"Buckingham Palace is neither so agreeable nor salubrious a residence as Windsor, but neither is the crown so pleasant to wear as a bonnet. I trust it is not necessary to remind Queen Victoria that royalty, like property, has its _duties_ as well as its _rights_. One of these duties is to reside in the metropolis of the kingdom, the presence of the sovereign in the capital being essential on many occasions. I could enumerate other duties of the sovereign, such, for instance, as conferring fashion on public entertainments that deserve to be encouraged by attending such places of amusement, and countenancing science, literature and the arts, by honouring distinguished professors with marks of approbation; in which respect it is much to be regretted there is too much room for those remarks on the remissness of Her Majesty in these respects that are so frequently made in society. When we know how much discontent, engendered by widely spread and deeply-felt distress is expressed by persons not to be numbered among 'the lower classes,' it is not without alarm that the influence of these acts of omission on the part of Queen Victoria can be regarded; and it becomes the duty of every friend of the monarchy and the constitution to warn the Sovereign of the danger, not merely to her personal popularity, but to the feeling of loyalty to the throne, that is likely to accrue from such neglect." In these years, and for a good many years to come, _Punch_ hunted in couples with _The Times_. [Sidenote: _Neglect of Native Talent_] The neglect of native talent and the encouragement of foreign artists, musicians, men of letters, is harped upon in number after number for year after year. Here again the method is sometimes direct, sometimes oblique, as in the fictitious list of people invited to the Court: Dickens, Hood, Mrs. Somerville, and Maria Edgeworth. Another opportunity was when it was announced that the Danish Royal family had attended the funeral of Thorwaldsen in deep mourning, _Punch_ exclaims, "imagine for a moment English Royalty in deep mourning for departed genius!" The often-repeated visits of "General Tom Thumb" to Court in 1844 made him very angry. At the second "command" performance the General "personated Napoleon amid great mirth, and this was followed by a representation of Grecian statues, after which he danced a nautical hornpipe, and sang several of his favourite songs" in the presence, as _Punch_ notes, of the Queen of the Belgians, daughter of Louis Philippe. But _Punch_ had his revenge on this curious and deep-rooted interest of Royalty in dwarfs--Queen Isabella of Spain had one permanently attached to her staff--by indulging in a delightful speculation on the happy results that would have ensued if George IV, like General Tom Thumb, had stopped growing at the age of five months:--