PAPER MONEY LYRICS.

CHORUS OF BUBBLE BUYERS.

"When these practisers come to the last decoction, blow, blow, puff, puff, and all flies in fumo. Poor wretches! I rather pity their folly and indiscretion, than their loss of time and money: for these may be restored by industry: but to be a fool born is a disease incurable."-Ben Jonson's Volpone.

OH! where are the hopes we have met in a morning,
As we hustled and bustled around Capel Court?

When we laugh'd at the croakers that bade us take warning,
Who once were our scorn, and now make us their sport.
Oh! where are the regions where well-paid inspectors
Found metals omnigenous, streak'd and emboss'd?
So kindly bought for us by honest directors,

Who charged us but three times as much as they cost.
Oh! where are the riches that bubbled like fountains,
In places we neither could utter nor spell,
A thousand miles inland mid untrodden mountains,
Where silver and gold grew like heath and blue-bell?
Oh! where are the lakes overflowing with treasure?
The go d-dust that roll'd in each torrent and stream?
The mines that held water by cubic-mile measure,
So easily pump'd up by portable steam?

That water our prospects a damp could not throw on,
We had only a million-horse power to prepare,
Make a thousand-mile road for the engine to go on,
And send coals from Newcastle to boil it when there.
Oh! where are the bridges to span the Atlantic ?
Oh! where is the gas to illumine the poles?
They came to our visions-that makes us half frantic:
They came to our pockets; that touches our souls.

Oh! there is the seat of most exquisite feeling:
The first pair of nerves to the pocket doth dive:
A wound in our hearts would be no time in healing,
But a wound in our pockets how can we survive?
Now curst be the projects, and curst the projectors,
And curst be the bubbles before us that roll'd,
Which bursting have left us like desolate spectres,
Bewailing our bodies of paper and gold.

For what is a man but his coat and his breeches,
His plate and his linen, his land and his house?
Oh! we had been men had we won our mock riches;
But now we are ghosts, each as poor as a mouse.

But shades as we are, we, with shadowy bubbles,

When the midnight bell tolls will through Capel Court glide,
And the dream of the Jew shall be turmoils and troubles,
When he sees each pale ghost on its bubble astride.

And the lecturing Scots that upheld the delusion,
By prating of paper, and wealth, and free trade,
Shall see us by night to their awe and confusion,
Grim phantoms of wrath that shall never be laid.

HER MAJESTY'S PORTRAITS.—THE GREAT STATE

SECRET.

TORIES and Whigs some time since made a great fuss about ministers dining so often with the Queen. We say nothing of the laudable pride, pomp, and jealousy occasioned by the circumstance. We have only to remark that among the innumerable conjectures of every shade of improbability to which it gave rise, there was not one that bordered upon a half-tint of truth. The present paper is devoted to an elucidation of the state secret.

George III. was accustomed to see Mr. Pitt on state affairs at the early and cool-headed hour of six in the morning. The fourth George, loving the more mature and mellow counsel of pausingtime, generally spared an hour after dinner on one day of the week -namely, Wednesday-to enter into those deep conferences with his ministers so necessary to the safe continuance of our political, social and moral existence and the hours appropriated by his late nautical majesty to the examination of the state-chart and log-book ap. proached nearer to those of his daybreak-loving sire. "But her present Majesty," ejaculated the more intemperate members of the opposition," her present Majesty holds counsel with her ministers every day at dinner! They dine there-at Buckingham Palace! They are commanded thither for the express purpose-and they eat! Full of royal cupboard-love, they go sponging upon her august board every day; and talk with their mouths full of all sorts of men and measures. It is unprecedented; nay worse, if it forms a precedent for the future, and a very bad one, we must humbly venture to think. With equal loyalty and humility we moreover solicit permission to ask, what in the name of grace will her Majesty be pleased to do next? These were junior members, and could not keep their temper in the face of a fact so savoury to their opponents. The green-eyed monster issued from every tureen of royal turtle which their seething imaginations saw placed before their rivals; and albeit, they were far too generous and possessed too much statesman. like magnanimity to express a public wish that the callipash might choke their eloquence, they most fervently prayed in private that a similar effect might be produced by the callipee. "Strange that such difference should be," &c. The elder members of the opposition_smiled in silent superiority. They did not understand why the Lords Melbourne, Russel, Palmerston, and Glenelg should dine so frequently upon state-affairs; but they felt it undignified to notice such things.

