Then silence your civic applauders, Lest better men cease from applause. He who tribute accepts of marauders, Is held to be pledged to their cause. Let no Corporate magnates of London An honour presume to award: Their own needs, till ill-doings be undone, Little honour to spare can afford! [Sidenote: Prince Punch to Prince Albert] A little later on, on the eve of the Crimean War, _Punch_ was evidently impressed by the alleged interference of the Prince in high affairs of State. The cartoon of January 7, 1854, represents the Prince skating on thin ice marked "Foreign Affairs--Very Dangerous," and _Mr. Punch_ shouting to him; and in the same issue the lines "Hint and Hypothesis" warn the Prince against shifting his tactics and adopting the _rôle_ of an intriguer. These rumours were so persistent that Lord Aberdeen felt it necessary to allude to them in the House of Lords at the opening of the Session, declaring that not only was there no foundation for the charge that the Prince had interfered with the Army or the Horse Guards, but that he had declined the suggestion of the Duke of Wellington that he should succeed him as Commander-in-Chief. His interest in the Army was naturally keen, but it was general. That he was the adviser of the Queen, in his capacity of husband and most intimate companion was beyond all doubt, but Lord Aberdeen vigorously maintained that he had never uttered a single Syllable in the Council which had not tended to the honour, the interest, and the welfare of the country. Still suspicion was not wholly appeased, and _Punch's_ references to the Prince during the Crimean War were none too friendly. In 1855 he is credited with the intention of heroically resigning his Field Marshal's bâton and pay, as a "noble beginning of Military Reform," in response to the public cry for the dismissal of "incompetent nobility." And at the end of the year his desire to go to the Crimea is made the subject of ironic remonstrance. As a matter of fact, the reader of to-day must be told, the intention and the desire were both inventions of _Punch_, who was playing his favourite game of attributing to exalted personages resolves and actions which they never contemplated, but which he wanted them to make or take, and which if they had taken, he would probably have criticized as unnecessary and injudicious. Even more malicious was the picture of _Punch_ regarding a portrait of the Prince, exhibited in the Academy of 1857, in Field Marshal's uniform, and saying to himself, "What sanguinary engagement can it be?" _Punch_ cannot be acquitted of treating the Prince Consort--as he only now began to be generally called--with less than justice in view of the difficult and delicate position he occupied. The impression was given that the Prince wanted to meddle in the conduct of the War, and that it was necessary to prevent him from making himself a nuisance by going to the front. And mixed with