Mr. Bosky (resuming his seat and natural voice). The monarch, glorying in the name of Briton, assumed the imperial diadem amidst the acclamations of his loyal subjects; the mime, though not Briton born, but naturalized, had done nothing to alienate his right comical peers, or diminish his authority in the High Court and Kingdom of Queerummania. But _Punch_ had fallen on evil times and tongues. A few sticks of the rotten edifice of _utilitarianism_ had been thrown together; men began to prefer the dry, prickly husks of disagreeable truths, to the whipt-syllabubs of pleasant fiction; all recreations were resolving themselves in “_Irishman's Holiday_ (_change of work!_) the vivacity of small beer, and the strength of workhouse gruel! an unjolly spirit had again come over the nation; and people thought that by making this world a hell upon earth, they were nearer on their road to heaven! The contemporaries of _Punch_, too, had declined in respectability. A race of inferior conjurors succeeded to the cups and balls of Mr. Fawkes; the equilibrists and vaulters * danced more like a pea on a tobacco-pipe, than artists on the wire; and a troop of barn-door fowls profaned the classic boards on which Dogget, Pinkethman, and Spiller, once crowed so triumphantly. * “Mr. Maddox balances on his chin seven pipes in one another; a chair, topsy-turvy, and a coach-wheel. Also a sword on the edge of a wine-glass; several glasses brim full of liquor; two pipes, cross-ways, on a hoop; a hat on his nose; and stands on his head while the wire is in full swing, without touching it with his hands.” These performances he exhibited at Sadler's Wells, the Haymarket Theatre, &c. from 1753 to 1770. “At the New Theatre Royal in the Haymarket this day, the 24th October, 1747, will be performed by a native Turk, Mahommed Caratha, the most surprising équilibrés on the slack-rope, without a balance. “Perhaps where Lear has rav'd, and Hamlet died, On flying cars new sorcerers may ride; Perhaps (for who can guess th' effects of chance?) Here Hunt may box, or Mahomet may dance.” Dame Nature, whose freaks in former times had contributed much to the amusement of the fair, turned spiteful--for children were born perversely well-proportioned; so that a dwarf (“_Homunculi quanti sunt cum recogito!_”) became a great rarity in the monster market; giants, like ground in the city, fetched three guineas a foot; humps rose, and the woods and forests were hunted for wild men. The same contradictory spirit ruled the animal creation. Cows had heretofore been born with a plurality of heads; and calves without tails were frequently retailed in the market. The pig, whose aptitude for polite learning had long been proverbial, sulked over his ABC, and determined to be a dunce; the dog * refused to be--