Now however there is an end of all concealment. We are permitted to divulge the secret, and our anxious friends shall presently be shown what deep and important reason has been hidden in the breast of the Premier, which no taunts and misrepresentations could for a moment make him dream of bringing to light. The mystery is now about to be unfolded; the elaborate design to become apparent; the cause of those secret cabinet councils, of the numerous couriers, messages, letters, portfolios, embroidered silk and morocco cases, which have created so much surprise, so many opinions and fancies, and so much uneasiness, is about to be made public. The result will show that the daily banquets eaten by the noble

lords aforesaid have not been eaten in vain; that the personal happiness of her Most Gracious Majesty in especial, and the universal public good, was the object of their thoughts; that the most convenient time was chosen in order to carry such objects into effect; and that the most loyal and patriotic feelings are involved in the speedy attainment of those objects. The cause of her Majesty having her ministers to dine with her so frequently was in fact a necessary part of a measure now in progress. They must be continually in her presence, and at those artistically auspicious moments when there is least restraint upon the play of the royal features; because it is important that they should in all reverence be as conversant with such a view in its various shades of expression, as with that which is displayed on grave and august occasions. Finally and most fortunately, the measure is one for which there is a precedent, and a truly literal, laudable, excellent, and comprehensive precedent it will prove, as we shall presently, in all duty and under authority, set forth and expound.

Everybody must have observed the innumerable quantity of por traits of her Majesty, Victoria I., which fill the windows of all the print and picture shops. Everybody must also have observed that there are no two alike. The portraits by the same painter are dif ferent individuals. As though by some extraordinary hallucination in the minds of all our artists,-descending to the printers and proof-takers, the very copies of the same picture or plate differ from each other. The inferences and consequences are various; some of them, under circumstances which we shall have to explain, wearing a serious and threatening aspect to the safety and happiness of her Majesty's throne and person, and the loyalty and welfare of the United Kingdom and her Majesty's Colonies.

We must pause a moment to take a cursory glance at some of the aforesaid pictures and prints, purporting to be portraits of her gracious Majesty. It might at least have been expected that Hayter, "painter of portraits to the Queen," would have produced, by virtue of his office as well as of his talent, a most striking likeness; that the perspective honour of knighthood conferred upon him by his admirers would have stimulated the unquestionable virtues and talents aforesaid to a degree which would have rendered failure next to impossible. Doubtless this was the case; and yet such is the com. mon fallacy of our expectations where most is expected, that his portraits are a very inefficient adumbration of the fair original. We allude to his pictures both before and since her Majesty's ascent to the throne. The engravings differ from the pictures, it is true; but not more than the latter differ from each other. Let any body compare the pictures of her Majesty-standing with the fingers of one hand on a table; seated with the Duchess of Kent in a box at the Opera; standing as it appears within the arms of her royal mother; and, seated on the throne since her ascession, and say if they are the same individual. Her Majesty's chief painter will pardon us, we are sure; we most gladly acknowledge his talent as an artist. But this is a fatality-there is no help for it, this tempo. rary hallucination among artists is a national calamity, doubtless for some good purpose.

We now turn to the portrait by E. C. Parris, a gentleman famous

for his annual beauties, with complexions of the most delicate wax tinted with rose and lilly hues: fashionable features, and expressions softly elegant, and charmingly the same upon all occasions, and fingers and feet quite angelic,-in fact, much too small to be used; what has he given us in the place of our queen? Truly, a sort of half-English, half-Spanish lady, up to her elbows in lace, with a countenance not unlike that of the lamented Madame Malibran. This remarkable coincidence renders it extremely interesting.

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A great quantity of coloured prints are in circulation, taken from sundry pictures by Bouvier. They are throned, crowned, and have the broad blue order across the breast, with such other colours as a Frenchman loveth; are handsome in form and feature, and one of them possesses a sweet expression: still, they have not the form, the feature, or the kind of sweetness of expression which characterize the youthful sovereign. All of them however are very different from each other; so that individuals of every turn of fancy may find a chance of hitting their taste as to what face and figure they would choose her Majesty to have. This artist being an excellent man of business has also favoured our admiring Cockneys with a sweeping thing in a green habit, which might be called Miss Anybody riding on a prancing nondescript unknown to naturalists.

