Our suggestion last week, that the royal birth should take place on Lord Mayor's Day, has, we are happy to see, been partially attended to; but we regret that the whole hog has not been gone, by twins having been presented to the anxious nation, so that there might have been a baronetcy each for the outgoing and incoming Lord Mayors of London and Dublin.
[Illustration: A ROYAL NURSERY RHYME FOR 1860
"There was a Royal Lady who lived in a shoe, She had so many children she didn't know what to do."]
This vein is further developed in burlesque bulletins of the progress of the infant Prince. _Punch's_ serious views as to the Prince's future are to be found in his "Pæan to the Princelet" and its sequel, inspired by the Royal Christening in February, 1842:--
The little Prince _must_ love the poor, And he will heed the cry Of the pauper mother, when she finds Her infant's fountains dry. He'll fill the cruse, and bruise the ear, To make those founts o'erflow, For they have vow'd our little Prince No "vanities" shall know. And we will rattle our little bell, And laugh, and dance, and sing as well-- Roo-too-tooit! Shallaballa! Life to the Prince! Fallallalla!
And death's dark bones will then become Like iv'ry pure and white! His blood-dyed robe will moulder off, And his garments be as light; For man will slaughter man no more For wrong begot by wrongs, For our little Prince will say--"To me Nor life nor death belongs." So we will rattle our little bell, And laugh, and dance, and sing as well-- Roo-too-tooit! Shallaballa! Life to the Prince! Fallallalla!
But while taking the Prince's future very seriously, _Punch_ could not emulate those writers in the Press who, with goose-quill in hand, could not approach the ordinary trials from which even Royal infants are not exempt, save on their knees:--
It has been announced to the public, through the medium of the Press, that a most important epoch has arrived in the life of the Prince of Wales. It is a strange fact, that this "important epoch" has not been noted in the biography of any previous Prince of Wales; for we look in vain through the pages of Hume and Smollett, Rapin, Lingard, Miss Julia Corner, and indeed every other corner within our reach, without being able to ascertain when Edward the Black Prince was driven from the breast to the bottle. The Heir Apparent to the English throne has, we are told, been lately subjected to this frightful vicissitude; and though his Royal Highness is said to have borne it tolerably well, it will appear that while he took to the pap-spoon with princely fortitude, there was something of the infant perceptible in his mode of first receiving it.