Punch: Punch (39.1860)

July 21, I860.]

PUNCH, OH THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

27

ODE ON THE DEPARTURE OF THE PRINCE OF WALES.

{If the Laureate won't do his work, Punch must.)

uspicious blow, ye
gales,

And swell the Royal
sails

That waft the Prince
of Wales

In a vessel of the line.
Away to Canada
Across the ocean
brine;

As the son of his
Mamma,

His weather should
be fine.

What transports the
Canadians will
evince

When they beholdour
youthful Prince!
Not ours alone, but
also theirs,

Each colony with
England shares
In Protestant So-
phia’s heirs.

How all the bells will
ring, the cannons
roar!

And they who never saw a Prince before,

Oil, won’t they feast him and caress him!

Waylay him, and address him,

His Royal Highness—bless him!—

Their demonstrations possibly may bore.

They’ll make, no doubt, a greater fuss
Than what is usually made by us
In some of our remoter parts,

Where country Corporations see,

Eor the first time, Her Majesty—

(May she be destined long to reign!)

When by her Parliament set free,

She travels by a stopping train,

Britannia’s trump, the Queenof Hearts.
But still more pressing ceremony waits
The Prince in the United States;

What mobs will his hotel beset
A sight of him in hopes to get!

What multitudes demand
To shake him bv the hand!

Hosts of reporters will his footsteps dog,

(As Baron Renfrew though he goes incog.)
Take down his every word,

Describe his mouth and nose,

And eyes, and hair, and clothes,

With a minuteness quite absurd.

Ye free and easy citizens, be not rude,

Disturb not our young Prince’s rest;

Upon his morning toilet don’t intrude :

Wait till he’s arest.

Oh ! will that Yankee not be blest
To whom the sou of England’s Queen shall say
“ Out of the way ? ”

And, oh—to touch a tender theme—

How will the fair around him throng,

And try, forgetting all their shyness,

To salute his Royal Highness,

The realisation of a happy dream !

The force of loveliness is strong.

A spark’s a spark, and tinder tinder,

And certain things in Heaven are written;
And is there any cause to hinder
The Prince of Wales from being smitten?
Transcendent charms drive even monarchs frantic,
A German Princess must he marry ?

And who can say he may not carry
One of Columbia’s fascinating daughters
O’er the Atlantic ?

Truth many a one might force to own,

Hopes that to her the kerchief may be flung,

To the ultimate exaltation of a young
American lady to the British throne.

PUNCH'S ESSENCE OE CONGRESS.

I860. June 4, Monday. In the Senate, the Bill for the Admission
of Kansas as a Free State came on for discussion. The Honourable
Charles Sumner, who about four years ago was brutally assaulted
by a ruffianly slave-owner named Brooks (since dead), addressed the
House for the first time since that outrage. He applied himself to
a long and elaborate argument to show the Barbarism of Slavery, and
proposed to knock out the “black marble block” which the South
declares to be the key stone of the arch of the American Constitution.
He showed, successively and successfully, that the “ Domestic Insti-
tution ” makes brutes of the slaves, and worse brutes of the masters
—that it checks education, industry, prosperity, and population—that
it generates violence, foul vice, cruelty, duelling, and ruffianism
generally—that its advocates in and out of Congress are the worst
citizens and the worst men in America—that it has been condemned
by Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin, and by all States-
men and Moralists of eminence—and that its poisonous influence is
actively working towards the destruction of the noble Republic. Mr.
Sumner’s speech was chiefly characterised by its closeness of argu-
ment and lucidity of diction, but he occasionally introduced a passage
of highly wrought eloquence, or an image of singular vividness; and
in England, however the orator’s sentiments might have been objected
to by a political antagonist, Mr. Sumner would have received the
eomplimeuts of gentlemen on both sides, upon so remarkable an exhi-
bition of sustained power and intellectual skill.

Mr. Chestnut, of South Carolina (Slave-owner), rose, and after
abusing Mr. Sumner for “ranging over Europe, crawling through
the back doors to whine at the feet of British aristocracy, craving
pity and reaping contempt,” called him the “ incarnation of malice,
mendacity, and cowardice,” and declined, on the part of Slave-
ownerism, to make any reply, because he was not inclined “ to send
forth the recipient of Punishment, howling through the world, yelping
fresh cries of slander and malice.” The punishment in question alludes
to the brutal assault with a bludgeon, committed by the now defunct
Brooks upon an unarmed and unsuspecting gentleman. The “ Slave-
masters in the Senate then surrounded Mr. Chestnut, and approved
his speech.” The question was postponed.

Mr. Punch begs to offer his respectful congratulations to Mr.
Sumner upon his magnificent speech, and, even more earnestly, upon
the ample and perfect testimony that was instantly given, by the
besotted Slave-owners, to the truth of his assertion of the Barbarism
of Slavery. It is not often that an orator’s enemies are in such a
desperate hurry to prove his case for him. But here he was scarcely
down when the Slave-party rushed together to proclaim themselves
the ruffians he had painted them, and in the published copv of the
oration, Mr. Sumner has given at once the calmest and the deadliest
blow to the system he denounces—for he prints Mr. Chestnut’s
speech. All the bludgeons in the hands of all the “ chivalry of the
South” cannot beat that, demonstration of Mr. Sumner’s case out of
the heads of the public in and out of the States. The speech should
be reprinted in England, and circulated in thousands. What is the
Anti-Slavery Society about ?

“And doth not a Dinner like this make Amends? ”

A New edition of “ The Art of Dining,” we believe, is in the press,
showing how by clever cookery and scientific marshalling of variously
flavoured dishes, a man may eat a dinner without losing his appetite,
or feeling fattened or fatigued by his some two hours’ mastication.
As the name of Hart is deer to every lover of good dinners, the
treatise will be dedicated to that gentleman (of Greenwich), and will
be called, in compliment The Hart of Dining.

Paradoxes and Puzzles.

An advertisement offers those whom it may concern “Comfort and
the Hydrostatic Paradox.” Have you any idea, old ladies, of what
the Hydrostatic Paradox, with which comfort is thus associated, can
possibly be ? The Hydrostatic Paradox, ladies, is a coffee-pot. What
hard names it is now the fashion to give to common things—is it not ?
If a coffee-pot is styled the Hydrostatic Paradox—what next? We
shall probably have a roasting-jack denominated the Differential
Calculus.