REGULAR CONJUGATIONS.

Now that it is certain the Queen has done with declining and is going to conjugate, Speculation, like a tasked schoolboy, is once more turned down to discover the potential, the imperative, the conditional, and all the other moods of the political future. Be assured, reader, si never put a verb more completely into the sub- junctive than a royal marriage the politics of England. Noy, can, would, could, should—these be now the signs of' your verb political. With them is it given to all mortals, by an unfbrtunate idiom of their nature, (part of the human sin-tax, it may be presumed,) to do their conjugations in this life; and VICTORIA and ALBERT are mortals. Alas, that the Prince's si-gh should govern the sub- junctive, thought he—as the Times is eager to inform us—being a mere supine passive himself, according to IlnAcasroxs, can govern nothing! But so it is. his loving sigh of his puts us, in fact, all in the subjunctive. It may be your "If" which is the " great peacemaker," or it may be the other sort which breaks the peace: in any case it is an If of much future significance, such as may need assiduous parsing.

It being both certain that the Queen marries, and certain whom she marries. much uncertainty becomes certain. Politics, religion, party, (" religion" and " party," by the way, ought really to be merged in one convenient collective term—they can no longer with propriety be named as separate things,) nobility, mobility—all these may be affected by the event in some way or another. But how ? Those lusty babies, in and out of the canonical swaddling-clothes, 'whom the great Protestant mother demented early by frightening 'with Old Beguy, or the Pope, were bawling but now " Oh, Ma', it's coining ! The Prince has got it in his pocket!" And now that the Prince's pockets being turned inside out, the said Pope is not to be fbund on him, they still squall and bawl and cry "Boguy" —for when will babies, early demented, cease from noise, if but the old terror be revived ? And thus they proclaim from the silly but stormy cradle of their helplessness—that Boguy's coining for all you can say ; that they can see him, though he is not yet in sight ; that VICToEl A, when she announced her intention of espous- ing her German cousin, or cousin-german, though she said nothing more at the time, winked, you might observe, supernaturally and horribly with one eye, as much as to give the knowing to know, that that was not all—that the thing, namely, was to be made in- strumental to a great religious revolution which she and Boguy are to effectuate in these realms.

1; Then fbr politic:4. All things arc possible through marriage; and P:ince Amu:Roes present sigh conjugal putting every aflitir, as has been said, in the potential, may cause even the welthre of an entire nation to be translated in some unforeseen manner. No class can count Oil being exempt from the operation of

the Prince's influeoce. Ile might bring loops and tassels into fashion, and ruin the Birmingham button-manufacture—or put the Queen up to cutting the Irish tail, and spoil the trade in patriots. Denied all power by the Constitution, he may derive it to himself from every other source than can confer it : in spite of Parliamcnt and the law, Prince ALBERT of Saxe Gotha may be- come virtual King of England. All depends on the parsing of the great If:

FrOIll the religiots, cued political let us turn to the domestic view. The sort and degree of attachment subsisting between our gracious Queen and her brick groom elect, are to every young lady and gentleman in these islands naturally very interesting questions. That the Prince sighs fur the Queen, is a titct which, with some of its attendant phamomena, has already been insisted on. But it is naturally very interesting to know, whether he " sighs like a furnace," or only like au ordinary pair of bellows. The people of this country are not indifferent to such a question : there is a con- siderable vein of the sentimental running below the regular stratum of British dulness, which prepares the public mind to cntertain it with interest. Kings and Queens so seldom marry

young, and, when they do marry, it is even so much seldomer that one hears any tender personal reasons alleged for the act, (for the most part a mere diplomatic arrangement and empty ceremonial.)

that the idea of a maiden Queen and a youthful Prince—their " united. ages," as we expect the papers to remark, hardly

amounting to forty years—loving one another like any given Jock and Joan in a cottage, putting up free choice in lieu of political expediency, substituting passion for politeness betwixt each other,

exchanging not bows but vwcs—altogether surprising Nature, in

fact, by restoring her to court, whence so long banished,—this idea, we say, so charming if' true, may reasonably be expected to put all the world and his wife into ecstatics. To what actual height the thing will go, it would be presumptuous in us at this moment to offer an opinion ; but some slight forecast of the probable course of our national sympathies may even now not be too rashly ventured.

