Elizabeth’s reign is remarkable for having produced a mantle which is worn at the present day, it having been originally made for one Shakspeare; but it is now worn by Mr. George Stephens, for whom, however, it is a palpable misfit, and it sits upon him most awkwardly.
Charles the First had his head cut off, and Mr. Cathcart acted him so naturally in Miss Mitford’s play that one would have thought the monarch was entirely without a head all through the tragedy.
Cromwell next obtained the chief authority. This man was a brewer, who did not think “small beer” of himself, and inundated his country with “heavy wet,” in the shape of tears, for a long period.
Charles the Second, well known as the merry monarch, is remarkable only for his profligacy, and for the number of very bad farces in which he has been the principal character. His brother James had a short reign, but not a merry one. He is the only English sovereign who may be said to have amputated his bludgeon; which, if we were speaking of an ordinary man and not a monarch, we should have rendered by the familiar phrase of “cut his stick,” a process which was soon performed by his majesty.
The crown now devolved upon William and Mary, upon whom half-a crown a-piece was thus settled by the liberality of Parliament. William was Prince of Orange, a descendant probably of the great King Pippin.
Anne of Denmark comes next on our list, but of her we shall say nothing; and as the Georges who followed her are so near own time, we shall observe, with regard to them, an equally impenetrable mystery.
WAR TO THE NAIL.
The British Critic, the high church, in fact, steeple Tory journal, tells its readers, “if we strike out the first person of Robert’s speeches, ay, out of his whole career, they become a rope untwisted,” &c. &c. &c. This excited old lady is evidently anxious to disfigure the head of the government, by scratching Sir Robert Peel’s I’s out.