The Dowager Queen of Oude has been making a royal
progress from India, via Southampton, to London. The object of her mission is to procure from Queen Victoria a reversal of the de- cree of Government, nominally executed by the East India Company, to depose the King, to confiscate ilia kingdoin, and to compel his retirement on a pension of 150,0001. a year. The Bing had used his crown and dignity for a most ludicrous bur- lesque on royal authority, in the indulgence of profligacies as vast as those of the Roman Ciesars and as frivolous as those of an English "gent" His mother nevertheless thinks that she may convince Queen Victoria and her councillors of the impro- priety of dethroning a crowned although a Company-made King, for such he was. As Naples says, so says Oude—The Sovereign of Great Britain and Ireland should beware the example of de- thronement ! The process of convincing the English Crown and Government is rather curiously carried out. The Dowager Queen, careful to guard herself from profane eyes, has been shielded, now in a secluded room, then in an enclosure of strips of calico held up by railway officials, and finally in an unfurnished house of the Regent's Park, which is at present a prey to upholsterers in haste—an expensive crew. Furthermore, to enhance the weight of her mission, her Majesty is accompanied by one hundred and ten personages of her suite, from generals to hookahbadars- from the grandest of Oriental grandeur to the dingiest of Hindu low caste. The royal cortege entering into London con- sisted of eight or ten carriages, three omnibuses, and a score of cabs, all illuminated with Oriental lanterns much like stable- lanterns. Oude asks how Queen Victoria can resist that appeal ?
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