Punch: Punch (11.1846)

160

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

AWFUL SCENE ON THE CHAIN PIEK, BEIGHTON.

Nursemaid. " Lawk ! There goes Charley, and he 's took his Mar's parasol. What will

iM i.ssus say ? "

TENDERS FOR THE NAVY.

Since the Prince of Wales has been made
a midshipman, the Admiralty has been be-
sieged with nurses and anxious mothers, car-
rying their little charges to be admitted into
the navy. The impression amongst the fair
sex evidently is, that a child cannot be entered
too early on board a man of war ; and the num -
ber of babies that have been tendered to the
Lords of the Admiralty as future Lord Nel-
sons, has been quite awful. One woman pre-
sented herself to the porter at the entrance with
twins, and began her speech with "Please, my
lord, I have brought you two young sailors. I
wish them, my lord, to be brought up as admirals,
in the same ship as the Prince of Wales.
This one I should like to be a red one, and this
other one, blue. You will see, my lord, I have
put ribbons round their little arms, so that
there shall be no mistake about it." She was
going on, when the porter interrupted her, by
assuring her that "they were over stocked with
admirals just at present, but he believed they
were in want of such an article at the Chelsea
steam-boats." The poor woman took up her
red and blue admirals, and went off immediately
at full speed.

OUR BIG SHAME.

We trust that the adage "Ars longa, vita
brevis," will not be violated in the case of the
Arch-Duke, but that this "long work of Art'
will have a very " brief existence."

PUNCH'S POLITICAL DICTIONARY.

oxarchy. From the Greek words fiovos,
alone, and a.p.xoo, to govern; meaning the
government of one person. There has
been no English monarch, strictly speak-
ing, since the days of Alexander
Selkirk, who was " monarch of all he
surveyed ;" but the British Government
cannot be properly called a Monarchy.
The word is sometimes applied ; but
monarchy in England is a species of
compound which may be assimilated to
negus ; whereof the Sovereign is the
lump of sugar, the Aristocracy form the
wine, and the Commons the water,
which in fact preserves the purity and
wholesomeness of the entire mixture.

Monk means literally, one who leads
a solitary life ; but the monks of old
appear to have been the most social set
of jolly dogs in Christendom. The only
remnant of a real monastic existence is
to be found in Vauxhall Gardens, where
the hermit leads the life of a rigid recluse
in the cell appropriated to his residence.
A vow of poverty used formerly to be
-taken by all monks, but this is unnecessary with the Vauxhall
monk, who is ex officio poor, for a shilling a night is understood to be
•the amount of his salary.

Mont de Piete {Monte di Pieta in Italian). Literally the
Mountain of Piety: a public institution, equivalent to our own pawn-
brokers' shops, for lending money. These mountains of piety have
very often been plundered and reduced to mole-hills by Governments
in want of money. Pope Pitjs the Sixth, probably by virtue of his
nominal piety, seized upon one of these mountains when pressed by
the French for a contribution to carry on the war against his own and
■other governments. This was in the time of Napoleon, who from
'his seizing on a slice of everything wherever he went, seems to have
been very appropriately called by the name of Bone-a-part.

Municipal Corporation. The corporation of a town ; which may

perhaps have been called the Corporation, from its being, as it were
the stomach or recipient of all the dinners and feasts paid for out oi
the municipal money.

THE DUKE ON A GRAND SCALE.

Our readers have probably seen those ingenious prints which show
the relative heights of the different monuments of Art throughout the
world, from the Pyramids at Egypt down to the Egyptian Hall, Picca-
dilly. Those engravings will henceforth not be complete without the
introduction of the Wellington Statue, in juxtaposition with the other
vast structures, showing its relation to them in point of magnitude.
The annexed illustration shows us the Ddke in reference to a well-
known and highly-popular Cathedral backed by an established
Pyramid.

a VERY GREAT SECRET.
A gentleman has offered a prize of forty pounds to any one who
will tell him who is at present Prime Minister of England.