NOTICE

"CHARDS

BATH
THIS YELL
DANCERS

THE BATH-CHAIR OF THE FUTURE.

THE ROAST BEEF OF NEW ENGLAND!
(The Pitiful New Year's Plaint of an Old-Style Patriot.)
AIR-" The Roast Beef of Old England!"
"When mighty roast beef was the Englishman's food,
It ennobled our hearts and enriched our blood."
So ran the old song, and it does my heart good.
Oh, the roast beef of Old England!
And oh for Old England's roast beef!

But now-well to get it a man tries in vain.
From Australia, America, prairie and plain,

What the Butchers call British beef comes o'er the main.
Oh, the roast beef of New England, &c.

Like good old Cheshire cheese, ribston pippins, sound ale,
British beef seems a thing that is gone beyond hail.
If you try to procure it you'll probably fail.

Oh, the roast beef, &c.

"British beef!" "Twas the synonym once for true pluck,
But now-like the beef-it seems frozen, worse luck!
BULL argufies now where he once would have struck.
Oh, the roast beef, &c.

66

British beef? Not at all; we are on a new course,
Feed on
" and "Essence "-most likely of horse!
Extract
Not beef, but beef-tea must now keep up our force.
Oh, the roast beef, &c.

Then sing, "Oh, the beef-tea of Old England!" Our shops
No longer sell English rump-steaks, British chops;
Foreign meat's our new pabulum, varied by slops!
Oh, the roast beef of Old England!
Alas for Old England's roast beef!

THE ORANGE FREE STATE.-The state of the London Pavements during the orange season.

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

IF Launce Kennedy had been somewhat less garrulous, Mr. CROCKETT'S latest novel, The Grey Man (FISHER UNWIN), would have been more delectable. In telling this story, Launce so overloads the narrative with detail as frequently to defeat his purpose of making things clear. Its progress is with direful industry drearily halted. At certain epochs, Launce rises above temptation, and lapses into clear, strong, picturesque narrative that has not, my Baronite assures me, been excelled by WALTER SCOTT or STEVENSON. Once this haps where he carries the challenge of his master to the Laird of Kerse. Again he shakes off the thrall of prolixity when he pictures the trial and execution of the Grey Man. In these two passages the incidents are so dramatic, the movement so swift, the description so picturesque, as to atone for the otherwise prevalent fault.

It is a pity BROWNING has not lived to see the beautiful edition of his poetical works just published. Messrs. SMITH, ELDER have for one issue had recourse to the magic India paper of the Oxford University Press. The result is that the seventeen volumes in which the poems originally saw the light are given in a book of less than eight hundred pages, legibly printed, much lighter than an ordinary volume of its size, and bound in royal crimson morocco. It is an édition de luxe without the necessity, once pictured in these pages, of the hapless owner lying prone on the floor with the mammoth book open before him, that being the most convenient way of mastering its contents. In addition to this gem of the printers' and bookbinders' craft the publishers issue a complete cheap edition of the works in two volumes of ordinary library fashion. Mr. AUGUSTINE BIRRELL edits it, and helps the unconverted by, as he modestly puts it, explaining in the margin the meaning of "such words as might, if left unexplained, momentarily arrest the understanding of the reader." There are some who are most fully in accord with BROWNING when he writes,

I still

Stand in the cloud, and, while it wraps
My face, ought not to speak perhaps.

For these the physical charm of the India-paper edition will be a delight. For the rest who can (or think they can) pierce the cloud that habitually wraps the poet's face, the work-a-day edition will serve.

Some readers of the Life and Letters of Sir Charles Hallé (SMITH, ELDER) will agree with my Baronite in the opinion that the most interesting chapters are those which contain HALLE'S early letters to his parents dated from Darmstadt and Paris. He was just launched on the sea of life. His observation was keen, his mind impressionable, out of a full heart he communed with the home circle, for whose companionship he yearned. Many of the later letters might have been omitted from the bulky volume, and the prosaic accounts of the visits to Australia and the Cape were better retained for family reading. The judicious reader can effect compression for himself, after which process he will find much of interest in the simple story of a strenuous life. THE BARON.

How the Blow fell in the higher Literary Circles of Islington.

