A EOYAL RETRIBUTION. 63 



wise than cause a most irregular disturbance amongst the con- 

 tiguous vegetable juices, which, forthwith beginning to ferment, 

 and rise, and consolidate around it, soon constitute again its 

 vegetable prison, a prison of no larger dimensions than the 

 narrow circle of an oak-apple, or a currant leaf-gall ? 



To follow up the above notable ideas, the peculiar tree of 

 England, her mighty oak, were certainly no unfitting instru- 

 ment for the punishment of England's erring potentates. Only 

 fancy, amongst others, the roistering spirit of the "merry 

 monarch" to have been condemned, in expiation of its in- 

 numerable naughtinesses, to wander, for nigh two hundred 

 summers, from leaf to leaf of the self-same tree, or a tree of 

 the same sort as that whereon he hung a fugitive. Or sup- 

 posing him by this time permitted to exchange for an animal 

 the vegetable form, think only of this animal king con- 

 demned to play the insect in the oak-apple ; and perhaps on this 

 oak-apple day of 1849, mounted in his gilded prison on the 

 beaver of a round-hat royalist! Then (oh, most crowning 

 consummation of a royal retribution !) the gilded apple with- 

 ers, and as the juices perish on which its occupant regaled, 

 the spirit of the Stewart, whose very God was appetite, pines 

 on starvation, dies as much as spirit can, and revives only to 

 animate another oak-apple, and tread again the same tiny 

 round of painted or gilded penance. 



But a truce with fancy, and now for fact ; or perhaps we 

 should say rather for the probable instead of improbable con- 



