Punch: Punch (33.1857)

August 1, 1857.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. 43

A NOAH'S ARK OF A HEART.

Lord Raynham must have a
heart as big as a Noah's Ark.
It seems devoted, also, to a
somewhat similar purpose.
All things that bark, bray,
bleat, grunt, crow, scream,
whistle, or cackle, are allowed
to take shelter in it. All ani-

4 _

THE BUKIAL OF BERANGEK.

Ah, Beranger, you brave old singer,
Of all the things you hated worst,—

That felt your lash's lustiest stinger,—
Tyrant and Jesuit were first.

At Jesuitry, whate'er its robe,

Kingly or Priestly, still you scoffed :
mated creatures that fly, leap, I Stabbed it with laughter round the globe,
swim burrow, climb, or crawl, J Exposed each mask it donned or doffed,
were to nave been taken m by

it. It was a kind of legisla- Imprisoned under Charles the Tenth,
J°r r ^Prisoned under « Mr. Smith ; »

lour pen but gathered greater strength,
More salt, more gall, more point and pith

whole animal kingdom. Ac
cording to his Bill for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Ani-
mals, you would not have been
able to have had a lobster

Then came the days of 'Porty-Eight:
boiled for supper. All the j Grown wiser still as you grew older,
fish-shops in the Haymarket I You stepped not out to serve the State,
would have had to put up ! ^ ^ shrugged tlle coldest shoulder,
their shutters; for under the; J ob

enactments of his Lordship's 1 Smiling beside your modest fire

maudlin measure, we doubt it . , , , , , ,

it would have been safe for \ TTAt f^ts grey, turned statesmen green :

any man to open an oyster. | Heard Hugo vent rhetoric ire,

It is equally doubtful whether j And sighed o'er poor old Lamartine.

we should not have laid ourselves open to its penalties every time we had the cruelty to , ._

quizz Wiscodnt Williams. j lou saw the social bubble burst,

However, there is not the toss-up of a doubt that the Bill would have had the effect of j As kingly ones had burst before ;

entirely sweeping away the Zoological Gardens. Poor Mr. Mitchell ! he would not have , |5ut still your green old age you nursf,

had so much as a Cobra left him to play with. You have no right says our sensitive lord,; And ked fi ftnd slmt door
to keep any animal under confinement, so as to irritate him. What, then,_ is to become i

of all the bears, lions, tigers, and boa constrictors that are confined in their cages in the ■ Against the nephew of the man

Regent's Park? What are you to do with the rhinoceros? How are you to get over the &wl • • m ' m, n j .

two hippopotami? Are they all to be let loose upon the neighbourhood? or must you Whom m youi youth you made a God:

destroy them ? But here, again, is another difficulty; for Lord Raynhah says, you have j By whose triumphal car you ran :

no right to inflict pain on any living creature. However, there is no more chance of the I Your Attila—Heaven's scourging rod.
Bill passing, than there is of the Master of the Mint passing a bad shilling; so our cooks ,
need not alarm themselves at the prospect of being taken up for smashing a blackbeetle.

The Animals' great friend has hitherto, been Mr. Richard Martin. Lord Raynham
is a worthy successor, for we should say that the clauses of his absurd attempt at legis-
lation must have been written under the ocular and jocular supervision of Mr. Martin's
Elizabethan namesake—the celebrated Miss Betty Martin. The Bill can only have been
the result of the wildest outbreak of animal spirits, and the next time his Lordship tries to
take the bull by the horns, he must do it with a less cruel hand, or else he will infallibly

find himself stuck on the horns of a dflemma by being the first person punished under his j As one late-fall n on evil days,

own enactment. Por his overweening sympathy for beasts, we can only say, in the borrowed i Equally fear and favour-proof:

words of a Prenchman, that it is :—" Bete!—ires Bete!—tout ce gu' U y a de plus Bete ! " ]\Tot venting blame : not feigning praise.

Defiant thus you died : once dead,

Alas, the nephew has his way.
Presumes to crown the lifeless head,
Which, living, frowned his hand away.

And, bitterest lot, old bard, for you,

The nephew had giv'n gold for laud,
Hard francs for flattery's hollow ring ;

But his mixed reign of force and fraud
Wras not the reign that you could sing.

So, while you lived, you sat aloof,

HERE WE AEL ARE !"

These marrying people give us a great deal of trouble. The other day we were obliged
to offer opinions upon no fewer than six matches in high life, on which the Morning Post
consulted us. (By the way, the footman, who told the Post that Lord Castlerosse' was

going to marry a certain lady, humbugged our contemporary, as the latter has been obliged j Scarce cold, they earth your hurried bier,

to own in penitence and tears.) Now we find thrust under our superhuman nose the
following advertisement of a marriage in humble life :—

" On the 14th inst. at Sheufield, Essex, by the Rev. C. J. York, Rector, Mr. Alfred Barton, Auctioneer
and Estate Agent, Nottingham, to Charlotte, eldest daughter of Thomas Barton, Esq., Windbarns, near
Brentwood, granddaughter of the late William Warren, Esq. , Hampden House, near Romford, niece of the
late James Ward, Esq., Willey Park, Farnham, Surrey, and cousin to Thomas Sanctuary, Esq., late High
Sheriff for the county of Sussex, the late Hon. Lady Stanhope, and Lieot.-Gen. Ezekial Barton, of the
First Native Infantry of the Hon. East India Company."

As Hamlet says, " what imports the nomination" of all these people? Why has this
respectable auctioneer presented the public with this catalogue of his wife's relations, lumped
in one Lot ? What on earth have we to do with them ? The problem, combined with the
heat, disturbed us so much, that we took off our coat to consider the case more deeply, but
we can arrive at no satisfactory conclusion. It certainly occurred to us that the advertisement

was a delicate way of hinting to various persons that they might send in wedding presents, j Death that frees most, makes you a slave 1
But it is not an ordinary custom for deceased parties to perform this act of politeness
nd generosity, and no fewer than three of the people enumerated are defunct. Well,
then we fancied that the advertisement might be a burst of pride and glory on the part of the
auctioneer, who 'might exult in alliance with the aristocracy. But auctioneers are usually
smart men, and know that connection with an Ex-Sheriff and a General of Sepoys is no such
marvellous thing for a prosperous man of business (which we hope Barton is) to make a
fuss about. Lastly, and this is only a guess, and may be all wrong—is the bride's famdy
" highly genteel" and opposed to commercial pursuits, and has the lady had more sense
than all her friends, and is this the bridegroom's pardonable taunt to the Stuck-ups ? If so,
we applaud Barton, and we hope it is so, because we really see no other excuse for the
publication of such a string ofnames at the end of a wedding announcement.

With hollow show of honours due,
That serve to mask the tyrant's fear.

" Mournful and Patriotic rites ! "

Sabres and bayonets line the way:
The flag, that graced the Uncle's fights,

Droops sadly o'er your captive clay.

Jesuit and Despot, both in one.

Usher you to your hasty grave.
Sad closing of a course so run—

Making Game of a Friend.

" Well, what do you say to the Lords' di-
vision ? " askeel Baron Rothschild, the other
day, of Mr. Bernal Osborne.

" Say ?" replied Osborne, unfeelingly ;
"why, as the croupier at Baden says, Le Jew est
fait!"