Mrs. Ibsen-Gibsen (to the MacTavish, introduced specially from the North, with a great reputation). And pray, Mr. MACTAVISH, what do you consider the finest romance of the century?

[A dead silence, while the great man reflects on Scottish whiskey. The MacTavish (after a pause). I'm thinking, Madam, that the finest prose wark I ever conseedered was the True History of Jack Larkaway, which was issued in penny numbers the same forbidden when I was leetle better than a wild whaup meeself. But, craving your indulgence, I was a de'il o' a lad for piratical escaupades, and hae the spell on me noo, occasionally! [General flight of all the younger ladies, who remember that the mistletoe has not been removed. The elders of the sex remain stationary. So does the MacTavish.

SPORTIVE SONGS.

A South-country Foxhunter, on a New Forest Pony, celebrates his triumph over a Midland "bullfincher."

He has come in his pride, just to show us the way,
From the country of grassland and spinnies,
And the hunter he's on, so I heard his groom say,
Cost at Melton a 66
half thou. of guineas."

His seat is a model, his boots cling like wax,

And his hat has a workmanlike air,

And his well-fitting coat is not one of those sacks

That we poor Southern countrymen wear.

Note the hand that he bears on his high-mettled mare,

While her antics he readily baffles,

And seems ev'ry movement of spirit to share

As he curbs it with lightest of snaffles.

He has greeted the Master, saluted the Field

And, I notice, is friendly with you;

I've no doubt that he thinks that all present must yield

To the charm of the nouveau venu.

Here are you on the castaway peacocky weed
That has little to boast of but rank,

And my sorry old nag is of true Forest breed,
But a bad'un to beat at a bank,

You may laugh at the Forester coarseheaded brute,
But I swear he shall show you to-day

That o'er heather and bog, and mid tangle and root,
There is none like my ill-favoured grey!

Just another low laugh and another soft look-
Then the melody-mongers give cry.

We are off! He is leading us all at the brook

By the firs where the scent is so high,

By the copse, where the hazels are crackling and sear,

You endeavour to keep with his pace;

Can't you see that he's but trying to steer,

And that you are not making him race?

Good fox! he has turned from the flint-powdered ridge To the vale, where the meadows lie dank,

And the hounds are now streaming to right by the bridge, On the left I will take them in flank.

Go on, dear old Hengist, I give you your head,
"Tis wiser than mine is to-day.

Yes! ford it quite gently-the water runs red
With the blood of the churn in the clay!

Good hounds! they have followed the quarry right well,
But the pace is too good long to last,
And what has become of the Leicestershire
Who started the running so fast?

Swell

And where, and oh! where is that Queen of the Chase
Who broke with that terrible rush ?-
Yet your trophies another fair tribute shall grace,
For Hengist and I take the brush!

AUGUSTE EN ANGLETERRE.

NOTES SUR L'ALMANACH (suite).

OCTOBER.-The chase to the pheasants commences the first, and during this month here there is the chase to the "cubs." For that one lifts himself of very good morning, in effect, during the night. The English love much the cold bath, and me also, because I find that he is very fortifying, though it is not the habitude of my compatriots. But during the night a cold bath at the candle, or at the electric light-ah, no! At the fine commences the chase to the fox, and also the sittings of the courts in the Palace of Justice. Maître Renard and the advocates in same time that has the air of a fable of LA FONTAINE. Only, the fox goes quick and loses, the law goes slowly and wins. The twenty and one the English celebrate the battle of Trafalgar. Me I see not for what not, although some French find there some injuries against our country. Provided that one is not chauvin, in english "jinggo," and too hostile towards the other nations, the love of the country is a sentiment which is no part more admired than in France.

NOVEMBER. At this season, or more soon, the great fogs of London commence. We have sometimes at Paris some fog, but, Ordinarily the fog at London commy faith, that it is nothing! mences at the fine of October, and, augmenting during the frost, continues until to the spring. Some days he is less thick, and even one can to see the sun, absolutely as one sees him through some smoked glass, without rays or brilliance. But the most part

of the days one sees not the sun, and ordinarily the fog is suchly -tellement-thick, that one sees neither the sky nor the earth, only the air. And the air is all simply the smoke, un véritable climat d'enfer, mais froid! The nine there is a great procession and a great banquet at London for to celebrate the day of birth of the Prince of WALES. Speaking of the City, I wish to make to remark my compatriots that the Lord Maire is not a great personage of the Government, as the Maire du Palais of the middle age. He is all simply the Prefect of the Thames-the Préfet de la Seine of London.

