Punch: Punch (56.1869)

214

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

[May 22, 1869.

LE FOLLY.

Mr. Punch dare not Tell how he has been Let into the Secret, but

THIS IS POSITIVELY THE LATEST FASHIONABLE MONSTROSITY FROM PARIS.

PROSPERITY AND PROGRESS.

Oysters are going,

Salmon is growing

Scarcer and scarcer, boys, year after year ;
Mouths must be shut on
Beef, veal, and mutton,

Butcher’s meat’s got so confoundedly dear.

Prices for chicken
Poulterers stick in ;

Fowls are about twice as dear as they were.
Splendidly living
People are giving

Six, seven, eight, and nine shillings a pair.

House-rent is rising.

Very surprising!

Births still increase at a wonderful rate,

0 the severity
Of our prosperity!

Hey! Will Posterity want or abate ?

A Safe Irish. Landlord.

There is one argument in favour of Mr. Bright’s
scheme for the purchase of Irish estates by the Govern-
ment, wnich the Earl of Derby, perhaps, has not con-
sidered. That plan would constitute Government the
Landlord of Ireland. Government might possibly get
payment of rent, or the price of land resold, by enforcing
it, and Government is a kind of Landlord that could not be
shot from behind a hedge.

Who’s Afraid ?

The nation at large may make itself perfectly easy about
its dispute with America. War can cost it nothing but its
excess of population. The pecuniary expenses of any
battles that, the country may have to fight will of course,
according to the Abyssinian precedent, have to be defrayed
by the payers of Income-Tax.

FENIANISM from a french point of view.

Une idee Napoleonienne,

Eenian Mayor shipped from Cork to Cayenne.

AN UNCANONISED MARTYR.

On Friday, the 7t.h instant, according to a newspaper, was cele-
brated at Orleans the fete of the famous Maid of that ilk. Christmas
comes but once a year, and when it comes it brings a variety of demon-
strations. The same may, with a difference, be said of Jeanne 1)arc’s
anniversary. The difference is chiefly that the latter has no pantomime
performed in its honour; though Joan of Arc, just now, is the victim
of a burlesque at the Strand Theatre. It was, however, observed the
other day “ with the usual ceremony,” Orleans was decorated with
flags, the principal inhabitants of the vicinity were present, and—

“ A large number of the Episcopal hierarchy took part in the festival;
amongst them being the Archbishops of Rouen and Bourges, the Bishops of
Beauvais, Poitiers, Chalons, Fancy, Yerdun, Saint Die, Biois, Troyes, Con-
stantina, and lastly of Orleans. The civil and military cortege started from
the bridge and arrived at eight o’clock at the Cathedral. The Mayor handed
Jeanne’s standard to the Archbishop of Rouen, who pronounced a
discourse.”

Which unfortunately is not reported. We can only imagine what
his Grace of Rouen said. Perhaps something of this sort:—“We
are here to celebrate the festival of a glorious heroine, martyr to
patriotism. Jeanne Darc, what was she ? A saint, a witch, a lunatic,
or an impostor? To imagine her an impostor would be to insult
Erance. If she had been indeed a saint, in the sense of the Church,
the ecclesiastical authorities, with the predecessor of my venerable
brother here present in the see of Beauvais, Pierre Cauchon, would
not have made the immense mistake of pronouncing her a witch, and
causing her to be burnt alive. Let us draw a curtain over all that.
As to witchcraft we well know that it is nothing more than a heretical
superstition, condemned solely as such by the bull of Pope Innocent
the Eighth. This bull did not commit infallibity to any assertion of
the mediaeval belief in witchcraft. As Jeanne Darc was no impostor,
it follows that she could have been no witch, and Cauchon and his
colleagues—whom I will not call cochons—erred, it must be avowed, with
a deplorable stupidity. It was the temporary aberration of a mis-
informed tribunal now reversed by the authority present here to-day

of no less than twelve Bishops. Was then, Jeanne Darc a lunatic ?
No, no—a thousand times no. She had, without doubt, a fixed idea ;
but that idea was noble. What was she, then ? I say a generous, a
sublime, a devoted enthusiast. Honour, immortal honour to the
memory of the Maid of Orleans ! She would not have been misun-
derstood in the present day. We enjoy the happiness ot living in the
civilisation of the nineteenth century, so fine a thing for Erance and
Humanity, except in those points which have been condemned by the
Holy See, particularly in the last Encyclical and syllabus of the Holy
Father.”

“ Ire Licet.”

Mr. Punch is glad of Mr. Horsman’s election, for the House is
not lively. But the mysterious explanation given by the new Member
for Liskeard of the reason for his return smacks of the_ Cave of
Trophonius, rather than that of Adullam. The Liberal majority was
for the milliomiaire, Lycett, when down came the Tories like Cedron
in flood, and seated Mr. Horsman, but the election had nothing to do
with Lycett, or with Toryism either. We “ Cave ” in.

Meller and Pochin.

There were two nice Members for Stafford,

One’s agents spent all they could af-imd.:

The other one’s purity
Proved no security:

1 walked ’em both clean out of Stafford.

Blackburn {Judge).

the season opens well.

Horses are clever animals, but until the other day we were not
aware that they could play cricket. It seems, however, that there has
been a match at Lord’s “ between eleven colts of the South, with
Hearne, and eleven colts of the North with Grundy.”