Punch: Punch (32.1857)

212

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

[May 30, 1857.

MONEY AND MARRIAGE.

The Lord Chancellor's new Divorce Bill
maintains due homage to the majesty of the law
and the profits of the lawyers. A man's wife
still remains to him his goods and chattels. If
a man possess a beautiful picture, a magnificent
piece of porcelain, and either picture or pottery
is maliciously damaged or fractured, the owner
thereof has, of course, a remedy at law for the
injury. He brings his suit, and is awarded in
recompense so much money. Now the law as it
is left by Lord Cranworth, leaves the wife of
a man's bosom in the condition, no higher and
no lower, of the picture and the vase. If spotted
or flawed she is to be paid for, and there an end.
Very commercial, this; but not very compli-
mentary to the dignity of human nature. But
so it is. When a wife fails to be good, she is
goods.

" Will—/ am llow'd if that ain't too bud—jor to go and make fan of hcs in that

ridic'lovjs manner."

BEAKS AND BEER.

Mr. Hardy has introduced a Beer Bill, the
object of which is to extend the system of magis-
trates' licences from public-houses to beer shops.
What big brewer is the particular friend of
Mr. Hardy ? Why, since all public-houses have
to be licensed by magistrates, are there any low
public-houses, the resorts of rascals and thieves ?
Why not, instead of extending the licencre-
system, abolish it altogether ? Is it the opinion
of everybody except the big brewers, and the
Injustices, their confederates on the Bench, that
the wisest way of dealing with beer would be to
establish Eree Trade in that article, and grant
publicans liberty instead of licence ?

WHO NAMES THE NAVY P

Next to those momentous queries, "Do you bruise your oats yet
and " Who's to win the Derby?" we think of all the questions of

us

the day, the one we most want answered is the one that heads t
article ? _ We rarely see a notice of an Admiralty ship-launch, without
its "seriously inclining" us to write off to Bell's Life or the Family
Herald, and beg that those all-knowing ones who answer Correspond-
ents will kindly tell us who is the Purveyor of Names for the Navy,
or in other phrase, who acts as the Government godfather.

We are tempted to ask this, not from any wish to pry into the
secrets of the State, but from sheer respect for the genius in question,
and our unbounded admiration of his talent for misnomer, which so
clearly proves his being the right man in the right place. What, for
instance, can surpass the exquisite appropriateness of christening by
such names as the Transit and the Urgent ships in which transition
was the last thing to be looked for, and which for urgent service
therefore were quite sure to be selected. To an ordinary mind it
might have seemed more suitable to call a spade a spade, and to have
christened the Admiralty steam-tubs by such names as would have
been suggestive of their characters. We, ourselves, perhaps, had we
been entrusted with the sponsorship, might have chosen, as more
applicable to our tugs of war, such appellations as the Snail, the Sloth,
the Crazy, or the Cranky: taking it for granted that a ship built by
the Government will not only turn out " Slow," but " Sure" of break-
ing down, if not of breaking up. It might never have occurred to us
to try a more sarcastic nomenclature, and indulge in pleasant fictions
of an Urgent or a Transit; in the creditable hope that the unfitness of
the name might be attractive of attention, before it was too late, to
the unfitness of the vessel. We almost question though if sarcasm can
be aHj|Pw made sliarP enough to penetrate the Wood that there is in
the Whitehall board; and as we never have much faith in any treat-
■ i our mvn' wc slia^ continue now and then to call the
Admiralty names, until we find they have the sense to give their ships
more fittirg ones.

Above all Price.

»rTSE ^port that certain French capitalists (Messrs. Peeeira,
j'Iirhs, Millatjd and other Rothschildren of wealth) had combined
their millions and billions for the purpose of purchasing Punch is
ridiculously untrue; and for the best of all reasons, because there
would not be capital sufficient in all France put together to command
such a purchase.

WHAT LOCKSLEY HALL SAID BEFORE HE PASSED HIS
OXFORD RESPONSIONS (W?o SMALL?).

inscribed to the poet laureate.

Oh the misery of " Smalls ! " the cark the turmoil and the grind,
Oh the cruel, cruel fetters which are wreathing round my mind!

There is grammar, there is Euclid, and far worse than all of these,
Arithmetical refinements, with their stocks and rules of threes,

With their discount and their practice and their very vulgar fractions
Smashing up the one ideal into many paltry factions.

Square root makes the head to ache, the decimals the tear to start,
For they 're ever circulating round the fibres of my heart—

Learning grammar is like putting water in a leaky pot,
And its memory is only like the days remembered not;

Verbs in "MI" are aggravating, Euclid makes the foot to stamp,
Only lucid when enlightened by a moderator lamp,

The old spider and his cobwebs! Would that I could sweep him out
From the dust and must of ages with a triumph and a shout ;

Shall I spurn him with my foot, or shall I scorn him with mine eye ?
Shall I tear him into pieces ? Southey burnt him—so will I.

The Maynooth Nuisance.

Mr. Spooner is defeated, but not convinced. The honourable
gentleman was considerably affected by his failure on Thursday night,
but it was remarked that he had partially recovered his constitutional
flow of spirits on Friday evening. This cheeiful change, as we have
heard, was entirely wrought by a sympathetic letter addressed to him
by the orthodox editor of The Morning Advertiser, who, in the hand-
somest wav, offered his columns for the rest of the session to the
pleasing polemics of the Luther of North Warwickshire. "May wc
not trace the noble dust of Cesar till we find it stopping a
bunghole ? "

Presents from Portugal.

The King of Portugal has sent to the Queen a present of cattle
—a bull, a bull-calf, and two heifers of a dun colour, and not more
than six-and-thirty inches high. Portugal having despatched these
little cattle, when may Portuguese bond-holders expect her to post the
pony, no matter how little the pony be,—to begin with ?