PRESENTS TO ROYALTY.
Smea the days of the Pharaohs, it has been understood that the best method of propitiating royalty is by a handsome present. The minds of courtiers and would-be courtiers have been and are in all ages and nations kept on the rack to devise acceptable gifts. The presents to Queen Vicronia, her husband, and royal babes, have been curiously multifarious,—ve;ls, baby-linen, Liliputian pohies, capercailzie8, mammoth cheeses, tartans, cats, (tailless and with tails,) and what not. Some of these tributes of loyalty are homely enough, but at least they were all looked upon as rarities. The in- vention of the giving public seems to be waxing low : the last dona- tion we read of is "a hundred hares," said to have been sent "alive" to his Royal Highness Prince ALBERT within the last few days by the Earl of LEICESTER. Hares—even live hares—are no rarity in this country. Seeing that we are now blessed with an heir-apparent, and that his Royal Highness does not wear a wig, the noble Earl cannot well be suspected of a bad practical pun. Prince ALBERT, since he met with one or two falls, seems to eschew the rougher sport of fox-hunting; but surely the Earl of LEICESTER is not so gauche a courtier as to mean to remind him of the comparative safety of coursing in the Home Park. COWPER tells us, that when he took to taming hares he was offered as many as might have stocked a park ; but it has never been hinted that his Royal Highness is endowed with the melancholic temperament, any more than with the poetical genius, of the amiable recluse of Olney. In short, the recondite meaning of the Earl of LEICESTER'S gift baffles conjec- ture: had the present been made to the Queen, the Earl's here- ditary politics might have led to the suspicion that Lord PALMER-. STON had a hand in it, and meant to supply her Majesty with Governors for India. The presentation of hares at Court cannot last long : the proverbial character of the March hare will render it an unsafe present, and February is the shortest month in the year. But what is to take their place ? We would humbly suggest, live sprats; which, seeing they cannot live in the fresh waters of Windsor, will have at least a quasi-exotic character to rescue them from commonplace.
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