THE GREAT INVASION.

THE English Nation have always been
distinguished by a strong predilection for a
"bogey"—a dreadful bugbear, hated, feared,
talked about by everybody. For a bogey of
bogeys—a bugbear about whom there can be
no mistake—a thorough, right-down, sanguinary,
man-eating, woman-murdering, child-roasting,
raw-head-and-cross-bones  bogey,
give me Bonaparte.

In the time of the original  "Boney"  the
cry was very strong. The French were
continually landing  (in imagination)  somewhere
or other.  Not a smuggler attempted a
peaceable run of brandy on a moonlight
night, but the hated Corsican—jack-boots,
cocked hat and all—was presumed to be in
full march on the Metropolis; not a little
boy sent up his harmless rocket, or discharged
his innocuous squib, but fearful reports
were circulated of a French-kindled
conflagration, or at best of the simultaneous
illumining of the beacon fires.  Boney, his
marshals, and his much redoubted invasion
were here, there, and everywhere.

We had a slight invasion panic in the year
'40  (when Commodore Napier beat the
Egyptians with their famous instrument of
torture—a stick).  Our "Boney" then was
an astute old gentleman, with a pear-shaped
head, who, assuming the patronymic of
Smith, abdicated sovereignty in a hack-cab.
He was to invade us in the twinkling of a
bed-post—he, Monsieur Thiers, Marshal
Bugeaud, and the Chasseurs d'Afrique; all
about some Eastern question, the merits of
which, if anybody understood or understands,
I am sure I don't.  The year '43 came, and
that terrible pamphlet by the good-natured
Prince Admiral, who so kindly stood godfather
to our Joinville cravats.  He was to  blow
us to pieces with steam-frigates ;  to
bombard Brighton; to demolish Dover; to
  lay Lowestoff low; to turn Great Grimsby
into a Golgotha, and Harwich into a howling
desert.  '45 came;  Pritchard, Tahiti, Queen
Pomare, and the grim Guizot.  War! war!
war!  cried the bogey-fearers.  Lamoricière,
Pélissier, Changarnier were to land the day
after to-morrow.  '48 came, and a few thousand
National Guards, who, despite the fears
of the alarmists, were provided with railway
return tickets in lieu of mortars and howitzers.
'51 came, and another foreign invasion,
the results of which, it appears to us,
we have already described in this journal.

And now the trumpet-cry sounds louder
than ever.  Now that the shores of England
and France are united by the electric wire,
by the iron hand-shaking of railroads, by a
hundred thousand bonds of friendship and
interest besides, we are to have a real invasion
—a dreadful invasion—an invasion in earnest.
It is all up with London, England, Great
Britain, and the Colonies!  Our soldiers can't
fight, and our ships can't sail; our guns won't
fire, nor will our bayonets pierce.  Tilbury
Fort is of no use, and the Guards must march
out of London at one end as the French
enter it by the other. We haven't got a
decent fortification, or a serviceable gun, or an
efficient soldier.  As for "Veritas,"  "Civilian,"
  "Q in the corner," the "Constant Readers,"
and the "Occasional Correspondents,"
they give up all hope. It is all over with us.
Let us put sackcloth and ashes on our heads.

But what is the use, my friends, of crying
"Wolf! " when the foe has already entered
our sheepfolds—when he has already carried
away the most succulent of our young lambs
from their bleating mothers, and thirsts now,
with his ravening jaws all dripping with
gore, for our lives?

Shall we be invaded?

We are invaded; root and branch, body and
bones, horse and foot, neck and heel, outfang
and infang. The invasion has been going on
for years, and we recked nothing of it. The
insidious enemy, burrowing like a mole
underground, has sapped our foundations; has
undermined our institutions. An unscrupulous
army of mercenaries  (principally Irish)  have
carried out his iniquitous behests.  We are
compassed round about,  hemmed in,
surrounded by his fortalices—not masked
batteries or stockaded forts—but defiant, brazen-
faced strongholds. Great, and getting greater
day by day, is the invasion of London.  We
are beleaguered by Brigadier Bricks and
Field-Marshal Mortar.  Their weapons of
offence have been scaffold-poles and
bricklayers' hods; their munitions of defence,
hoarding and wheelbarrows. This is what I
call the "real invasion."