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Utopia, to commence the Era of Estheticism, and of the Fors?

Now, turning his picking propensities to some real use, he will learn to do hard work, to blister his hands, to wheel barrows, to preach Buskinism.

From The Shotover Papers. Oxford, 1874.

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Mr. Ruskin is a depressing pessimist, according to whom nearly everything that was done in England three centuries or so ago was lovely and true, whilst all nineteenth century progress is in the wrong direction. "I know of nothing" he writes that has been taught the youth of our time except that their fathers were apes, and their mothers winkles; that the world began in accident, and will end in darkness; that honour is a folly, ambition a virtue, charity a vice, poverty a crime, and rascality the means of all wealth and the sum of all wisdom." Now these sweeping assertions are false, and Mr. Ruskin knows they are false, he could not advance a tittle of proof that any professor in modern times had inculcated any such doctrines. Those who want an antidote to Mr. Ruskin's views should read "Pre-Raffaelitism; or a Popular enquiry into some newlyasserted Principles connected with the Philosophy, Poetry, Religion and Revolution of Art" by the Rev. Edward Young, M. A. London: Longmans & Co., 1857.

OUIDA.

MOLL MARINE:

(By "Weeder.")

MOLL Marine! A simple, touching name! It had been bestowed upon her by the rude country hinds among whom she dwelt. It was all she received at their hands besides blows and curses. Moll was a common name in those parts, but none knew what it meant, none discerned the hidden poetry in that brief monosyllable. Moll Marine they called her, because she came among them as a waif from the wild waves, as a white foam fleck that the winds toss on to the cold rocks to gleam a moment in the setting sun, and then dissolve for ever into the dews of night.

She was only fifteen, tall and graceful as a young poplar, with a warm brown skin and a scented wealth of amber hair Everybody hated her. "It was natural," she thought. They beat her, but she cared not. She was like a lucifer; they struck her, and she blazed forth resplendent; beautiful as the spotted panther of the forest, as the shapely thistle that the ass crops unheeding, as the beaming comet that shakes out her golden tresses in the soft hush of summer nights.

And she loved. Loved madly, passionately, hopelessly. He knew it. He knew that he had but to say, "Come!" and she would follow him to disgrace or death, to polar snows or deserts arid as Gehenna. To him she was nothing. No more than the painted fly he pinned in sport, than the yellow meadow flowers that he crushed beneath his heel, than the soft tender doves whose downy necks he wrung and whose bodies he eat with cruel relish.

[We regret to say that the rest of this contribution is improper, and unfit for publication.-ED.]

From The Light Green. Cambridge, 1872.

The World prize competition, for parodies on Ouida's Under Two Flags, subject "The Cambridgshire Stakes."

FIRST PRIZE.

'SEVEN to 5 on Leoville; 9 to 3 on Lartington; 10 to 2 on Falmouth; 13 to 4 Flotsam; 17 to 9 Exeter; the Field bar one; 22 to 8 Lord Clive; 33 to 12 Discord! Take the Field bar one; take the Field!' yelled a burly bookmaker, as an elegant young patrician redolent of Jockey Club sauntered past him.

'I do take it in; also the Life,' said the noble, as he flicked some dust from his spotless boots, and then he blew his nose gracefully.

'O, stow yer larks !' said the other; but the next moment he repented using such language; for the apparently delicate nobleman had carelessly taken him by the seat of his trousers and thrown him over the rails, as though he had been a feather, instead of weighing at least 15 stone.

'Curse him!' he muttered, as he came back trying to look pleased. 'What d'yer want to do, my lord?' he said, with a ghastly smile.

Mentioning a horse, the haughty young aristocrat asked what he would lay against it.

'Against it?' said the welcher. 'Well, it ain't usual for us to lay against 'em; but I'll give yer 4 to 2.' 'Very well,' wearily replied the marquis; in half millions. I also want to back it for a lady, in gloves.' 'Wery good, my lord; dogskin or kid?'

This of course could only be meant for insult. The peer looked at him half amused, half disgusted, and walked listlessly away.

The welcher scowled after him with bitter hatred; but just then the bell rang, and he hurried off to see the horses and jockeys weighed. When he arrived at the shed he found all ready but one, the jockey who was to ride the horse he had laid against. He was just sitting down to dinner.

