half-hour--will be upon the women of the bedchamber. The war with
China--the price of sugar--the corn-laws--the fourteen new Bishops about to
be hatched--timber--cotton--a property tax, and the penny post--all these
matters and persons are of secondary importance to this greater
question--whether the female who hands the Queen her gown shall think Lord
Melbourne a "very pretty fellow in his day;" or whether she shall believe
my friend Sir Robert to be as great a conjuror as Roger Bacon or the Wizard
of the North--if the lady can look upon O'Connell and not call for burnt
feathers or scream for _sal volatile_; or if she really thinks the Pope to
be a woman with a naughty name, clothed in most exceptionable scarlet. It
is whether Lady Mary thinks black, or Lady Clementina thinks white; whether
her father who begot her voted with the Marquis of Londonderry or Earl
Grey--_that_ is the grand question to be solved, before my friend Sir
Robert can condescend to be the saviour of his country. To have the
privilege of making a batch of peers, or a handful of bishops is nothing,
positively nothing--no, the crowning work is to manufacture a lady's maid.
What's a mitre to a mob-cap--what the garters of a peer to the garters of
the Lady Adeliza?

READER.--You are getting warm, Mr. PUNCH--very warm.

PUNCH.--I always do get warm when I talk of the delicious sex: for though
now and then I thrash my wife before company, who shall imagine how cosy we
are when we're alone? Do you not remember that great axiom of Sir
Robert's--an axiom that should make Machiavelli howl with envy--that "_the
battle of the Constitution is to fought in the bedchamber_."

READER.--I remember it.

PUNCH.--That was a great sentence. Had Sir Robert known his true fame, he