One of the most popular brochures however, is a huge lithographic drawing by Swandale, of the Royal Furniture: the half-smothered Innocent sitting pale in the midst, being now so reduced in figure, as she has elsewhere been made immensely too large, that she seems of far less importance than her paraphernalia, while her whole contour of face is carefully at variance with all other artists' previous productions. We suppose some artists will call this making the most of an idea.

The medallion modelled by Weigall and engraved by Freebairn, is like in some respects, and not at all in others; and the same may be said of the profile on stone by Lane. All that we have seen of the bust and figure-models have been hitherto abominable. One of them, by Barre,-not a mean work either as to art, or it would not be placed in Colnaghi's window,-presents the exact personification of a thick-and-hard-featured Scotch spinster of thirty-five. We pass over the strange fancies of W. Drummond, Noel, Costello, Dickenson, Averton, Hill, Gear, &c. &c. &c. and take a peep into the Suffolk-street Exhibition. We are there presented by Mr. Dawe with the full-length figure of a school-girl, having a complexion tinted with Norfolk biffin, faded in the sun, and standing in a wood of the same colour before a bust of her royal father, which in shape and colour bears a close resemblance to a roasted appple; and a halflength thing by Mr. Boaden, which the Courier justly pronounced to be " a trussed pullet." Nor must we on any account omit the "great" allegorical picture on horseback, by Latilla; for although her Majesty is there portrayed with the same aerial aspect as the angel soaring just above her forehead, which we venture to consider as rather a premature compliment, the evident portrait of the horse from the original of Vandyke is certainly very cleverly conveyed. We hope to heaven that the series of pictures by Miss M. Gil. lies, called the "Daughter of Zion," does not also contain some latent allegory applicable to her English Majesty, whose portrait by Col. len is placed directly underneath; and that it was not owing to an

ingenious perception of this "fine design," added to the real nobleness of the compositions, which occasioned the gallant and loyal Globe and Courier to speak in such terms of laudation concerning her Hebrew Majesty.

But of all miniature painters, from whom could we expect a more exquisite and vraisemblable portrait than from Collen, who has studied the original for years, and is now Miniature Painter in Ordinary to the Queen, with a Knight in armour staring him in the face! We cannot however admit that he has at present succeeded. As far as likeness is concerned, his performance is still imperfect. Not that we blame Mr. Collen, not that we do not appreciate his talents and accomplishments,-it is the universal hallucination among artists which is too strong for his genius. As to Chalton's portrait, it is perfectly wonderful. Not the remotest shade of one touch of likeness in feature or expression does it manifest.

We must dismiss in one word the heap of pictures and prints of a young lady of all degrees of width and height, the falsification in these respects being only equalled by the diversity of its manifestations, sitting in a chair, standing, walking, riding, driving, looking out of a box at the theatre, or in an open barouche alone or accompanied by a more or less mature and lofty lady, of qualities not so chameleon-like; and this one word will suffice to designate the batch-they are treasonable. The very best hands even among the caricaturists are paralyzed. H. B. usually so happy, fails here utterly. He cannot represent the Queen, or give us anything like her. One hallucination outwits his wit, as it does that of all his fraternity of satirists and caricaturists, however admirable they may be at touching off the Duke or the Dan. We had the honour, at the private view of the Royal Academy Exhibition last year, of seeing her Majesty pass close in front of various pictures purporting to be representations of herself. How marvellous and edifying was the comparison of dissimilarities. With what difficulty, and evidently out of consideration for the feelings of the artist's friends or patrons who might be present, did she refrain from laughing; sometimes turning hastily away, as though the difficulties would be too great to master if she waited to give a second look. But if such were the feelings attending the previous exhibition, what must her Majesty have felt on beholding the various "new views" of herself which we this year see displayed!

Wilkie has exerted his fine genius to overcome the fatality; but we can by no means allow that he has succeeded. Although it is evident that in order to propitiate the Spirit of the Spell, he has of. fered up the likenesses of sundry noblemen, and an archbishop who surrounded her, by mulcting each of them of twenty or thirty years of honourable life-time; still we fear he is wofully deceived, and the Spirit of the Patron Portrait will not be conciliated and brought down to earth by any such sacrifices. Directly above this picture is a full-length by G. Hayter, M. A. S. L., &c., and a fine portrait it is; albeit we leave the public to decide whether it be not at least twenty years too old, and whether it would not better pass as one of her Majesty's aunts royal?

To conclude however the interminable list of soi disant resemblances here and elsewhere, we must say generally, that the prevailing characters are those of ad libitum faces, with elegant figures of