The Press.
London, England, 1856-03-08 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

MARCH 8, 1856.

ARGYLL: No. There the Noble Viscount showed his ignorance of
physical science. Brass was a compound metal. The most useful
kind of solder was tin—(Hear, hear, hear)—and he was sure the Mem-
bers of her Majesty's Government would support him in the assertion
that it was tin—(the remainder of this sentence was lost in tumultuous cheers
and rattling of glasses on the table). They might also derive instruction
from geology. In the primary formation nothing was ever found.
That might be compared to the Whig formation in politics. Granite
was very old, and Dr. Johnson, an enemy to the Whigs, had borne tes-
timony to their antiquity. He said that the Devil was the first Whiff.
The oldest inhabitant, as his Noble Friend the President of th;
Council could testify
Lord LANSDOWNE : I can testify to nothing, but the immaculate
purity of the Whig party.
ARGYLL : Well, he would not press that point. Then there was a
formation in which the remains of various extinct species were to be
found. He hoped he might, without offence, designate the Noble
Viscount as the old red sandstone.
PAM.: What the devil do you mean by that?
ARGYLL : Why every one know that in the old red sandstone you
found now and then a part of some antediluvian animal or other—as of
the mammoth or ichtyosaurus. Now, if they examined the Noble
Viscount's career, they would find it made up in an extraordinary
manner of extinct Administrations. They found in it a bit of the
Liverpool Administration, and a bit of the Goderich, and a bit of the
Canning, and he knew not how many others ; and, taking the Reform
Bill as the flood, the Noble Viscount was richer in antediluvian
remains than any formation he knew of.
. _ _

PAM. • I say, Duke, this won't do. You're carrying the joke too far.
Antediluvian, indeed; why, what are you ? A lilliputian post pillar,
a diminutive letter-bag, an abridgment of a penny postman. I'll make
you drive the first mail-cart on the Queen's birthday. If lam ante-
diluvian, what do you call yourself?
ARGYLL : Passing over some injurious expressions of my Noble
Friend, I consider myself to be an embodiment of the last and most
enlightened age of the world
PAN.: No you aint. You're merely an embodiment of conceit,
ami an offshoot of Stafford-house. I'll have you made up into a letter,
and sent to the Land's End, with directions to every postmaster to
thump you with his stamp till yuu are bruised into a jelly. I'll get
Barnum to come over and exhibit you as Tom Thumb arrived at
maturity of littleness. I'll have a house made for you out of my hat-
box. I'll cure you of your ante diluvianism. We came here to eat your
dinner, not to have your scientific gabble thrust down our throats.
I'll go down to the House, and provoke Dizzy to rise that I may get
over the nausea of your measure. Now, some of you wake Lewis
and Wood, and pack them in a cab after me to Westminster.
(Party breaks up.)

OUR BOROUGH ELECTION.
(AFTER CRABBE.)
Where aguish swamps absorb the farmer's lands,
Mid Lincoln fens an ancient borough stands,
Whose quiet streets resound H ith sounds of strife,
And whose smooth dulness yields to bustling life.
The reason of this change should ye inquire,
Know its late Member is a Knight of Shire,
Succeeding in that honour his dull sire,
Who as Lord Aveland sits with right in tail,
Not a life puppet like poor Wensleydale.
And Boston's market-place a hustings boasts,
And Boston's taprooms echo varying toasts,
For Mr. Ingram hear the hoarse huzza,
And listen to the vivats raised for Sleigh,
While cheers for Adams aid the loud display.

And who is Ingram? Question it who can,
A pedlar turned a literary man.
His panegyric we may soon peruse
And see his portrait in the London News.
For Mr. Ingram owns that harmless sheet—
But, hark ! whose voice is this that startles Boston's streets?
'Tis Percy Wormwood, moralist and wit,
Brought down by Ingram to his benefit,
The gentle satirist, whose lash descends
Less fiercely on his foes than on his friends ;
Wormwood, whose savage humour's strangely blent
With an unmanly maudlin sentiment ;
Wormwood, who snaps and snarls in currish strain,
Then drivelling weeps, and snaps, and snarls again.
His the shrill ♦oice that's raised in Ingram's cause,
And names the statesman meet to mend our laws.
" Rush to the poll ye men of ten pound votes,
And roar as I dictate with thirsty throats ;
For Mr. Ingram raise the loud huzza,
For Ingram and the lEsop in his pay.
Ingram's a man of letters "—Hold, enough !
What is a man of letters, Mr. Puff ?
Is your vote to confer the honour'd name ?
Or shall quack medicines vindicate the claim ?
Be candid, Wormwood, and for once reveal
The secret " reasons" for your earnest zeal.
You warrant him to cure his country's ills,
What, Wormwood, with his vote or with his pills ?

PROMOTION.
James Baron Wensleydale to be a Lord—in Waitiny.