(so the Post puts it) 'tis the Parents who pay the Bills, and not Queen Street, Soho-nor King's Cross :-nor Duke's Place, Wapping. Whereas, if we come by a Royal Prodigal-alasa-day! every one knows what must happen: and it is perhaps as civil not to stir up old names and old shames on our Prince's Birthday! Don't misunderstand me. I am not for one instant hinting that a case of extravagant example, direct or indirect, is exhibited to our tiny Mightiness, whose motto is "Ich Dien!"-Long live Her Majesty! A young Lady full of life-full of gaiety-fond of Opera-going-fond of boating-fond of Powder Balls at home-and as much travelling abroad as Great Seal and Great Councillor can possibly accredit! - who yet, has never thoughtlessly gone beyond her (diamond) pin-money, and called upon the Populace to pay for her pleasures.-Long life to her! And long live, also, H. M.'s Consort; as a quiet, gentle, economical young gentleman, with liberal volitions, and elegant tastes, the strength whereof no Chemist has commissioned us to test, so 66 we 'll leave them!"I believe, in sober earnest, that our Royal personages have a conscientious conviction of the Responsibilities of Royalty: and, when such is the case, a five-pound note, more or less, is of little matter -still less, a smile; especially now, when Boz, by the perpetual drawing of Mr. Carker's teeth, is doing his best to drive smiling out of fashion! And this belief it was, which set me a thinking when I read about our Prince's Birthday :-since, "why," asked I of myself (and my wife, a famous manager of little folks, could give me no answer) "if one is sober for one's selves, should one be frivolous over one's Children? And when we read of Banks breaking, and Factories shutting their doors-of public works being suspended-of Irish Landlords stalked and shot down like so many head of wild deer, by an infuriated and wicked set of famishing savages (what has made them all these things, not being here the question)- when every day's newspaper comes up to the breakfast-table reeking with some new details of crime, or squalid with the statistics of misery-when Pestilence is said to be striding towards us-when a great and free people are going to butcher one another, by every approved receipt, in defence of Religious toleration,-how can we choose but wonder if the teaching of our Child has yet begun? Hard Condition of Royalty, that Reality should begin from its birth-hour! But so it must be. There is no youth under a Crown, now-a-days :-nor is there to be 66 any. The dear French Princess, who was for good-naturedly solacing starving Paris with pie-crusts, when the stock of bread ran low, is a figure, who would be found, in this year of grace, as superfluous and out of place, as Madame du Barry herself. Nay, may we not say more so? . . . when we see a Betsy Watson" esthetically Dubarry-fied in æsthetical Bavaria, at this time being with additions, alterations, and amendments, suitable to Louis the First of the Valhalla and the Alle-Heiligen Kapelle as distinguished from Louis the Fifteenth of the Parc aux Cerfs :while the French Princes, and Princesses, are saving fortunés; not theoretically throwing away their pie-crusts. I shall be told, I doubt not, by the Abigails in waiting on the Prime Minister of the Nursery, by the Countess who has the portfolio (or pincushion) of the Cradle department, that I am raising a storm in a slop-basin-making a fuss which is "truly inconvenient," and as much out of order in the neighbourhood of a Palace, as illness was in Fanny Burney's day. "Duty, if we were to die for it!" is their motto. So, too, is it mine. But every day brings Truth more and more forward as a Duty -in Court, Council, Conclave, Camp, Chapel, or 'Change!Truth, clear of any design to demolish, overthrow, or revolutionise -to partition the earth anew, by spoiling its Emperors or Egyptians but Truth convinced that Peace alone resides in Progress and Order in openness to improve! And wherefore not my truth in Print, as well as yours, my Lady of the Wardrobe? You print your blast of incense in adoration of the Kilted Babe, and the Palatial Cake. I print my Counter-blast of bracing air, in plea for somewhat plainer, more real, more practical, as fitted to these dark days! I must speak of the poor, and the criminal; of wars abroad, of the deaths of the mighty, of the starvation of those who deserve food-not in the tone of the German tutor, who dresses up a Saint Nicholas to frighten poor, innocent children into good conduct, or of the revengeful Nurse who threatens the sensitive culprit with a Ghost, which is to come out of China closet or clock-case to devour him, if he does not keep quiet-but as a gentle memento to one who is to rule us (late may it be first!) that the good spirits of Love, and Pity, and Kindliness, wait without, if he will open the gate and let them in. God forbid that I should scare the Hope of England by letting loose upon him monsters, leprous people, or black-bearded Robbers, or pale-faced Catholics, who would treat him as badly (to quote the Bigot's yore, hideous rhyme) as the Jews treated the Catholic children of could they get their blood-thirsty Papistical nails into him!