LE BCEUF GRAS.
A KING of the French must give as good as he gets, be it in blows or in gifts, or he is no king for his people. To save the honour of France, Louis Philippe must send the Queen of Rng- land as fine a piece of beef for her Carnival dinner as the Queei's Purveyor sent his Majesty at Christmas. The English ox, poor fellow, died without the slightest suspicion of the posthumous honours that awaited "him at royal tables ; but the French been/ was paraded through Paris fluttering with as many ribands as a general or diplomatist who has earned every order in Europe. Queen Victoria can drive at leisure in an open carriage through her good city of London ; but as a similar excursion through Paris might be perilous to Louis Philippe, he sends the " band gras " in his stead.
It is a curious fancy of his French Majesty to compliment John Bull's Royal Mistress with a slice of the fat bull that has served for the Shrove Tuesday show of the Parisians. The present is a kind of practical bull, more worthy of an Irishman than a French- man. It used to be the fashion in England—a custom perhaps not altogether obsolete in secluded districts, into which the Animal's Friend Society has not yet penetrated—to devote Shrove Tuesday to the humane sport of throwing at cocks. Only fancy Queen Victoria sending a fine old cock, that had been bepelted till it grew tender, to make leek-soup for her Royal Brother of France It would have been construed into an insulting allusion to the na- tional emblem. But John Bull is not so touchy. This kitchen-diplomacy augurs ill for the stomachs of crowned heads. Be it tough or be it tainted, the present must take its place at table and have due honour paid to it. The royal pre- sentee will be afraid to make a wry mouth at the most nauseous morsel, and will masticate meat tough as shoe-leather despite of prophetic forebodings of indigestion, lest the "entente cordiale" he endangered.
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