DECEMBER.-The fogs continue still more thick. During all this month here the English make some vast preparations for the most great feast of all the year, when, following their habitude, they eat, and this time enormously. Ordinarily at Christmas he makes a time unbelieveably sad. Sometimes he falls some rain, sometimes he makes some fog, sometimes there is all the two together, invariably there is much of mud and much of obscurity; never the sun, never the fine time, excepted this year who comes of to finish, when the sun shone during two days, themselves, the unhappy English are obliged of to shut themselves that which is all to fact exceptional. Thus, for to amuse at them_chez eux-of to light the lamps at midday, and of to eat just to the night. At Christmas in England, and above all at London, the night and the day it is the same thing. Seen these not much more sad. In effect they are sometimes narquois and habitudes so melancholy, it astonishes me that the English are gay: With a fine irony they call feast there "The Merry Christmas." Voilà, Mister Punch, a pleasantery of your compatriots, worthy of to be printed in your journal so illustriousa pleasantery with which I terminate these notes, in saying to AUGUSTE. To the to see again." Agree, &c., you,

THE QUARTER OF LONDON WHERE A FRENCHMAN OUGHT TO RESIDE.-The E.C. on parle Français district.

MINDING OTHER PEOPLE'S BUSINESS.

THE American Senate, having postponed a resolution asking the English Government to pardon Mrs. MAYBRICK, will probably proceed to discuss the following questions:

Shall Spain continue to exist?

Ought the West Front of Peterborough Cathedral to be reerected in steel and concrete ?

Is duelling to be allowed in the German Army?

What should be the law as to a "place" for betting in England?

Should the Anti-Semites in Vienna be muzzled or not? Shall there be a new street from Holborn to the Strand, and shall the houses on this street be twenty stories high, and designed as in Chicago?

Ought Gambling at Monte Carlo to be suppressed? Is kleptomania on the increase in England? Shall Russia be allowed to send convicts to Siberia ? Can Hyde Park be improved by an elevated railroad from Kensington to the Marble Arch?

What can be done to hurry up the French Academy, which began a dictionary one hundred and forty years before the Declaration of Independence, and has not finished yet?

Shall our spelling of "neighbor," " parlor," "center" and "theater" be made compulsory in England?

How does the treaty of peace between Italy and Abyssinia conform to the Monroe Doctrine ?

Are the dépôts and cars of the British railroads satisfactory? Should the Chinese be compelled to dress in black coats and tall hats like respectable American Citizens?

Shall the Behring Sea Fisheries award be paid?

It is expected that the last resolution will be indefinitely postponed; it is even thought that it will never be proposed.

CAVIARE TO THE GENERAL. SALVATIONIST BOOTH, Mr. GLADSTONE politely Addressed you as 66 General," possibly rightly; Yet he all his life has continued to spurn all Such fanciful fame, he is not even Colonel; This Old Parliamentary Hand, this old stager Has failed to attain the position of Major; His manifold talents have never been wrapped in The quite ineffectual title of Captain; He never has carried a banner or pennant, Or beaten a drum-he is not a Lieutenant; His speech is so silver, in heraldry "argent," Your people like talking-he is not a Sergeant; Untitled, not even like KELVIN or LISTER, This man, so much greater than you, is plain Mister.

An Architectural Settlement.

First Man (eminent in painting, literature or science). What a controversy about Peterborough Cathedral! Do you know anything about architecture? I don't.

Second Man (ditto). Nothing whatever. And I've never been within twenty miles of Peterborough.

First Man. Nor have I. Then let us go at once and sign a memorial to the Dean and Chapter, asking them not to let anybody do anything. [Exeunt, excitedly.

A DIPLOMATIST WHO DOES NOT BELIE HIS SURNAME.-Mr. NELTHORPE BEAUCLERK, our new Consul-General at Buda-Pesth, speaks Chinese, Russian, French, German, Italian, Danish, Spanish, with other languages. A beau clerc, indeed!

THE FAVOURITE HERO OF THE LOG-ROLLER. "General BoUM."