WANTED, A COURT-GUIDE.

OF all the many divinities that hedge a
king there are none so numerous, or whose
power is so fixed and immutable, as the
members of the royal household. Within the
somewhat homely and rather circumscribed
limits of a modern English palace, it is
difficult to imagine where standing room
can be found for the swarming members of
this idle and ornamental army. Taking
the area of their sphere of action, and
comparing it with their numbers and their
average bulk, it is not difficult to demonstrate
to the meanest mathematical capacity, that
they must huddle together in the palatial
ante-rooms, and ride upon each other's backs
up the palatial staircases.

It is difficult to solve the problem of their
physical accommodation, far more difficult
to ascertain the exact nature, amount, and
value of their individual functions, and to
reconcile those functions, when discovered,
with our notions of comfort, and our rules of
prudence and common-sense. When we hold
forth, in our superior civilised wisdom and our
benevolent platform pity, upon the lamentable
social condition of the wretched natives of
India, we are accustomed to place our
discerning fingers upon the absurd doctrine of
caste as the one cause that lies at the bottom
of their abasement — the one stumbling-block
and barrier in the way of their improvement.
But, what shall we say when we examine the
interior of the first house in our kingdom,
the residence of our gracious monarch, and
find it given up to the possession of a crowd
of titled menials, who have encrusted royalty
with an empty, useless, expensive, and
distasteful state, and whose allotted duties are
as slight and divided as those of the
benighted servants of an Asiatic mansion?

It must be a pleasant thing for the
sovereign of the realm to see about one thousand,
unselected, vested interest, hungry, hereditary
bondsmen, dancing round the Crown, like
Red Indians round a stake, and scrambling
for three hundred and twenty-five thousand
of the three hundred and eighty-five
thousand pounds that is thrown to them every
year by a liberal and uninquiring country.
Far be it from us, as worthy members of the
greatest nation under the sun— as members of
a gentle nation that never took a poor man's
bed to satisfy an unpaid tax — far be it from
us to say, that the royal claims are too exacting
even to the extent of the odd five pounds per
annum. If we are considerately silent on the
amount of the grant, we may, perhaps, be
allowed to criticise the manner of its disposal.

We can imagine a young, amiable, sensitive,
and newly-created monarch — a monarch
simple in tastes, who had spent much of his
time in the comparative solitude of yacht
sailing — coming unexpectedly to a throne in
consequence of some uncalculated vagaries of
death, and being set down suddenly and
unprepared in the midst of this eddying whirlpool
of frothy state. We can imagine his
bewilderment at the crowd in the first
department — that of the Lord Steward —
consisting of the Lord Steward himself,
treasurer, a comptroller of the household, master
of the household, secretary of the master,
another secretary, three clerks of the household,
secretary of the garden-accounts,
paymaster of the household, office-keeper, two
messengers, and a necessary woman. A
clerk of the kitchen, four clerks of the
kitchen, one messenger of the kitchen, a
necessary woman of the kitchen, a chief
cook, four master cooks, sundry apprentices,
two yeomen of the kitchen, two assistant
cooks, two roasting cooks, four scourers,
three kitchen maids, one storekeeper, two
green-office men, two steam-apparatus men,
first yeoman of the confectionery, second
yeoman of the confectionery, an apprentice of
the confectionery, three female assistants,
an errand-man, a pastry-cook, two female
assistants of the pastry-cook, a baker, an
assistant baker, three coffee-room women;
one yeoman of the ewer, two female assistants
of the yeoman of the ewer, the gentleman of
the wine and beer cellars, two yeomen of the
intoxicating liquors, a groom of the intoxicating
liquors, a principal table decker, a
second table decker, a third table decker, an
assistant table decker, a wax fitter; three
yeomen of the plate-pantry, a groom of the plate-
pantry, and six assistants of the plate-pantry.
Two principal coal-porters, eleven assistants of
the two principal coal-porters. First
gentleman-porter, first yeoman-porter, second
yeoman-porter, an assistant porter, three groom-
porters, a state serjeant-porter, five state