Six hares alive were taken out Each in its canvas sack; And five as dead as mutton, in The same were carried back. The battue of hares at Stowe during the Prince's visit to the Duke of Buckingham in January, 1845, is the subject of another derisive ballad modelled on _John Gilpin_, and of a cartoon showing the Prince shooting down the tame quarry point-blank from an easy chair. The grand climax to this raillery, however, was reached during the Royal visit to Germany in September, when the stag hunt at Gotha was scarified with pen and pencil. In two parallel cartoons of "Court Pastimes" are contrasted the bear-baiting under Elizabeth with the butchery of stags under Victoria; and the hand of Thackeray is unmistakable in the "Sonnick, sejested by Prince Halbert gratiously killing the Staggs at Sacks-Cobug-Gothy":-- Some forty Ed of sleak and hantlered dear In Cobug (where such hanimmles abound) Were shot, as by the nusepapers I hear, By Halbert Usband of the British Crownd. Britannia's Queen let fall the purly tear; Seeing them butchered in their silvn prisns; Igspecially, when the keepers, standing round, Came up and cut their pretty hinnocent whizns. Suppose, instead of this pore Germing sport, This Saxn wenison which he shoots and baggs, Our Prins should take a turn in Capel Court And make a massyker of English Staggs.[12] Pore Staggs of Hengland! Were the Untsman at you, What avoc he _would_ make and what a trimenjus battu! JEAMS. [Footnote 12: In reference to the then prevalent mania for railway speculation.] [Illustration: ELIZABETH] [Sidenote: _Stag Slaughter at Gotha_] [Illustration: VICTORIA] Even more lacerating is the use made in the same number of the comment of a loyal eye-witness quoted by the _Standard_:-- TEARS AT GOTHA The _Standard_ gives the following extract of a letter from Gotha to a gentleman in London:-- "This (the deer killing) was very shocking. The Queen wept _I saw large tears in her eyes_: and Her Majesty tells me that she with difficulty kept the chair during what followed. When the Queen saw the otter hunt in Scotland, the pity that she _naturally felt_ at the death of the animal was _counterbalanced by a knowledge of his propensities_, so that it is almost as meritorious _to destroy an otter as it is a snake_; but this was a totally different case; nor is Her Majesty yet recovered. _For the Prince_, the deer were too numerous, and _must_ be killed. _This_ was the German method; and no doubt the reigning Duke will distribute them to his people, who will thank Prince Albert for providing them venison." [Illustration: THE MOMENTOUS QUESTION "Tell me, oh tell me, dearest Albert, have _you_ any Railway Shares?"]