three times what was obtained from Parliament for the education of the poor. _The Times_ of December 2, 1841, quoted from the _Sporting Magazine_ an account of the accommodation provided for the Prince Consort's beagles and Her Majesty's dogs--sleeping beds, compartments paved with asphalt, dry and clean, with roomy and healthy green yards; and boiling and distemper houses detached from the other portions of the building--and bracketed with it the sworn evidence of the late matron and medical attendant at the Sevenoaks Union. The lying-in ward was small and always looked dirty. "There had been six women there at one time: two were confined in one bed. It was impossible entirely to shut out the infection. I have known fifteen children sleep in two beds." Six young girls, inmates of the Lambeth workhouse, were charged about the same time with breaking several panes of glass. In their defence they complained that they had been treated worse in the workhouse than they would be in prison, and said that it was to cause their committal to the latter place they broke the windows. Strange reading this in a comic journal, yet paralleled by similar extracts week after week and month after month. The birth of the Prince of Wales was chronicled in the same issue of the daily papers which contained the "luscious history" of the Lord Mayor's dinner:-- Oh, men of Paisley--good folks of Bolton--what promise for ye is here! Turkeys, capons, sirloins, asparagus, pheasants, pineapples, Savoy cakes, Chantilly baskets, mince-pies, preserved ginger, brandy cherries, a thousand luscious cakes that "the sense aches at!" What are all these gifts of plenty but a glad promise that in the time of the "sweetest young prince," on the birthday of that Prince just vouchsafed to us, all England will be a large Lord Mayor's table! [Sidenote: _Fleshpots and Famine_] When the question of the title of the next King was discussed, _Punch_ boldly suggested Lazarus:-- Let Henry the Fifth have his Agincourt; let him, in history, sit upon a throne of Frenchmen's skulls; our LAZARUS THE FIRST shall heal the wounds of wretchedness--shall gather bloodless laurels in the hospital and workhouse--his ermine and purple shall make fellowship with rags of linsey-wolsey--he shall be a king enthroned and worshipped in the hearts of the indigent! LAZARUS THE FIRST! There is hope in the very sound for the wretched! There is Christian comfort to all men in the very syllables! By giving such a name to the greatest king of the earth, there is a shadowing forth and a promise of glorification to the beggars in eternity. Poverty and sores are anointed--tatters are invested with regality--man in his most abject and hopeless condition is shown his rightful equality with the bravest of the earth--royalty and beggary meet and embrace each other in the embrace of fraternity.