588 Notes of the Month on Affairs in General. 



eye. If this suggestion could be conveyed to the ear of the Queen, it 

 is not impossible that it might be acted upon/' 



An " intelligent correspondent" is generally a rogue, who adopts 

 the title to conceal that he is a blockhead. Our plan is in finitely better: 

 the whole effect would be lost by piling the infant materiel on benches ; 

 the true way would be to hang them on the prominent parts of the 

 architecture, in the style of the Cupids in the opera ballets, and give 

 them that semblance of angels, which is to be found in groups of fat 

 cheeks with duck's wings, and bodies curtailed or forgotten. This 

 would be something new ; and while the bench system in this east 

 wind would only present his Majesty with ten thousand coughing and 

 shivering brats, our plan would shew them all cherubs. If a few 

 were hanged in the operation, how could they be nearer Heaven ! 



The Bourbons were lately reported to have lost another flower. 

 News was received of the death of his Neapolitan majesty, Francis I., 

 at Turin. It is of little consequence, we suppose, whether the news 

 be true or not. At all events, it was hardly worth while to contradict 

 such a report ; for if he is not dead he soon will be. On his decease, 

 the crown will come to his eldest son, Ferdinand Charles, Duke of 

 Calabria, in his 21st year, by his second wife, whom Francis espoused 

 in 1802, he being at that time forty-three, and his youthful bride but 

 thirteen years of age. 



As for Francis I., if he is really in a situation that requires an 

 epitaph, all that we can say of him is, that he was a potentate of whose 

 life the world knew nothing, except that he was fat, ate macaroni, was 

 supposed to have once swallowed poison from the hands of his loving 

 mother, and married a child of thirteen. Peace be to his manes. It 

 is well for kings when death finds them neither in a prison, nor in exile, 

 but travelling like a bon bourgeois, and eating six meals a day. If the 

 world goes on as it promises now, and if the successor of Francis does 

 not discover that the fates of millions will be placed in his hands for 

 something better than to eat macaroni, and do nothing, he will have a 

 different story to tell at his latter end. We shall have his majesty 

 building a cottage on the mighty Potowmac, or locating his six acres 

 under the Peel dynasty on the Swan, unless he shall prefer serving 

 in the troops of his highness the Dey of Tripoli, or taking his rest in 

 the sunshine at the back of the Mole among his congenial Lazzaroni. 



The "Winter's Wreath," published byWhittaker, is a beautiful collec- 

 tion of engravings, certainly not yielding to any in London. But the 

 general fault of these works is that they seem all written by the same 

 set of persons. We have William and Mary Howitt, meek as mice, in 

 every one of them. Miss Jewsbury seldom misses an opportunity, 

 Bernard Barton is not so multitudinous as formerly, and so much the 

 better. But as we have made up our minds long since on Quaker 

 poetry, and decided that no broadbrim can write a decision which is 

 fully sanctioned by universal experience, though Goldsmith said that 

 they ought to be the most literary of drab-coloured creatures, " as their 

 founder was a Penn," a pun for which the bard deserves to be immor- 

 talized we can discover a Quaker's verse at any distance, as the doc^ 

 tors lately could discover a madman, by the smell. However, we hope 

 the editors will repent, and give us some new faces to delight ui next 

 year. 



