Punch (72.1877)

12

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI

[January 13, 1877.

4

MANAGER BEACONSFIELD'S TRANSFORMATION

5CESE.

Theatre Royal, Delhi.

Cv,yf- #S n recisely within a

week of Christmas
Day there has been
exhibited in the
Capital of India a
spectacle curiously
similar to those
magnificent displays
with which the sen-
timents inspired by
that solemn season
are wont to be 'de-
monstrated in the
Metropolis of the
British Empire. The
proclamation of Her
Majesty's Imperial
title at Delhi on New
Year's Day was at-
tended with cere-
mony and pageant
just as much calcu-
lated to astonish and
gratify the .natives
privileged to witness
it as analogous
pomps and splendour
here to amaze and
delight the youthful
mind. The scene on
the plain three miles
north of the Vice-
regal camp at Delhi;
the amphitheatre
and dais—the circu-
lar platform of light
blue framework, re-
lieved by illumi-
nated panels alternatelyMisplaying the Royal Arms and the Imperial
Crown intermingled,with the Imperial Initials, with its umbrella-
shaped canopy of red, white, and gold supported on gilt posts over-
head ; the gorgeously-coloured semicircle of seats reserved for the
native grandees and high officials under the white awning fringed
with blue, and resting on white and gilt figures decorated with Hags
and festoons ; the attendant troops and guards of honour ; the pic-
turesque costumes and uniforms of the guests and visitors ; theYiCE-
roy and Lady Lytton riding in a gilt howdah on a huge elephant,
followed by their children on another, and attended by. a gigantic
sham-herald, Major Barnes, in a tabard surreptitiously copied from
the real thing, its wearer innocent of'all connection with the College
in Doctors'Commons,'and grievous to the soul of Garter, Clarenceux,
and Dragon Rouge, but attired in two hundred pounds' worth of
heraldic habiliments ; the sixty-three ruling Chiefs in attendance
with their military retainers ; the salute of a hundred guns; the
feu-de-joie fired by the soldiers ; the glare, glitter, and parade of
the whole show must have resembled nothing so exactly as the Trans-
formation Scene of a Christmas Pantomime. This resemblance was
rendered all the closer by the piece of dumb show, performed by
Lord Lytton, of hanging commemorative medals about the necks
of the native Chiefs, and by the delivery of the Proclamation,
spoken by Major Barnes after an appropriate flourish of trumpets ;
only the Proclamation was not, as it might have been, cast in heroic
verse. And there was one particular in which the comparison be-
tween the Durbar at Delhi and the Pantomimes at Drury Lane and
Covent Garden certainly cannot be sustained. There was no bene-
ficent fairy present to turn any of the characters in the scene into
Harlequin and Columbine, not to mention Clown and Pantaloon.
However, the whole display served admirably to typify the supre-
macy over barbaric magnificence assumed and asserted by Civilisa-
tion.

Flames Male and Female.

At the Royal Institution, the other evening, in the third lecture
?• a ' juvenile course," Dr. Gladstone described "the various
kinds of flames." Among these, however, from a report of his
lecture, he appears to have made no mention of the " old flame"
remembered by most men as once so extremely bright and beauti-
ful, but as liable to grow in the hard hands of Time quite the reverse
of either beautiful or bright.

THE ENDOWMENT OE EE SEARCH.

" Government Fund of £4000 for the Promotion of Scientific
Kerearch.—The President and Council of the Koyal Society have resolved
to advise the Committee of Council on Education to expend the above-named
Fund in aiding Scientific Research :—1. By conferring grants on Competent
Persons, or by offering Prizes of considerable value for the solution of Pro-
blems. 2. By meeting applications from Persons desirous of undertaking
Investigations. 3. By applying Funds for Computation, the Formation of
Tables of Constants, and other laborious and unremunerative Scientific work.
—Applications are to be addressed to the Secretaries of the Royal Society,
Burlington House, London, W., marked [Government Fund]."

This announcement has naturally produced great excitement in
the Scientific World. The letter-box of the Royal Society is daily
choked with applications. We append a few of the more remark-
able of these appeals.

Gentlemen,

For years past I have consecrated all my leisure to per-
fecting a discovery which will produce results beyond the power of
the most Oriental imagination to realise. I am as certain as I am
of the rise of to-morrow's sun, or the visit of the tax-collector, that
a grant of £50—or, to prevent the possibility of failure, say £100—
would enable me to bring my experiments to a successful issue, and
confer on the Royal Society the enviable distinction of having been
the merlium of revealing to the world a long latent secret.—I mean
that of Perpetual Motion.
88, Chimera Crescent, N. W. P. Green Mooning.

Dear Sir, jan- 6>1877-

I have not slept a moment, for pardonable excitement since
I read of the intentions of our glorious, great-hearted, chivalrous
Government, to grant £1000 for Scientific Research. A cheque for
£150 (not crossed) will put me in possession of the means of procuring
apparatus and chemicals, the only things wanting to enable me to
complete the last link in a chain of experiments which will, which
shall, which must culminate in the transmutation of all the baser
metals into genuine, solid, virgin GOLD.

Yours in haste (for the Laboratory waits),

0. run C/-777. 7 C/. 4 77 EtJPHORBIUS WniSTLETON.

2a, Little stickleback street, E.

276, Dock Avenue, Liverpool,
Gentlemen, y/1/77.

Pray use your influence with the Government to get me
awarded a grant of £500 to £1000, to aid me in showing that the whole
system of Modern Astronomy is radically wrong. The prevailing
notions of the configuration of the earth (ridiculously called one of
the heavenly bodies), the composition of the sun and its distance
from our globe, and the absence of life in the moon, I have over and
over again proved to the satisfaction of myself and my friends, to
be as gross delusions as the belief in the philosopher's stone and the
divining rod of former ages. I only require the trifle I have men-
tioned to put my convictions on such a base of absolute certainty,
that the world shall hail me as the greatest Scientific Reformer
since the days of Copernicus, Galileo, and Tycho Brahe.

Yours,

Thales Alexander Wilderspin.

Gentlemen,

I am ready to sell to the Government my infallible specifics
for sea-sickness and hydrophobia, ivhich have never been known to
fail since my great-grandfather first brought the prescriptions with
him from the Yale of Cashmere. My terms are £4000 cash.

Your obedient Servant,
Lsle of Dogs, E., Jan. 1, 1877. Andrew Mac Cannie.

Mr Dear Sirs The Crib, James Wattville, Manchester.

A new motive power is within my grasp, which will render
steam as obsolete as the pack-horse and the stage-waggon. I am
impeded in my experiments by the want of means to procure mate-
rial, machinery, skilled labour, and workshops. I want but only
£2000 for all this. Plead for me for a grant to that amount, and
you will place me (and yourselves) on the same pedestal of fame as
Archimedes, Watt, and the Stephensons.
Qjlj-jrj Archimedes,J. Strowgrass.

Miss Kathleen O'Corkey is anxious to engage in the foUowing
computations:—

1. The number of penny postage-stamps it would take to go round
the world.

2. The number and cost of the umbrellas now in use in Great
Britain and Ireland.

3. The value of the waste paper annually burnt or thrown away in
GreatBritain, Scotland, and Wales.

She trusts the Government will allow her an annuity of £250
until her calculations are completed.

Thomas Moore Street, Dublin. Friday Evening.