THE LATE MINISTERS.
TIME and space have not yet been annihilated : Windsor is still out of town. By a pompous enumeration of precautionary arrangements—railway express-trains and electric telegraphs—an impression had been created that our parturient Queen was as near the sages of her Council at Windsor as at Pimlico. But . .
"The best-laid schemes of mice and men
Gang aft ajee !"
'The electric telegraph did its duty, for the intelligence of her Majesty's condition on Tuesday morning was transmitted from Slough to Paddington with the speed of thought ; and Ministers were dashed along the railway with a velocity of sixty miles in the hour. Yet it is clear that some elements had been omitted in the calculation ; for the Ministers came too late.
Something perhaps may be placed to the account of her Majesty's ultra-railroad celerity on such occasions. She is favoured among women : the primal curse lies lightly on her. And her faithful subjects rejoice therefore,—albeit with trembling when they think of the cost of a period of such easy childbearing, commenced earlier than that of good Queen CHARLOTTE, and likely, in all human probability, to be protracted as long.
The discomfiture of Ministers may be more easily conceived than expressed. The friends of the Duke of WELLINGTON have pretty well exculpated him from the charge of having been surprised at Waterloo ; but he has clearly been caught napping on this occasion,—napping as soundly as at the Queen's concert, when her sportive Majesty awakened him with a gentle tap of her bouquet. The luckless Bishop of LONDON was as far in the rear of his colleagues as certain of his late speeches give occasion to suspect 'him of being in arrear of the tolerance of the age : he arrived at Slough in time to return with the late Ministers—who are, however, still in office. But the worst case was that of Lord LIVERPOOL, who, Master of the Household, was absent when the Mistress was incapable of managing it. The others were distanced, but he, in the language of the turf, "was nowhere."
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