The vvorld will first of all naturally wait—but especially his wife—to see the bridegroom : then, indeed, if report speak true,

(intimating that he is handsome, modest, cavalierlike—in a word, all that he ought to be, to fill such a destiny,) the cestacies must, and will, at once be gone into. We shall then have in the news-

papers a daily average of three-and-thirty entirely exclusive me- moirs of the Prince, with fac-similes of the pothooks he made when he learnt writing and accounts under the same master with the future Queen of England, and a proportionate number of superb, and the only genuine portraits, given " gratis with our week's number," by editors to whom no sacrifice is too large that enables them to testify the enthusiasm with which they are there and then " rallying" for the hundredth time " round the throne:" Even the masses will not be forgotten ; whom to satisfy, and the yearnings of' natural loyalty, revived in hearts not yet dead to every nobler emotion, hearts still English—and other things too tedious to enumerate—fine cuts at a penny each, with a limited number of proofs on India paper at twopence-farthing, will be issued by various other spirited "friends of the people ;" cuts that will strengthen those emotions, and enlarge that Englishness wherever they already exist, and, where they exist not, diffuse them ; cuts carrying comfbrt to the hearths of' millions—Oh what a thought, my countrymen ! Come April, conic ALBERT ! For, behold, aided, by you—may we not hope, for one thing, to uphold.the Bread-tax yet another season?

Then shall we have odes, ballads, hymns, epithalamia. Then will the " sphere-born harmonious sisters wed their divine sounds" to produce twenty-and-four celebrated original songs per diem, for Tweedledum, Tweedledee, and Co., adorned on the outside with as many exquisite lithographic illustrations, showing our united Sovereigns, few example, in a bower in the quadrangle of Bucking- ham Ilouse, a sentinel in the background, and over all the con- scious moon, for two shillings. Then will the illustrious Priggins, or one other of our world-fiunous national composers, endeavour perhaps at " Jubilate"—though he succeed best at Tie-dium.

Front intoxicating pleasures like these it is well to revert to that darker side of timings which Fortune never fails to annex to her brightest dispensations. In this we must certainly include the fide of one class of her Majesty's people—a class limited indeed in num- bets, but not in the depth of their irremediable wo—to whose miserable hearts only anguish and despair can be communicated by an event penetrating all others with satisfaction and delight ; for whom, even from the very excess of their attachment to their Sove- reign, it must be all the more impossible to share in that satisfitc- tion ; a class possessing peculiar claims to sympathy, even front her Majesty, certainly from all her loving subjects. We need hardly say, perhaps, that we allude to the Queen's lovers ; of whom, it is well known, no lady ever boasted a more numerous, nor, on the whole, a more unique and peculiar retinue. The least observant reader cannot have failed to remark from time to time the proceed- ings of these ill-starred individuals. Some concealed themselves in the chimney, others were found behind the arras; some repre- sented the state of their affections in writing, others urged their suit in brief but. burning moments snatched at reviews ; these looked un- utterable things through the palings at Windsor Park, those made preparations Rr an elopement or were discovered getting in at the window ; in a word, there was no adventure so bold, to which the passion of' love can be supposed to spur the soul of man, but we saw it attempted, if not achieved, by these ardent beings. And now, unhappy men, with this final extinguisher on their hopes, what will become of' them ? How cheerfully, for he?. sake, did they bear Bow Street—the rough handling of the Policemen—the Ma- gistrate's unfeeling taunts! Plow contentedly did they go to the house of Correction—even to the Lunatic Asylum, as long as a hope remained that she might not be insensible to inju- ries sufIhred on her account — would peradventure some-

