Punch (31.1856)

T)EACE—dove-eyed, rose-lipped Peace—under the mistletoe !

Peace, in her sweet simplicity, believed that she had taken hands, and given her own hand to the
lips of high contracting parties, some time last spring : in Paris spring-time, when the Boulevards are
fragrant with violets, and the chesnuts have all but ceased to smoke and crackle. But, somehow, Peace
—being a woman—has ever been the dupe of deep protestations and frothy vows; and so—and so—it has
again happened; and a Mighty Emperor, whose crown is almost among the stars, and whose waving sceptre
hushes into obsequiousness sixty millions of souls (and a few handfulls over,) has disputed with the Lady
Peace in a higgling, haggling spirit, even as Ben Manasses, the old clothesman, would higgle and haggle
with Mary, the housemaid, in exchange for current coin of a perquisite hare-skin. Not very chivalrous
this in a sublime Autocrat, topped with a star-reaching crown, and endowed with a soul-hushing sceptre ;
but so it is, and it is for mere millions of mortals to take autocrats as they find them, even as the sheep
took pastor Polyphemus.

And so, ere the year runs out, Peace is again and finally to be saluted in Paris; and Mr. Punch
takes the genial opportunity presented by the completion of his Thirty-First Volume, to utter a few
words of counsel to the contracting parties again about to press with their lips the hand of Peace ; and
most especially to that Party whose tricksiness has made the necessity—a necessity, it may be, a little
too readily granted—of the solemnity.

Mr. Punch has given orders for a certain number of this his Thirty-Eirst Volume to be superbly and
significantly bound, and forwarded to Lord Cowley, the hospitable English Ambassador at the Court ot
France, that His Excellency may, on the consummation of the ceremony, hand over to the representative
of either saluting party, the rewarding tome, in token of the event, and in communion of good faith to be
kept and cultivated.

Mr. Punch foreshadows, with a movement of his pen, the ceremony as, of course, it will be performed.