'They're waiting for you,' said a steward, rushing into the room.

'Ask them to wait a little longer; I shall be ready in forty minutes,' said the jockey, taking a spoonful of potage à la Tortue.

The steward rushed out somewhat excitedly.

'Now's my time,' said the welcher, and creeping behind the light weight he gently unfastened one of his spurs, and put another in its place. He had scarcely finished when the referee came in to say that the starter would wait no longer. Quaffing a large goblet of champagne, the jockey murmured, Che, sara, sara,' and staggered out. Why did the welcher look so fiendish. He had fastened on the jockey's boot a spur with painted rowels.

Following him out, he could just see him galloping down the course, and hear the people cheer as their favourite went by in his crimson jacket, with scarlet sash, green hoops, pink sleeves, and yellow cap. Before he could get to the starting-box the horses were off; but disdaining to join them in the middle of the race, and wishing also to exchange a few compliments with the starter, he rode up to him, and after relieving his mind, dashed after the others. By the time he got to the 'Corner' he was only two furlongs behind; at the distance a hundred yards; at the Red House fifty; and as they passed the Stand he was but a length from the leaders. He touched his gallant steed with the spur for a final effort; but instead of leaving the others behind as usual, it staggered, stopped, and went to sleep. The laudanum had done its work. Just then his rider heard a great shout, and looking up saw thousands of arms carrying the victorious jockey back to the scales. La Merveille had won the Cambridgeshire.

ORACLE. (E. E. D. Davis.)

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SECOND PRIZE.

20 to none

'FOUR to none against Hartington!' 8 to none against Sarserperiller!' '25 to none against Stylites!' (pronounced by the welchers' as a dissyllable, like Skylights). none against Lar Mervilly! (La Merveille). 2 to bar none!' These and a hundred other cries rose high above the roar of the Ring on the bright October afternoon that shone for the nonce over the wide windy fens and sandy loams of Cambridshire and Suffolk on the day of the last great scrambling handicap of the year.

Maunderers muttering to their moustaches, layers, takers, 'ossy' cards, tiptop swells, who had put the pot on' to any extent, ladies of rank and ladies of pleasure (the latter in sealskin and velvet, and gracefully puffing the daintiest of papilitos)-all, with an instinct of stupidity, came down eager for a 'go in' on the scratching Cambridgeshire.

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The bell was throbbing and sobbing spasmodically; and, that cynosure of all eyes, Hartington, whose magnificently-dessicated veins bulged out black as the bloody cords of an injected subject,' strode grandly forth, a roar, deep as the voice of forests or the moan of the sea, went suddenly up- the crack!'

La Merveille, the blue filly, whose neck had the Arch of Marble, was a thick, short, long-barrelled horse, with superb Watteau eyes, and an I'll-take-the-conceit-out-of-a good-many-of-you-if-I-choose-looking head. She belonged to the Lord of the Durdans, Earl Elderberry, whose colours were Hebrew lily inclining to Primrose.

See! Twice ten thousand starters are hoisted in admirable time; the competitors muster at the post, and the coup d'œil, as they glimmer and shimmer there in the sunlight, is as that of an early Turner sunset gone ineffably mad.

Three breaks; the flag falls; a glorious start, and away they go like no end of a line of eager harlequins before their creditors. 'Off!' and Out of Pounds, after taking up the running, compounded;' Adamite fell; Sunburn cooled down; Caxtonian pressed' onward; Fitz-Pluto warmed' to his work. Now!' Blood lashes to fury. The Ring roars It's a skinner!' And Breadloser, Lord Strive, Hartington, and Lar Mervilly dash like fiends through the cold, fresh, wild winter wind, blowing as it might have done in Stuart times, when Mistress Nell Gwynn, the fat King's 'fancy,' was here to inhale it.

Hark! The formost wins!' 'Rob Boy's a "teaser"!' 'Mervilly's lost!' Flash Man's a brilliant failure!'

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Lost? A palpitating lie!

'Send me a cropper!' exclaimed Constable, a 'clipping' jock who had landed many a mount. 'Send me a cropper,

if you like, but "plant" me a winner!'

The blue filly answered with lightning spontaneity. Game to the last, Constable, a great Pickwick in his mouth, coaxed a final effort out of her. The delirium of pace was upon him. Go in a perisher !'

