Chancellor, my Lord Archbishop, and my
Lords the great officers of State are with the
first public exhibition of Prince Prosperous;
but there is the same skill in the doctor, the
same care and attention in the nurse, the
same solicitude and joy in all womankind
that are about; the same pride in the father,
the same and less chattering, hurrying about,
and ceaseless potterings over fireplaces with
saucepans , containing mysterious messes, at
the birth of the little sweep in the garret, as
of the little Prince of the Palace. Napoleon,
bursting into the golden ante-chamber
of the Tuileries with that long-desiderated
man-child in his arms, swathed in the
purple, and crying out to his Marshals,
and Ministers, and Cardinals, with all the joy
and exultation of satisfied ambition, and new
nascent hope, "It is a King of Rome!" sings
but to the self-same tune as the parish nurse
does to the happy Mr. Ragg, senior, when,
holding a particularly diminutive infant
in her arms, she informs him that it is
the finest child "that hever were seen."
They both mean BABY, and they are both
equal in their birth. Baby Beggar is as
good as Baby Basileus. The gruel is in
a silver cup or a broken butter-boat. The
Doctor must be an M.R.C.S., whether he
have the prefix of Sir, and the prestige
of Court practice or not; and the poor
man's baby makes an equal item as the
heir of a Brown in the Registrar-General's
returns. Nay, if Mr. Ragg, père, choose to
invest three shillings and sixpence with the
proprietors of the Times newspaper, he
can read at full length in that journal such
an announcement as "in Hampshire Hog
Lane, the lady of John Ragg, Esquire, of a
Son." His lady may go to St. Giles's or St.
James's and be churched by a live Doctor of
Divinity, and what more can the infant prince
have than a little larger type in the
newspaper, a few more lines, the smoke and smell
of a little gunpowder, and an archbishop to
compose a form of thanksgiving to be recited,
on the Sunday following, in all parish churches
in England, and the town of Berwick-upon-
Tweed.

But though our first Birthdays are all
pretty nearly alike, no sooner is Baby short-
coated and weaned than we begin to play our
little game of mummeries and masqueradings,
posture-makings and hankey-pankey tricks;
and the Birthday becomes an institution to
be kept with great state, and splendour, and
carousal by the rich, to be neglected or
ignored by the poor. Little Jack Ragg
speedily forgets all about his birthday, if
indeed anybody ever took the trouble to
inform him of the exact date of the
anniversary of that event: that young gentleman
has sundry important preoccupations touching
the provision of shoes for his feet, a shirt for
his back, victuals for his belly, and a bed to
lay his head upon; and he is oftener prompter
to bewail his existence altogether, and that
he "hever wor born," than to make enquiries
as to when his natal day falls due, and rejoice
thereupon. Little black Topsey never had a
birthday, she 'spects; she "growed," for
aught .she knows; the "Speculator" who
raised her, old master who made the flesh fly,
or old missis who whipped her with a poker,
never made her Birthday presents— what
should she, or Jack Ragg in England, or Fagg
the tramp, or Bobtail the thief, know or care
about their birthdays? They have no large
Family Bibles with all the birthdays of the
family accurately registered on the fly leaves.
They have no Bibles at all, no families, no
anything. What should they know of their
own birthdays when they are utterly ignorant
of the meaning and purpose of the great blessed
Birthday— nay, ignorant of its very being. You
shall go down courts and alleys; you shall hold
your breath in the noisome stench of common
lodging-houses; you shall stir up the breathing
heaps of foul rags on which the rays of the
policeman's bulls-eye fall; you shall see the
man in tatters, and the "woman in
unwomanly rags," the boy thief, the girl without
a name, the whole tribe from the patriarch
to the new-born babe in dirt, hunger, misery,
and the ignorance that slayeth. To talk to
these forlorn beings about their birthdays!

Yet we all have our Birthdays, though
ofttimes disregardful of them as of other
precious gifts; there may be no oxen roasted
whole, or fireworks let off, or Sir Roger de
Coverley danced when our natal anniversaries
come round, yet we can be joyful for our
birthdays, and thankful for that mercy, which
has permitted us to enjoy so many of them.

I am not about to inflict upon my reader a
course of Lemprière or Adams's Roman
Antiquities, else it would be as easy as lying to tell
you how the ancients kept their birthdays; how
the men sacrificed to Jupiter and the women
to Juno; how rich dresses were worn and
presented as gifts: how great feasts were
held, where the guests in postures of graceful
accubation made themselves sick with those
peculiarly nasty dishes which were the glory
of Roman cookery. Yet there are some
modern birthdays in whose phases of celebration
there may be things socially interesting.

Place to Princes, and let us have a peep at
the King's birthday! Which King and which
birthday shall we have? There are many to
choose from. Shall we go back to the twenty-
ninth of May, sixteen hundred and sixty, and
stand at Charing Cross (close by where was
once a certain statue, pulled down during the
late troubles, and supposed to have been cast
into parliamentary ordnance, for administering
"apostolic blows and knocks" long
since, but which has been safely hidden
underground, and is soon to be set up again
in as high estate as ever with new glorifications
of pedestal-carvings by Grinling
Gibbons)— Shall we stand here while the
trumpets bray out their noisy fanfares, and
the joy-bells ring their merry peals, and the