Some forty Ed of sleak and hantlered dear In Cobug (where such hanimmles abound) Were shot, as by the nusepapers I hear, By Halbert Usband of the British Crownd. Britannia's Queen let fall the purly tear; Seeing them butchered in their silvn prisns; Igspecially, when the keepers, standing round, Came up and cut their pretty hinnocent whizns. Suppose, instead of this pore Germing sport, This Saxn wenison which he shoots and baggs, Our Prins should take a turn in Capel Court And make a massyker of English Staggs.[12] Pore Staggs of Hengland! Were the Untsman at you, What avoc he _would_ make and what a trimenjus battu!
[Footnote 12: In reference to the then prevalent mania for railway speculation.]
Even more lacerating is the use made in the same number of the comment of a loyal eye-witness quoted by the _Standard_:--
The _Standard_ gives the following extract of a letter from Gotha to a gentleman in London:--
"This (the deer killing) was very shocking. The Queen wept _I saw large tears in her eyes_: and Her Majesty tells me that she with difficulty kept the chair during what followed. When the Queen saw the otter hunt in Scotland, the pity that she _naturally felt_ at the death of the animal was _counterbalanced by a knowledge of his propensities_, so that it is almost as meritorious _to destroy an otter as it is a snake_; but this was a totally different case; nor is Her Majesty yet recovered. _For the Prince_, the deer were too numerous, and _must_ be killed. _This_ was the German method; and no doubt the reigning Duke will distribute them to his people, who will thank Prince Albert for providing them venison."
"Tell me, oh tell me, dearest Albert, have _you_ any Railway Shares?"]
This incident marked the high-water level of _Punch's_ anti-Albertianism--at any rate, in the domain of sport; we find an address of condolence to the Prince on the conclusion of the shooting season a year and a half later, but, in the main, the criticisms of the Royal Consort henceforth are founded on other grounds of dissatisfaction. What infuriated _Punch_ even more than the ineptitudes of the Court was the fulsome adulation of the _Lickspittle-offs_ of the Press, who were prepared, not only to defend, but to eulogize them. "The amount of good that Royalty can effect in this country is astonishing," _Punch_ frankly admits, while caustically adding: "only less astonishing than that which it has yet to do." But between a generous acknowledgment of what could be done by royal example (as, for instance, its discouragement of gambling) and the "insanity of loyalty," there was an immense gulf, and _Punch_ was never weary of gibbeting those writers in and out of the Press who thought they "could best oppose the questioning spirit of the time--questioning, as it does, the 'divinity' that hedges the throne--by adopting the worse than foolish adulation of a bygone age." Assuredly, the absolute _reductio ad absurdum_ of this courtiership was reached when the Queen was extolled for behaving as any reasonable woman would:--