Punch (27.1854)

TT will be no more than the proper thing to do. Our Volume -
J- Mr. Punch's Twenty-Seventh Volume—shall be sent, ai.
alliance-offering, to the people of France. To that end, the tome
was significantly, magnificently bound : printed upon vellum of

the choicest South-Down sheep. How the bright, black ink flashed from the many faces as Mr. Punch, in
his own room, 85, Fleet Street, complacently turned over the leaves,—the faces, alive and glancing; and
smiling, and bobbing heads, and mouths curving, and eye-brows lifting,—a thousand faces, thousands of
features, vital, animated ! Mr. Punch reverently closed the book; that he might consider the binding.
For Mr. Punch's Twenty-Seventh Volume was to be placed for all time on a shelf of polished British oak
in the Royal Library of France; an offering to the alliance that in the year of manful daring, was consecrated
by the mingled blood of both nations.

The book—we have said it—was significantly bound. On one cover was emblazoned the lions of
England in heraldic field; on the other the honey-bees of sunny France ! Strength and sweetness were
here together; even as the honey in the lion of Samson.

And thus were England and France bound together, with nothing but good fellowship, and give-
and-take jest and good humour—written and symbolised in the leaves of Punch—between them. And as
it is in 1854, so may it ever be !

Still,—how, how shall we present our Volume to the people of France? Through the French
Ambassador? Not so? Then how? Let us consider it.