Punch (16.1849)

OUR NEW YEAR'S CAROL.

rPHE daylight lengthens, and the sunshine strengthens, | From hill and mountain, and from crystal fountain,

J- And things in general also look more clear ; Each dawn more early sweeps the fog and mist;

Trade growing brighter as the skies get lighter: The gloom dispelling, too, which has been dwelling

Thus, in its cradle, smiles the new-born Year. So long on yarn and wool, and cotton-twist.

Snowdrops now sleeping, shortly will be peeping
Forth, and the crocus lift its yellow cup ;

But faster thriving, sooner still reviving,
The markets are already looking up.

To its meridian, with rise quotidian,
More highly soars the rolling orb of day;

And looms are spinning quicker, mills beginning
With fresh velocity to whirl away.

His arms unfolding, better times beholding,
O'.d Business takes his pen from o'er his ear,

His ledger spreading, and a clean page heading,
In hopeful flourish, with another year.

And Punch, the undrooping, all the public whooping,
Shouting with might and main for joy and mirth,

Rears these new columns on his former volumes,
To teach, reform, and jollify the Earth.

THE WINDSOR CASTLE SHAKESPEARE. digger has impressed himself on the recollection as one of the principal

characters. With the actors themselves, this Oae of Spades was always
regarded as a sure card wherever it was played; and the corpulence
of the performer, enhanced by a multiplicity of waistcoats, was, to use
a technical phrase, one of those "delicious bits of fat" that are
hungered after by ihe professional appetite.

The exclusion of the Gravedigger from the royal presence will
render it necessary, a fortiori, that YoricKs skull, which was always a
crack bit with the tragedian, should be entirely left out; and the grand
point where Hamlet usually jumps into the newly-dug grave of Ophelia
must be got rid of altogether, or a substitute found, which will enable
the performer to strike his attitude, form his picture, and *>ring 'iown
his applause in some new manner.

We presume the benefit of purification will be given to Box and,
Cox, and that Mb. Btjckstone's by-play with the piece of bacon—a
literal " bit of fat"—will be expunged in the same nice spirit that has
dealt with the unfortunate Gravedigger

Another new edition of the
immortal bard must, or ought
to be, speedily prepared,
under the title of The Windsor
Castle Shakespeare; for the
scholarly gentleman who has
been intrusted with the
presentation of the Poet
before the Queen, has
used the pruning-knile wih
unusual vehemence. Perhaps the work has been, on the whole,
judiciously performed, but we must protest, in the name of all the
Sextons of England, against the dismissal of the well-known Grave-
digger from the situation he has long held in the tragedy of Hamlet.
This seems to us second only to the great original idea of omitting
the Prince of Denmark from this play; for, in many minds, the Grave-

Vol. 16.