-But when he is dressed up in the face of all England (poor thing!) like a small Scotchman-may not I, subject though I be-ad-dress him, and say, "Please, your Highness, remember your little countrymen, who have no oat-cake to eat on their Birthdays! When the Yule Log is put upon the hearth, and the ghost-story begins to go round,--that pleasure of Christmas well nigh as dear and as dreadful as Snap Dragon itself!-may not I come to the door; not as a whining Pauper-not as a disgusting trader on writhen limbs and ugly sores-not as Captain Rock or Captain Starlight, or one of the Peterloo rioters redivivus, whose name was so magical a bugbear in Lancashire, during the vile days of the Cato-street Conspiracy-but as a man, though subject not servile? May I not say, adapting the language of the wisest of men (after the fashion of others, who, when they quote Scripture, adapt it to the promulgation of their own favourite ism) “There is a time to think, as well as a time to laugh; if ye would not that, a time to weep shall also come ! THE GREETING ON THE THRESHOLD. SPEEDETH Time, the unrelenting, speedeth onward Time, the king, “I am Christmas :-read the records of the deeds that ye have done ; "Have ye walked the world meek-hearted-in your patience have ye worn Lowly thoughts for inner vesture, nought of pride, and nought of scorn? Have ye walked the world love-missioned, impulse strong, and purpose high, Foremost aye to strive and struggle for the vexed humanity? "Have ye chased one cloud of error? Have ye sown one seed of good? Have ye done the work God gave ye, honestly, as true men should? Have ye borne a cheerful aspect, hoping on through toil and care? Have ye won a poor man's blessing, or a poor man's broken prayer? "Then--burn bright your hearth-fires! flash the mirth-light in your eyes! All my olden gladness cheer you, all my jests and jollities! Loving friends be gathered round you- merry voice and visage gay— Good befal you! God be with you! such the greeting I would say. "But if ye have willed to follow other ways, O men, than these, All regardless of the warning of life's solemn verities;— If the loves that ye have cherished, have been self-loves, false and coldLove of earth, and earth's ambitions, love of greed and love of gold— "If your hearts have scorned to hearken, in the hour of mastery, To all pleadings of good angels, pity, mercy, charity If ye 've walked alone, self-trusting, self-sustaining, unsubdued By God's love, shed warmly round you, and your bond of brotherhood "Then-still lonely, drear and lonely, be your hearth, and be your home! "Fate-like I unfold your portals, and I bid you judge aright So, when next ye hear my greeting, blessed meanings it may bear!" Speedeth Time, the unrelenting, speedeth onward Time, the king, Christmas standeth at our thresholds-brothers, through the murky air Camberwell. T. WESTWOOD. 547 WHAT IS THE CAUSE OF SURPRISE? 'AND What connection has it with the Laws of Suggestion? BY HENRY MAYHEW. BEFORE proceeding to inquire into the Cause of Surprise, and the nature of its connection with the Laws of Suggestion, it is necessary that we should settle what those laws are. Accordingly, we shall begin by defining the Laws of Suggestion to be simply those uniform relations by which one thought or feeling suggests or gives rise to that which immediately follows it. "That one thought," says Dugald Stewart, "is often suggested to the mind by another, and that the sight of an external object recalls former occurrences, and revives former feelings, are facts which are perfectly familiar, even to those who are the least disposed to speculate concerning the principles of their nature. In passing along a road which we have formerly travelled in the company of a friend, the particulars of the conversation in which we were then engaged, are frequently suggested to us by the objects we meet with. In such a scene we recollect that a particular subject was started, and in passing the different houses, and plantations, and rivers, the arguments we were discussing when we last saw them recur spontaneously to the memory." "After time has in some degree reconciled us to the death of a friend," adds the same author, "how wonderfully are we -affected the first time we enter the house where he lived. Everything we see the apartment where he studied the chair upon which he sat recall to us the happiness we have enjoyed together; and we should feel it a sort of violation of that respect we owe to his memory to engage in any light or frivolous discourse when such objects are before us." Now, what are the uniform relations by which such thoughts and feelings are suggested to the mind? "In the first place then," says Dr. Abercrombie, in his book on the Intellectual Powers, "there is a remarkable tendency in the mental constitution, by which two or more facts or conceptions which have been contemplated together or in immediate succession, |