1030.] Affairs in General. 587 



let France and Europe shake hands if they can. Prussia will catch fire. 

 England will hold oft' till she has a chance of losing immensely by her 

 interference, and we shall gain by her loss. Probatum est' Two 

 hundred nameless adventurers were sent to Brussels, and de Wepenberg 

 went to the Hague." 



This is the age of Discoveries of all kinds. A very curious one has 

 just been made through the agency of the " Literary Gazette." It 

 appears that a novel recently published, purporting to be a new one, 

 and pretty generally attributed to a certain Right Honourable authoress, 

 is a version almost without an alteration except as regards the title arid 

 the names of some compound of sighs, tears sal volatile, and white 

 handkerchiefs, which made its public entree about eighteen years ago, 

 and was most naturally and judiciously forgotten by every living crea- 

 ture, except the Right Honourable writer, and the person whose long 

 memory has now rendered a service to the public in unmasking the 

 fraud. We can have no hesitation in calling it a fraud ; which is the 

 more culpable party, the author or the publisher, remains to be seen. 

 Either the one, calculating upon the badness of the book, and upon the 

 proneness of people to banish dulness from their recollections, has 

 palmed an old novel upon her publisher for a new one ; or the other 

 has played the same trick upon the public. It lies between them we 

 shall see who comes clear from the fire. 



The city is in great exultation at the prospect of the Royal visit to the 

 Mansion House, which will be paid just after our lucubrations see the 

 light, but which we can predict will be welcomed by one of the most 

 showy receptions remembered. Key, the Lord Mayor, will kneel down 

 a simple subject, and rise up an altered man : no longer a citizen, but a 

 knight bearing a bloody hand, married to a lady of high degree, and 

 entitled to propagate honours through his line for fifty generations to 

 come. We presume we shall see the lady's portrait in " La Belle Assem- 

 blee," which already announces a splendid engraving commemorative 

 of the event, representing all the courtiers and citizens at high feast, 

 and as brilliant as colours can make them. 



There will be, of course, some fantastic notions in the heads of the 

 hundred projectors, who are in full motion on the event. Alderman 

 Birch has proposed to erect a fountain in the centre of Cheapside, which 

 is to play turtle soup from twelve o'clock to six. The United Uphol- 

 sterers intend to present a pocket mirror to every officer and private of 

 the escort of Hussars, to enable them to look at themselves during the 

 procession, nothing else being half so delightful. Pudding-lane sug- 

 gests its appropriate gifts, and Fish-street-hill is already prepared with 

 a sturgeon, worthy of the Majesty of all the Russias. But the finest 

 project of all, is our own idea of piling up the front of St. Paul's, not with 

 carpets or confectionary, but with heads of children from three to 

 thirteen years of age. 



" Entrance of the King into the City. An intelligent correspondent sug- 

 gests that all the children educated at all the free schools in London 

 might be accommodated within the area of St. Paul's ; and that the 

 Ordnance Department, by supplying tarpaulins and erecting benches, 

 might, at a small expense, provide shelter from the weather for the 

 little ones, who, if amphitheatrically arranged, would present a sight 

 in every point of view the most interesting that could gratify the Royal 



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