as to how a similar scene might be gone through with H.R.H. the Prince of Wales and H.R.H. the Duke of Edinburgh giving imitations of Mr. Compton and Mr. Buckstone in ‘Box and Cox.’ Kings of England in the olden time seldom made jokes, and more seldom allowed them to be made by others, excepting professional jesters. When we come to the Norman time we find the Conquistor so little able to digest a joke that he declared war against the King of France for making one at the expense of William’s obesity. The latter, indeed, did try to answer the jest, but the answer missed its aim, and William lost his life because he could not understand humour. Rufus, on the contrary, indulged in such jesting as one might expect in an ill-bred bachelor king of loose principles and looser companions. The first Henry is handed down to us by successive historians as a man of very facetious humour, but they afford no samples of the humorous expression. Stephen had little leisure for anything but to keep his seat in the saddle into which he had leaped after a severe struggle. The humour of Henry the Second was of a sad-coloured hue; as it well might be. It was sardonically indulged when he caused to be painted on the wall of a chamber at Windsor and on the ceiling of a room at Winchester a singular picture. The artist is nameless, but he must have been the Landseer or the Ansdell of his day. The subject was an old eagle attacked by his four eaglets. The youngest and fiercest of the four was savagely picking at the parent eagle’s eyes. The king used to smile a melancholy smile as courtiers gazed at this picture, and did not penetrate, or seemed not to penetrate, the allegory which it presented. Probably when they were beyond royal sight and hearing they made good guesses at it, or the king interpreted it, and then it was no treason to give circulation to Henry’s interpretation. The old eagle was the monarch himself. The four eaglets were his obstinately rebellious sons. The ruffianly youngest bird savagely trying to peck the parent’s eyes out was the youngest and most ruffianly of his sons, John. In that form the half-mad and most melancholy Henry manifested his humour with regard to family affairs--an example which has not been generally followed. In one of his sons, Richard the First, there was much readiness of wit; and he especially loved to turn it against the priests. To make a joke at the cost of an ecclesiastic was as good to him as slaying an infidel. John’s jokes took a cruel form, drawing Jews’ teeth to accelerate their disposition to lend money, and behaving noisily at divine worship with an idea of humiliating some priest or bishop who had offended him. His son Henry loved the arts and good company. Of the three Edwards not one has come to our knowledge as a joker, but the son of the last, the Black Prince, did once so far stoop from his dignity as to, half jocularly, half angrily, call an archbishop an ass. The second Richard never had an opportunity for