said, 'We are going in search of Prince Certainpersonio.  The
pleasure of your company is requested at church in half an hour
precisely.'  So she and the Princess Alicia got into the carriage;
and Mr. Pickles's boy handed in the duchess, who sat by herself on
the opposite seat; and then Mr. Pickles's boy put up the steps and
got up behind, and the peacocks flew away with their tails behind.

Prince Certainpersonio was sitting by himself, eating barley-sugar,
and waiting to be ninety.  When he saw the peacocks, followed by
the carriage, coming in at the window it immediately occurred to
him that something uncommon was going to happen.

'Prince,' said Grandmarina, 'I bring you your bride.'  The moment
the fairy said those words, Prince Certainpersonio's face left off
being sticky, and his jacket and corduroys changed to peach-bloom
velvet, and his hair curled, and a cap and feather flew in like a
bird and settled on his head.  He got into the carriage by the
fairy's invitation; and there he renewed his acquaintance with the
duchess, whom he had seen before.

In the church were the prince's relations and friends, and the
Princess Alicia's relations and friends, and the seventeen princes
and princesses, and the baby, and a crowd of the neighbours.  The
marriage was beautiful beyond expression.  The duchess was
bridesmaid, and beheld the ceremony from the pulpit, where she was
supported by the cushion of the desk.

Grandmarina gave a magnificent wedding-feast afterwards, in which
there was everything and more to eat, and everything and more to
drink.  The wedding-cake was delicately ornamented with white satin
ribbons, frosted silver, and white lilies, and was forty-two yards
round.

When Grandmarina had drunk her love to the young couple, and Prince
Certainpersonio had made a speech, and everybody had cried, Hip,
hip, hip, hurrah! Grandmarina announced to the king and queen that
in future there would be eight quarter-days in every year, except
in leap-year, when there would be ten.  She then turned to
Certainpersonio and Alicia, and said, 'My dears, you will have
thirty-five children, and they will all be good and beautiful.
Seventeen of your children will be boys, and eighteen will be
girls.  The hair of the whole of your children will curl naturally.
They will never have the measles, and will have recovered from the
whooping-cough before being born.'

On hearing such good news, everybody cried out 'Hip, hip, hip,
hurrah!' again.

'It only remains,' said Grandmarina in conclusion, 'to make an end
of the fish-bone.'

So she took it from the hand of the Princess Alicia, and it
instantly flew down the throat of the dreadful little snapping pug-
dog, next door, and choked him, and he expired in convulsions.

PART III. - ROMANCE.  FROM THE PEN OF LIEUT.-COL. ROBIN REDFORTH
(Aged nine.)

THE subject of our present narrative would appear to have devoted
himself to the pirate profession at a comparatively early age.  We
find him in command of a splendid schooner of one hundred guns
loaded to the muzzle, ere yet he had had a party in honour of his
tenth birthday.

It seems that our hero, considering himself spited by a Latin-
grammar master, demanded the satisfaction due from one man of
honour to another. - Not getting it, he privately withdrew his
haughty spirit from such low company, bought a second-hand pocket-
pistol, folded up some sandwiches in a paper bag, made a bottle of
Spanish liquorice-water, and entered on a career of valour.

It were tedious to follow Boldheart (for such was his name) through
the commencing stages of his story.  Suffice it, that we find him
bearing the rank of Capt. Boldheart, reclining in full uniform on a
crimson hearth-rug spread out upon the quarter-deck of his schooner
'The Beauty,' in the China seas.  It was a lovely evening; and, as
his crew lay grouped about him, he favoured them with the following
melody:

O landsmen are folly!
O pirates are jolly!
O diddleum Dolly,
Di!
CHORUS. - Heave yo.

The soothing effect of these animated sounds floating over the
waters, as the common sailors united their rough voices to take up
the rich tones of Boldheart, may be more easily conceived than
described.

It was under these circumstances that the look-out at the masthead
gave the word, 'Whales!'

All was now activity.

'Where away?' cried Capt. Boldheart, starting up.

'On the larboard bow, sir,' replied the fellow at the masthead,
touching his hat.  For such was the height of discipline on board
of 'The Beauty,' that, even at that height, he was obliged to mind