyptian.

Nae doot our freens, true to their nation,
Spite o' yon Hastie, and gastronomy,
Wad hauld their leeberal celebration

Wi' due attention to economy.

And dine where no that high the shot is-
Though deeners may be waur by far-
For patriotic as your Scot is,

He'll no bleed twice at Trafalgar.

So that in bounds the lawings kept are,
Leeb'ralism folks may gie a loose to-
Let Scots uphaud the Crown and Sceptre-
It's a gran' cry-and a cheap hoose, too.

A DESPOT IN GRAIN.

KING BOMBA is making himself disagreeable in his small way. It is a small way as regards ourselves and our Allies: for BOMBA cannot constitute himself a great nuisance to anybody that is not in his clutches, as poor POERIO is, the captive of this modern MEZENTIUS. BOMBA is prohibiting the exportation of grain to our forces in the Crimea; a line of policy which, by glutting all the mills in his dominions with grist, will render his despotism more grinding than ever. Some time ago his sulphureous Majesty refused to THE last advices from Melbourne announce that 14,000 Chinamen have lately let us have any of his brimstone; and no doubt he persists walked into the colony with the agreeable announcement that "all the rest are in withholding from us that unpleasant but necessary coming after them." Victoria is said to be in want of population, and the want is substance. POLYPHEMUS had only one eye; but with the now likely to be supplied with what is popularly termed "a vengeance." Some- half of that organ he would have been able to see what, how or other the Chinamen are not received with much enthusiasm by the colonists, under existing circumstances, would be the best thing to do and it is said that a law is to be passed to exclude the unwelcome strangers, though with such a petty tyrant as the present ruler of the land it is evident that by shutting the door on the Chinese, the authorities would open he lived in. It is to be wished that he were still extant, to the door to a great evil. One of the complaints against the Chinamen is, that they take this small sovereign by the nape of the neck, and take more than their fair share of water, which they probably require for their fling him either into Etna, or a league or two off Sicily tea. Victoria must be badly off indeed for rivers if it is apprehended that the into the sea. Cannot England and France, between them, thirst of the Chinese will occasion a drought. We defy the most inveterate of tea- in default of POLYPHEMUS, contrive to pitch Bomba into totallers to get through more than his daily gallon of the element; and supposing the middle of next week? As to the grain which he has every one of the 14,000 Chinamen to be able to gulp down the contents of a moderate the impertinence to deny us-why MR. EISENBERG, supsized water-butt, there are surely sufficient sources from which this drain on the ported by a British man-of-war, would very soon succeed aquatic wealth of the colony might be counterbalanced. in extracting all his corns from him.

Perhaps when the colonial thirst for gold is accompanied by a thirst of a more natural and wholesome character, the diggers will begin to think of digging for water instead of digging perpetually for the precious metal. It will be indeed a sad lesson to the money-grubbing population of Victoria if it should come to pass that water in pints should prove a more really desirable acquisition than gold in quartz.

King Clicquot's Colours.

THE wits of FREDERICK WILLIAM have gone Berlin wool-gathering. The colour of the King's proceedings can no longer pass under the denomination of neutral tint; and (Prussian) blue.

SIR CHARLES NAPIER angrily refuses to be a G. C. B. We thought he was one affairs in the quarter of Sans Souci are looking decidedly already,-GRAHAM's Cross Boy.

Jolly Young Waterman. "HOLLOA! HI! POLICE! BACK WATER, JACK! WE'VE GOT INTO A NEST OF SWANS, AND THEY'RE A PITCHIN' INTO ME!"

THE CITY STATE COACH.
THIS lumbering old machine seems to cost more than it is
worth, for it entails a tax which nobody likes to pay, and unless
an arrangement is come to, the probability is, that the vehicle
will be torn to pieces by the hands of the bailiffs. We have
heard of horses eating off their own heads, and we may soon
expect to hear of a gilt coach that has eaten all its own gin-
gerbread. MR. EX-LORD MAYOR SIDNEY refuses to pay the
tax on the old vehicle, on the ground that he refused to ride in
it, because it shook him to death, frightened him out of his

wits, and soiled his state robes, with its dirty old cushions.
We have often pitied the Kings of the City, as we have seen
them well shaken when taken in the State Coach to Guildhall,
and we have expected to see the REMEMBRANCER pitched
into the LORD MAYOR'S arms, or sent flying, mace-forward,
through the plate-glass panel on to the heads of the multitude,
We often wondered why the REMEMBRANCER's head was cased
in fur-so emblematic of the ordinary muff-but we now per-
ceive that it is intended as a safeguard to that official, whose
brains-or other contents of his caput-might otherwise be
dashed or shaken out by the jolting of the state vehicle.

We confess our admiration of the wisdom which refuses to

pay any further tax on the LORD MAYOR'S Coach, which
ought to have gone out with Bartholomew Fair, Smithfield
Market, and the other fooleries and nuisances for which the
City has been conspicuous. Now that advertising vans are
illegal, we are not sure that the State Coach does not come
under the act by coming over the height to which_vehicles
are limited. We should like to see the LORD MAYOR'S
Coachman brought up and fined forty shillings for perambu-
lating the metropolis with a gilded van on LORD MAYOR's Day
against the statute," and occasionally against the lamp-posts,
or other articles with which the crazy old concern is liable to
come in contact.

66

THE USE OF ADULTERATION.

Little Girl. "IF YOU PLEASE, SIR, MOTHER SAYS, WILL YOU LET HER HAVE A QUARTER OF A POUND OF YOUR BEST TEA TO KILL THE RATS WITH, AND A OUNCE OF CHOCOLATE AS WOULD GET RID OF THE BLACK BEADLES?"