times reward them with a thought, perhaps a sigh ! Poor NED HAYWARD, NYI10 " strongly expressed to Colonel Cut-Immo his desire to marry the Queen," where now is he, and in what frame of mind ?—questions one cannot but ask oneself. And what has become of the " commercial traveller," sad but not inelegant apparition, that crosses the stage of history for a single brief moment, his hand on his heart, curvetting gracefully, and re- vealing in expressive pantomime the one intense secret of his ex- istence—then vanishing for ever from the scene to Erebus and blackest night, with five pounds to pay to Mr. MissnuLn? And where is the young man of' sooty memory, who, being native and to the manner born, bided his time in the "chimbley," who had "often seen the Queen at Council and

beard her talk politics," and who made "still more extraordi- nary statements," which the Morning Post "could not print"— where is he? For we have yet to learn that it requires such ela- borate preparations to filch a pot of bear's grease. Far other aspi- rations, it is our belief, fired the breast of EnwARD COTTON. It came out in the evidence that he was sixteen—not " thirteen," as was at first erroneously stated ; a difference of age, it may be retnembered, exactly corresponding, in his regard, to that which was thought of so much importance in the case of his prototype Don Juan, with reference to the morality of his behaviour.

" Such a thing might be Quite innocently done, and harmless styled, When she had twenty years, and thirteen he; But 1 am not so sure 1 should have smiled, When he was sixteen, Julia twenty-three."

But chiefly thee, TOM FLowmt, we mourn—cut off too soon from the ways of men! Who can forget TOM FLowna, whose it intentions were honourable ?" Tom was surprised in the Pic- ture Gallery at midnight within seven yards English of the Queen's bedroom,—a position to which he had not attained without a se- ries of precarious enterprises, hardships, and endurances, which might almost entitle him to some of its advantages; and be was proceeding accordingly to pour Ibrth through the keyhole those protestations which had been all the day trembling on his lips, when, alas, he found himself hurried away for ever from the pre- sence of her Ibr whom alone life was worth possessing, to be im- mured in Tothill Fields House of Correction! Faithful was the heart of TONI FLownn, and his intentions honourable; long had he sighed for the Royal Maid—never befbre within seven yards English ;' he had let concealment, like the worm i' the bud, prey on his vitals; he had loved and borne his grief.; in silence. But, in the nature of things, this could not last ; his flame, long cooped up, demanded at length it vent, and found it : on one desperate throw Tom FLowEn staked all his hopes—and lost ! Theretbre for Tom nownn must the tear of compassion OVOr fall ; limr, though he got too near the keyhole, great were his afflictions—and his intentions were honourable.

Exceeding strange are some of the allotments of sovereignty— wry up are time " ups" and rery down the " downs" of royal life. Your King, that sits one day enthroned in might—terror on his brow and homage at his feet—must come home next day with a stone in Ins eye burled fi.oin the hand of a workhouse-pauper, and, in lieu of " terror," must put on brown paper and vinegar. Your Queen, on whose empire " the sun never sets," mistress of the seas, for whom twenty Princes might sigh, and sigh in vain, cannot choose but get amorous leers from commercial travellers—perilianee a squeeze of the hand; cannot help having TO,M FLowint popping the question through the keyhole. Long may her Majesty, how-

ever, meet with no unworthier reception when she stirs abroad— no worse public inconvenience than the ogles she must fbrbid, the proposals she cannot listen to, or the vows she cannot return.

