IT seems from our late dispatches that the prevailing assassin has made his appearance in England, and has fired at Her Royal Tallness, the Queen. The dispatch does not say why the man fired at Victoria, but the chances are that she at some time in a careless moment refused him the appointment of Book-keeper to the Queen's Livery Stable Extraordinary, or neglected to confirm his nomination to the position as Usher Plenipotentiary to the Royal Bath Room and Knight of the Queen's Cuspidor.
Royalty gets it in the nose every day or two, and yet after the family has hung onto the salary for several centuries it does not occur to the average king that he could strike a job as humorist on some London paper, at about the same salary and with none of the annoyances. The most of those people who have worn a great, heavy cast iron crown, with diamonds on it as big as a peanut, have become so attached to it that they can't swear off in a moment.
We do not see where the orchestra comes in on a thing like that. The average American would rather sell mining stock, and get wealthy without a tail on his name and his hair all worn off with a crown two sizes too large for him, than to be King of the Cannibal Islands with a missionary baby on toast twice a day.
ENGLISH HUMOR
THE London Spectator says that "the humor of the United States, if closely examined, will be found to depend in a great measure on the ascendancy which the principle of utility has gained over the imaginations of a rather imaginative people." The humor of England, if closely examined, will be found just about ready to drop over the picket fence into the arena, but never quite making connections. If we scan the English literary horizon, we will find the humorist up a tall tree, depending from a sharp knot thereof by the slack of his overalls. He is just out of sight at the time you look in that direction. He always has a man working in his place, however. The man who works in his place is just paring down the half sole, and newly pegging a joke, that has recently been sent in by the foreman for repairs.