the Wind,” “A Gentleman in Difficulties,” “Where shall I dine?” and “Honest Thieves.” We mean to commence the present season with “All in the wrong,” and “His Last Legs.”

PUNCH.—Humph! I am sorry to say I have received several complaints of the manner in which you have conducted the business of your establishment for several years. It appears you put forth bills promising wonders, while your performances have been of the lowest possible description.

RUSS.—S’elp me, Bob! there ain’t a word of truth in it. If there’s anything we takes pride on, ’tis our gentility.

PUNCH.—You have degraded the drama by the introduction of card-shufflers and thimble-rig impostors.

RUSS.—We denies the thimble-rigging in totum, my lud; that was brought out at Stanley’s opposition booth.

PUNCH.—At least you were a promoter of state conjuring and legerdemain tricks on the stage.

RUSS.—Only a little hanky-panky, my lud. The people likes it; they loves to be cheated before their faces. One, two, three—presto—begone. I’ll show your ludship as pretty a trick of putting a piece of money in your eye and taking it out of your elbow, as you ever beheld. Has your ludship got such a thing as a good shilling about you? ’Pon my honour, I’ll return it.

PUNCH.—Be more respectful, sir, and reply to my questions. It appears further, that several respectable persons have lost their honesty in your booth.

RUSS.—Very little of that ’ere commodity is ever brought into it, my lud.

PUNCH.—And, in short, that you and your colleagues’ hands have been frequently found in the pockets of your audience.

RUSS.—Only in a professional way, my lud—strictly professional.

PUNCH.—But the most serious charge of all is that, on a recent occasion, when the audience hissed your performances, you put out the lights, let in the swell-mob, and raised a cry of “No Corn Laws.”

RUSS.—Why, my lud, on that p’int I admit there was a slight row.

PUNCH.—Enough, sir. The court considers you have grossly misconducted yourself, and refuses to grant you license to perform.

MEL.—But, my lord, I protest I did nothing.

PUNCH.—So everybody says, sir. You are therefore unfit to have the management of (next to my own) the greatest theatre in the world. You may retire.

MEL. (to RUSS.)—Oh! Johnny, this is your work—with your confounded hanky-panky.

RUSS.—No—’twas you that did it; we have been ruined by your laziness. What is to become of us now?

MEL.—Alas! where shall we dine?

The next individual who presented himself, to obtain a license for the Carlton Club Equestrian Troop, was a strange-loooking character, who gave his name as Sibthorp.

PUNCH.—What are you, sir?

SIB.—Clown to the ring, my lord, and principal performer on the Salt-box. I provide my own paint and pipe-clay, make my own jokes, and laugh at them too. I do the ground and lofty tumbling, and ride the wonderful donkey—all for the small sum of fifteen bob a-week.

PUNCH.—You have been represented as a very noisy and turbulent fellow.

SIB.—Meek as a lamb, my lord, except when I’m on the saw-dust; there I acknowledge, I do crow pretty loudly—but that’s in the way of business,—and your lordship knows that we public jokers must pitch it strong sometimes to make our audience laugh, and bring the browns into the treasury. After all, my lord, I am not the rogue many people take me for,—more the other way, I can assure you, and

PUNCH.—A strong appeal, I must confess. You shall have your license.

The successful claimant having made his best bow to Commissioner Punch, withdrew, whistling the national air of

“BRITONS, STRIKE HOME.”

A fellow named Peel, who has been for many years in the habit of exhibiting as a quack-doctor, next applied for liberty to vend his nostrums at the fair. On being questioned as to his qualifications, he shook his head gravely, and, without uttering a word, placed the following card in the hands of Punch.

TO THE GULLIBLE PUBLIC.

SIR RHUBARB PILL, M.D. and L.S.D.

Professor of Political Chemistry and Conservative Medicine to the

CARLTON CLUB;

PHYSICIAN IN ORDINARY TO THE KING OF HANOVER!!!

Inventor of the People’s Patent Sliding Stomach-pump;—of the Poor Man’s anti-Breakfast and Dinner Waist-belt;—and of the new Royal extract of Toryism, as prescribed for, and lately swallowed by,

THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS PERSONAGE IN THESE DOMINIONS.

Sir Rhubarb begs further to state, that he practises national tooth-drawing and bleeding to an unlimited extent; and undertakes to cure the consumption of bread without the use of

A FIXED PLASTER.

N.B.—No connexion with the corn doctor who recently vacated the concern now occupied by Sir R.P.

Hours of attendance, from ten till four each day, at his establishment, Downing-street.—A private entrance for M.P.’s round the corner.

Ben D’Israeli, the proprietor of the Learned Pig, applied for permission to exhibit his animal at the fair. A license was unhesitatingly granted by his lordship, who rightly considered that the exhibition of the extraordinary talents of the pig and its master, would do much to promote a taste for polite literature amongst the Smithneld “pennyboys.”

A poor old man, who called himself Sir Francis Burdett, applied for a license to exhibit his wonderful Dissolving Views. The most remarkable of which were—“The Hustings in Covent-garden—changing to Rous’s dinner in Drury-lane”—and “The Patriot in the Tower—changing to the Renegade in the Carlton.” It appeared that the applicant was, at one time, in a respectable business, and kept “The Old Glory,” a favourite public-house in Westminster, but, falling into bad company, he lost his custom and his character, and was reduced to his present miserable occupation. Punch, in pity for the wretched petitioner, and fully convinced that his childish tricks were perfectly harmless, granted him a license to exhibit.

Licenses were also granted to the following persons in the course of the day:—

Sir E.L. Bulwer, to exhibit his own portrait, in the character of Alcibiades, painted by himself.

Doctor Bowring, to exhibit six Tartarian chiefs, caught in the vicinity of the Seven Dials, with songs, translated from the original Irish Calmuc, by the Doctor.

Emerson Tennent, to exhibit his wonderful Cosmorama, or views of anywhere and everywhere; in which the striking features of Ireland, Greece, Belgium, and Whitechapel will be so happily confounded, that the spectator may imagine he beholds any or all of these places at a single glance.

Messrs. Stephens, Heraud, and Co., to exhibit, gratis, a Syncretic Tragedy, with fireworks and tumbling, according to law, between the acts; to be followed by a lecture on the Unactable Drama.

CAPITAL ILLUSTRATION.

At the recent fracas in Pall Mall, between Captain Fitzroy and Mr. Shepherd, the latter, like his predecessor of old, the “Gentle Shepherd,” performed sundry vague evolutions with a silver-mounted cane, and requested Captain Fitzroy to consider himself horsewhipped. Not entertaining quite so high an opinion of his adversary’s imaginative