On came the trio-on, until one last convulsive impulse of the outstretched limbs, and-hark! The cry has changed. 'Mervilly wins !'

A thousand jewelled hands hold forth bouquets of hissing eau de Cologne. And Constable, true to the canons of his Order, runs her in.'

A cry as of the disappointed, the desperate, or the d-d, went out over the ghastly fens; seemed to reel from many a gallant plunger in anticipation of an approaching weigh-in.' Next to first was Second; Better Last than Never, whose dominant instinct it was to lose, third.

There was much wisdom after the event. Two minutes eight seconds! A man on a bicycle might have done it in less time!

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A parody of Ouida's Ariadne was published in The Weekly Dispatch parody competition, September 13, 1885, but owing to the enforced brevity of the compositions, this one consisted of little more than a catalogue of names and facts, without any fun, or humour.

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Of course Mr. F. C. Burnand wrote a parody on Ouida," it appeared in Punch in 1878, and was entitled “Strapmore! A Romance by Weeder, author of Folly and Farini, Under Two Rags, Arryadn'ty, Chuck, Two Little Wooden Jews, Nicotine, A Horse with Glanders, In Somers Town, Shamdross, &c., &c." This wild weird story of blood and crime was republished in book form by Bradbury, Agnew & Co.

Judy also published a parody, entitled "Bluebottles. A Novel of Queer Society" Idylised à la Ouida. This was commenced July 7, 1880.

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The following very happy burlesque of the nautical tales in the style of Captain Marryat and Captain Chamier, was written in 1842 by the late Professor W. E. Aytoun, who, in conjunction with Sir Theodore Martin, wrote the Bon Gaultier Ballads.

THE FLYING DUTCHMAN.

A Tale of the Sea.

WE were in the midst of the storm-tossed Atlantic. A heavy simoom, blowing N. E. by S., brought in the huge tropical billows mast-high from the Gulf of Labrador, and a woke old ocean, roaring in its fury, from its unfathomable depths. No moon was visible among the hurricane rack of the sky-even the pole-star, sole magnet of the mariner's path, was buried in the murky obscurity of the tempest ; nor was it possible to see which way the ship was steering, except by the long track of livid flames which followed in the wake of the bow, or when, at times, some huge leviathan leapt up from the water beside us, and descending with the vehemence of a rock hurled from heaven, drove up a shower of aquatic splinters, like a burst of liquid lava from the sea. All the sails which usually decorated the majestic masts of H. M.S. Syncope (a real seventy-nine of the old Trafalgar build, teakbuilt and copper fastened) were reefed tightly up, with the exception of the mainsail, the spritsail, the mizzen-boom sail, and a few others of minor consequence. Everything was cleared away-halyards, hencoop, and binnacle had been taken down below, to prevent accidents; and the whole of the crew, along with the marines and boarders, piped to their hammocks. No one remained upon deck except the steersman, as usual lashed to the helm; Josh Junk, the first bos'un; and the author of this narrative, who was then a midshipman on board the vessel, commanded by his uncle, Commodore Sir Peregrine Pendant.

"Skewer my timbers!" exclaimed Mr. Junk, staggering from one side of the deck to the other as an enormous wave struck us on the leeside, and very nearly unshipped the capstan-"Skewer my timbers, if this a'n't enough to put an admiral's pipe out! Why, Master Tom, d'ye see, it's growing altogether more and more darkerer; and if it a'n't clearer by twelve bells, we'll be obligated to drop anchor, which a'n't by no means so pleasant, with a heavy swell like this, running at nineteen knots an hour in the middle of the wide Atlantic. How's her head, boy?"

"North by south it is, sir," replied the steersman.

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Keep her seven points more to the west, you lubber! Always get an offing when there's a wet sheet and a flowing That's right, Jem! Hold her hard abaft, and she'll go slick before the wind, like a hot knife through a pound of

sea.

butter. Halloo, Master Tom, are you holding on by the seat-railings already-you a'n't sick, are you? Shall I tell the steward to fetch a basin ?"

"No, no, Josh," I replied, "'tis nothing-merely a temporary qualm. But tell me-do you really apprehend any danger? If so, would it not be prudent to call up the commodore, and hang out the dead-lights?"

