Let those who shudder at the cost, at least know to whom the cost is due. We are now paying, and are likely to pay for a long time to come, for the privilege of having a Coalition Ministry. But we submit, that the continuance of such a form of government is not desirable. We have shown, in regard to foreign affairs, and from evidence which cannot be gainsayed, what are its results; we could show, if space allowed us, its results upon domestic legislation. But we shall not enter into the lesser topics now. We have, as yet, but touched upon a part of the expediency of coalition; and our deliberate conclusion is, that to the fact of the formation of the Coalition Ministry we must attribute the development of the schemes of Russia, and to its extraordinary vacillation and want of concert the catastrophe of a European war. _Printed by William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh._ ----- Footnote 1: _Histoire des Marionettes en Europe depuis l’antiquité jusqu’à nos jours._ Par CHARLES MAGNIN, Member de l’Institut. Paris, 1852. Footnote 2: These common Italian marionettes have travelled far. Daniel Clarke found them in Tartary, all the fashion amongst the Cossacks of the Don.—_Vide_ his _Travels in Various Countries_, part I.; _Russia, &c._, p. 233. Footnote 3: Casperle is a comic countryman, who replaced Jack Padding on the stage of the Austrian puppet-shows, and became so popular that the principal marionette theatre of the Vienna faubourgs received the name of the Casperle Theatre, and the coin which was the price of a place in the pit was called a casperle. Footnote 4: “You have exactly caught his manner of clearing his throat and spitting, but as for his genius....”—_Wallenstein’s Lager_, Scene vi. Footnote 5: The accomplished and lamented author of La Chartreuse di Parme; Le Rouge et le Noir; Rome, Naples, et Florence, &c. &c., of whose complete works a new edition is now appearing at Paris, under the editorship of his friend, M. Prosper Mérimée. Footnote 6: M. Magnin here refers to an engraving at page 47 of the fifth volume of the _Théatre de la Foire_ (1722) to prove that Punch’s humps, both in front and rear, were formerly much less prominent. It is easy to understand how, in the hands of ignorant showmen and manufacturers of puppets, that which was at first the reflection of a popular metaphor (of origin difficult to trace) was exaggerated into a senseless and scarcely ludicrous deformity. _Rire comme un bossu_, to laugh like a hunchback, is to the present day one of the vulgarest of French colloquial similes. It is not easy to say whence it arose, or why a hump between the shoulders should render the bearer more prone to laughter than his straighter made fellows. Footnote 7: