perfectly safe; for the whole credit of the nation
—queen, parliament, government, and all—
is pledged to the due fulfilment of these
engagements.

POETRY AND PANTOMIME.

OWING to an attack of, I will say, gout, as
being the only complaint which a genteel person
can publicly own to, I have been prevented this
season from witnessing a pantomime: which has
been a great disappointment to me, for I love a
pantomime, and can enjoy one as heartily as any
six-year-old home for the holidays. However,
as I have not been able to gratify my eyes and
my ears by listening to the jokes and witnessing
the pranks of the various performers, I have
endeavoured to make amends to myself, as far as
possible, by buying the books of the openings
and reading them here, quietly by my fireside:
where you may picture me, if you choose, with
my right foot swathed in flannel and resting on
a stool. The little books, in all sorts of brightly
coloured covers, are on the table beside me now
—with the bottle of colchicum—and I purpose,
not being in pain to-night, and consequently not
in ill humour, to review a few of them for the
benefit of those who, like myself, have been laid
up and prevented from visiting the theatre.

The first book I lay my hand upon is Mr.
Byron's Haymarket extravaganza of the "Princess
Springtime, or the Envoy who Stole the
King's Daughter," founded on a story by the
Countess d'Anois, with which, no doubt, many
of my readers are familiar. King Kokolorum,
"monarch of a kingdom which should be 'right
in' the middle of the map, but has somehow
been left out," is congratulating himself and his
court on the birth of an heir. Thus speaks King
Kokolorum:

Though we've for years been forced to wear a wig,
Our crown at length has got a little heir;
That is to say, an heiress, such a pearl,
In fact our little 'air's a little curl.

The ingenuity of the author here is to be
commended. With a long remembrance of much joke-
work in hair, one might have expected the
subject to be completely combed out. The king
regards the birth of an heir as an era, and says so
with much emphasis; whereupon the queen,
knowing her husband's weakness, and his
favourite jokes, gives him the cue to fire them
off. " What's an era?" she says, as if she hadn't
had a first-rate education, and didn't know all
the hardest words in the dictionary! The
natural answer of the king to such a silly
question would have been, "Don't try to make
yourself out a greater fool than you are, my dear;"
but, of course, it was all arranged between
them, just like bringing in the candles in the
midst of a discussion to enable some one to say
that a light had been thrown on the subject.
So the king, after the queen has said an "era"
says immediately that he is a "farther" and that
he feels a "parents" thrill, because it is his first
"apparents" in the part; which leads to some
pretty talk about the baby thus:

What joy to see the infant bite its wrists,
Or take a light refection off its fists,
Or off its cart-wheel suck of paint a part:
Thus dining upon wheel—hem—à  la cart.

Against this punning exercise, we may, I think,
write "bene;" but the exclamation of the king,
when the nurse says that the child has two
teeth coming, is open to the charge of want of
novelty. The king's exclamation, I need scarcely
mention, was " By gum!" The royal infant is
threatened by the evil power of the enchanter
Carabossa, and her anxious, though royal,
parents consult as to the best means of hiding
their jewel. To guard her from assaults, the
king proposes to lock her up in the Guard's
Waults. Eventually, however, the guard's waults
having possibly been found impracticable for the
purpose, the Princess is locked up in a tower,
where each heavy door being barred, she declares
it is much too bar'd;  an observation with which
the perceptive reader will no doubt agree. The
Princess is shut up in a pitch-dark tower, and
longs to see the light; for, as she says to her
Abigail, she is getting a big girl (do you take?)
and ought not to be treated so shamefully at
her time of life. She makes a hole, sees the
light streaming in, and says, " Hooray!"
After this, Fanfarinet comes to propose to the
Princess. He is struck all of a heap at the sight
of her beauty, and says,

Yes, like champagne whose force no string can stop
She has a phiz that must produce a pop.

Upon which the King declares that the
champagne simile is of love declaratory.

The Princess, after a very short and summary
courtship, runs away with Fanfarinet, and
repents at her leisure. Fanfarinet calls her a
"lubber," and she protests that she is not his
lubber, but his wife. They are in a wood together,
hungry, and the Princess finds in a tree a
honeycomb, which she says, as it was culled by
bees and found in a tree must surely be
treecull.

I put out my hand for another little book, and
take up Mr. Blanchard's Drury Lane Pantomime
of " Hop o' my Thumb," which opens in
the orthodox manner, with a number of demons
weaving evil spells against the party who is
eventually to be made happy by the aid of a
good fairy. Okriki (is the author aware of the
remote etymology of this word?) and his demon
cobblers are at work upon a pair of seven-league
boots for the wicked Ogre. The dark scene
and the dark doings are dispelled by the appearance
of the Man in the Moon, who introduces
the signs of the Zodiac and the planets, and
combines amusement with lessons on astronomy
and general science. Orion is an Irishman,
whose brogue is accounted for by his living in
an atmosphere "so Tipperarified" and being
the highest constellation, you can't, of course,
find one more higherish. Then "Actinia, the
active principle of the solar ray," appears,