THE CHRISTENING.
IT would be gratifying to know, whose taste presided over the adorn- ments of the ceremonial at the reception of the infant Princess into the visible church. A day or two previous to the 10th, the Court journals gave us an account of an express despatched to Windsor to bring TIPPOO Sain's tiger, with its golden tongue and ruby eyes, and the jewelled peacock of the Great Mogul, to be present at the ceremony : we trust not as emblems of the future character of the illustrious Princess. It does not clearly appear what place was assigned to these appropriate ornaments ; but care has been taken to inform the public that " the water in the font, and wherewith the Royal child was christened, came from the river Jordan, having been sent to her Majesty as a present for this especial purpose." To prevent, however, any suspicion of relic-mongering, and de- ference to the Irish Papists in this matter, " cups, vases, and tankards" are enumerated as figuring on the sideboard at dinner, " some of which had enamelled paintings let into them of sacred subjects, having evidently been formerly employed in the services of the Church of Rome" Our Babylonish Sovereign still uses the vessels of the temple at feasts : there is no reconcilement—no inten- tion of disgorging the plunder of the Church. The once-consecrated utensils were huddled amongst heathenish bas-reliefs : " here might be seen a beautiful and graceful group of bacchanals dancing round a palm-tree ; there a group of sturdy Tritons labouring at the car ; then a Venus floating in a shell ; then a subject from the Greek my- thology." Amid this confusion of classical mythology, ornaments inherited or plundered from " the realm of the Great Mogul," and church-tankards condemned to hold mulled wines, the Archbishop of CANTERBURY is skilfully introduced by the Court chronicler : " Whether the ample and flowing robes of the Archbishop deceived the child, or whether the kind tenderness of manner of the excel- lent Prelate prevented the infant from discovering any difference, certain it is that her Royal Highness reposed in the arms of the spiritual head of the church with as much contentment as though she had been in the arms of her own nurse." VOLTAIRE himself never darted a more polished or daring scoff. To complete this cabinet of curiosities, there only needed "a christening- cake of the most enormous dimensions : round it was a wreath of flowers ; on the top of it a rock, surmounting which Neptune, driving his hippocampi ; and in the car a figure of Britannia, hold- ing in her arms the infant Princess Royal ; the whole being exe- cuted in sugar, and being a very fair specimen of the confectioner's skill."
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