It is certain that sovereigns may go further and fare worse. Your King, in a particular manner, is obnoxious to the oddest vicissitudes ; and, especially, it' once his subjects begin throwing Stones at him—there's no end to it. This is curious. Some phi- losopher has endeavoured to account for that secret instinct of' our nature which compels us to pelt a brother in the pillory. Without hazarding a positive opinion on that subject, we many remark that it is doubtless by the same species of impulse that people, in all

civilized countries, pelt the sovereign. That there is satisfimetion in hitting a well-defined object we grant; but we hold it quite in- sufficient to explain the cause of the passion in question ; which must be fished for, we imagine, in the deeper waters of human nature. But whether it was the mere elevation and isolated posi- tion of the sovereign when moving abroad, which, in exposing hint as ti neat mark to his people, first turned their attention to stoning him, or that the hearts of pcimple are of themselves stony and natu- rally Hi of wickedness, certain it is, history teems with the mis- siles flung at. kings. It requires nothing but a beginning ; it is in fir a penny in for a pound ;" let one stone fly—you shall not see the last. It is a habit which grows with what it feeds on, and has something in it—we know not what—so, in a manner, natural, and, as it were, seducing, that only see how wonderfully it gets on wher- ever it is established ; as amongst the French ! We believe no man in the pillory, getting the rottenest-egg reception, would be so mad as to exchange places with time King of that people—a King whose departure front home is a signal for the discharge of salutes, not for him, but at him. With them the custom of flinging things at the Sovereign is grown so ordinary that it may be included amongst the public regulations observed by that punctilious people: not to fling things at him, begins to be a want of attention. We should be loath to exaggerate in a miter so serious, and indeed, as we think, demanding the subtlest inquiry ; but if all the stones and brickbats flung at Louis Ptin.mern could be collected, don't you think they would pave Oxford Street? Let us thank God, then, that we have a Queen at whom her loving people can desire to east nothing harder than ogles and sheep's eyes, and even for that venial impertinence are duly judged to go to Bedlam or the Compter. .And lit the Queen also occa- sionally thank God, and turn these things over in her mind in the right spirit. For though there lives not that monster ill human shape that would dare so much as dream of' harming hit' thin head, yet it cannot but prove wholesome sometimes to meditate on those accidents that have happened in the family—the stone shied at her grandfather, and that long line of contusions which may be said to connect her with the Conqueror ; for we believe it to be a fact in English history, that there never was a King who had nothing

flung at him. Such contusions may yet be turned to account, and, though thrown away on the heads that received them, may pos- sibly suggest in others useful considerations. Every stone thrown

at the head of one's sovereign has had its history, if you could but trace it ; and it is the most absurd delusion in the world—a down- right error in meteorology—to n present those stones as coming mernly from the hands of hendies : one might as well pretend they fell iii nit the moon itsmdf. Ti' philosophical historian, who sees "sinnuon in stones, amid good la evt ry thing,- will not paSS SO lightly by tlit.se, but riAlter recognize them Os t so.tt of stray monu- ment of popular feeling—to go fur something. Let majesty give no umbrage to reasonnble beings, and we believe it has nothing to fear from lunatics—who certainly ought to be the last to rise against it, seeing that, in the eye of the law, they are its special care and concern.

But a truce to thoughts so little in In.manony with the announce. in cut of Saturday, and which, in pl :k.n. on oyeus tripudiary augura- tion, have led . its such it mere DontIm's dance. Away wit it talk of stones, brickba;s, blutigoms, blumicrimsses, daggers, pistols, and infernal maeltines, and let our harp ii 111111 only to honey and happiness--Aimmur and Vinanilm.%. Heaven send us all our deserts, say we; to the Queen all blessings—love, and wisdom, and good (1)11115 1. and a conjugation easy to do, and got by heart ; and to the Country, joy mnol satisfaction ; and to Commercial Tra- vellers, cot ffirt and resigtmtion ; ;Intl Itt Tnm V LOW E a, lucid mo- ments; and to Ministers, lucky necidonts ; and to old Boguy, con- tusion ; and to Tweedledum, Tweedledee, and Co., ,odor.;; and to Priggins, genius; and to us, in the l'idne,s of time, tho true parsing of the great If.