In 1903 the King and Queen visited Ireland, and _Punch_ prefaced his Donnybrook Fair rhymes--a long way after Thackeray--on their entry into Dublin with the audacious but impenitent declaration that he intended to adhere to a method of spelling which bore no sort of resemblance to Irish pronunciation. Of all the Royal visitors in the years before the war, none was more popular or "had a better Press" than King Alfonso. In 1905 _Punch_ happily contrasted past and present in his cartoon of the Kings of England and Spain in friendly converse, while in the background the formidable shade of Queen Elizabeth remarks with more of amazement than approval: "Odds my life! A King of Spain in England! And right cousinly entreated withal!" King Alfonso's marriage in the following year to Princess Ena of Battenberg is genially commemorated in Sambourne's happy adaptation of Velazquez; and when the infant Prince of the Asturias made his first visit to England, the same artist gave us the wholly delightful picture of Prince Olaf of Denmark pushing the Spanish princelet in his "pram": "Come along, old man," he says; "I'll show you round. I've been here before." Spain was not a royal bed of roses, but it was at least spared the upheaval which convulsed the adjoining kingdom of Portugal. On the assassination of King Carlos and the Crown Prince in 1908, Britannia in _Punch's_ cartoon bade King Manoel take courage: when he was deposed by the Revolution of 1910, he appears as a dignified figure mournfully bewailing the downfall of his House. Simultaneously _Punch_ chronicles the saying attributed to the late Mlle. Gaby Deslys: "I am not ashamed of having the friendship of young King Manoel," and ironically describes it as "the humility of true greatness." King Edward was born in the same year in which _Punch_ first appeared, and when he died in 1910 the commemorative number goes back to the cartoon of "The First Tooth," published at a time when _Punch's_ comments on the Royal Nursery were more frank than decorous. But whether as a small boy or an Oxford undergraduate, in America or India, in illness or in health, as Prince or King, he had always found a benevolent friend and lenient critic in _Punch_, who now saluted him in death, in the name of Europe, as a Maker of Peace. To the mass of obituary literature, mostly uncritical, which was inspired by the passing of a great and popular personality _Punch_ contributed an interesting fact. There was nothing surprising in the statement that King Edward never joined in debate in the House of Lords; but it was curious to learn that he never voted--except for the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill. The King's affection for his little dog Cæsar was one of those personal traits which had moved the popular sentiment, and _Punch_ was fortunate in having on his staff a writer who was a poet as well as a lover of dogs:--