PREPARATIONS FOR THE RETIREMENT OF LORD MELBOURNE.
Tun elaborate finish of an ornamental cottage erected on the island at the eastern extremity of the sheet of water in St. James's Park, has excited considerable curiosity as to its destination. The opinion seems to have gone abroad, that it is intended to afford a post of honourable retirement for the Palace Premier when he re- signs his more weighty task of ruling the state. The witty MELBOURNE is to be appointed life-governor of an island nearly in the same latitude with that which was bestowed by CHARLES the Second on the scarcely less witty ST. EVREMOND. Great difficulty is understood to exist regarding the name which ought to be be- stowed upon the new island. Some suggest Hong-Kong ; others Robinson Crusoe's Island, (a delicate inuendo that his Lordship will be the only placeman left by the Whig shipwreck,) others again Barataria. ST. EVREMOND'S government was called "Duck Island." That might be too trivial a title for one who has been Prime Minister. We remember a story once current in Scot- land of a zealous old lady who apostrophized a Duke of Buc- deugh—" God bless your goose's face, for duke* 's ower weet to ea' you." Perhaps Governor of Goose-Island might be more con- sistent with the dignity of an ex-premier.
* Scotch pionunciation of duck. f Too little.
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