_Thursday._ Gladstone moved Resolution allotting Wedding Dowry of six thousand a year to Princess Beatrice. On the whole rather a depressing business. More like a funeral than the preliminary to a wedding party. House listened in politely glum silence. Gladstone seemed to feel this, and laboured along making most of argument that this was the last. Also (being the last) promised Committee for next year to go into whole matter. Labby opposed vote, and O'Brien testified afresh to his disappointment at failure of efforts made to spoil success of Prince of Wales' visit to Ireland. W. Redmond gave the proposal a great fillip by opposing it, and House divided: 337 for making the little present; 38, chiefly Parnellites, against. By way of set-off, _Punch_ descanted melodiously on the "Royal Ring-Doves," alluding to Princess Beatrice as England's home-staying daughter, bride, yet bound As with silk ties, within the dear home-round By many a gentle reason. Here one cannot forget that terrible _Court Journal_ of four years back, or acquit _Punch_ of irony in the light of the fact (recorded in the _Annual Register_) that the Queen only gave her consent to the marriage on condition of Princess Beatrice's living in England. The discomforts and stinginess of the Court are satirized in an acid extract from the "Letter of a Lady-in-Waiting" in January, 1886, and there is a good deal of veiled sarcasm in the long account of the opening of the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in the summer. The whole ceremony is made to appear tedious, badly rehearsed and trivial, and the Queen is described as speaking with a "slightly foreign accent." Cordiality revives, however, in the verses "Astræa Redux," on the Queen's "happy restoration to public life," _à propos_ of her visit to Liverpool; and in the reference to her patronage of the Carl Rosa Opera Company at the Lyceum. [Sidenote: _Punch's Jubilee Ode_] With the year of the Queen's Golden Jubilee _Punch's_ chivalrous devotion to the person of the sovereign, which had never failed even in his most democratic days, reawakened in full force. In his Jubilee ode he emphasizes throughout the peaceful aim of the celebration:-- Not with the ruthless Roman's proud parade Of flaunting ensigns and of fettered foes, Nor radiantly arrayed In pomp of purple, such as fitly flows From the stern Conqueror's shoulders, comes our Queen Whilst England's ways with June's glad garniture are green. Not with the scent of battle, or the taint Of cruel carnage round about her car, Making the sick air faint With the dread breath of devastating war, Rolls on our Royal Lady, whilst the shout Of a free people's love compasses her about.