"Why, Master Tom," replied the bos'un, turning his quid, "them ere's kevestions as I can't answer. 'Cos, firstthere's no knowing what danger is till it comes; secondly, it's as much as my place is worth to disturb old Fire-and-Faggots -axing your pardon for the liberty-afore he's finished his grog with the mates below; and, thirdly, it's no use hanging out the dead-lights, 'cos we're entirely out of oil."

"Gracious heavens !" cried I, "and suppose any other ship should be in the same latitude?"

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Then," said the bos'un with all imaginable coolness, I reckon it would be a case of bump. Oak varsus teak, as the law-wers say, and Davy Jones take the weakest.—But hitch my trousers! what's that?"

As the non-commissioned officer spoke, a bright flash was seen to the seaward immediately ahead of our vessel. It was too bright, too intense to proceed from any meteoric phenomena, such as sometimes are witnessed in those tropical climate, and the sullen report which immediately followed, indicated too clearly that it proceeded from some vessel in the vicinity.

"A first-rater, by jingo!" said Mr. Junk, "and in distress Hold my telescope, Master Tom, till I go below and turn out the watch,”. -but that instant his course was arrested.

Scarce a second had elapsed after the sound of the discharge reverberated through our rigging, when, only a hawser's distance from our bowsprit, a phosphoric light seemed to rise from the bosom of the shadowy deep. It hung upon the hull, the binnacle, the masts, the yards of a prodigious ship, pierced apparently for three tier of guns, which, with every sail set, bore down direct upon us. One moment more and collision was inevitable; but Junk, with prodigious presence of mind, sprang to the helm, snatched the wheel from the hands of the petrified steersman, and luffed with almost supernatural force. Like a well-trained courser who obeys the rein, our noble ship instantly yielded to the impulse, and bore up a-lee, whilst the stranger came hissing up, and shot past us so close that I could distinctly mark each lineament of the pale countenances of the crew as they stood clustered upon the rigging, and even read—so powerful was that strange, mysterious light-the words painted within her sides,-"THOSE WHO GO ABAFT THE BINNACLE PAY CABIN FARE!" On, on she drove-a lambent coruscation, cleaving the black billows of the Atlantic main, about to vanish amidst the deep darkness of the night.

"That was a near shave, anyhow," said Mr. Junk, relinquishing the wheel, "but we must know something more of that saucy clipper," and catching up a speaking trumpet, he hailed,

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Three imitations of Charles Lamb's essay on "Some of our Old Actors" were published in a Parody Competition in The World, October, 15, 1879. The first prize was awarded to the following:

TAKING up a to-days Standard-I know not by what freak of fancy I came to purchase one-I glanced at a few of the theatrical advertisements, which occupy no inconsiderable space in its columns. One of these presented the cast of parts in the Iron Chest at the Lyceum Theatre- Sir Edward Mortimer, by Henry Irving. What an ambitious sound it has ! How clearly it brings before me the comely sad face-thoughtful and therefore sad-and the almost painfully-intense manner of the modern actor!

Of all the Sir Edwards' who have flourished in my time-a dismal phrase if taken aright, reader-that, mad genius, the great little man with the fine Italian face and flashing eyes, Edmund Kean, is the most unforgetable. That of Irving comes next. He, since Kean, most fully realises the author's idea of the style of man best suited to fill the part a man of sable hue, and one in whose soul there's something o'er which his melancholy sits and broods.' But the secret of Irving's success lies in his fine annihilation of self- a rare quality among players-combined with an originality which triumphs over tradition. There is a marked naturalness about his acting of this character, bottomed on enthusiasm. Like genius, he seems at times to have the power of kindling his own fire into any degree of intensity.

Kean, of whom Mrs. Siddons said, 'There is too little of him to do anything; but of whom his landlady said,' There is something about Mr. Kean, ma'am, that tells me he will be a great man;' Kean, whose exclamation, 'My God, if I should succeed now, I think it will drive me mad!' was prophetic, and who, when successful, cried, D-Lord Essex, Mary; the pit rose at me !'-Kean tore the passion of the play to tatters.

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Irving's recenter style does not go to work so grossly. Seemingly convinced of the facts that whatever is done for effect will be seen to be done for effect, and that Nature for ever puts a premium on reality, he interests, as all may, by being persistently and intensely human. There is a consonancy, so to speak, which the green probationer in tragedy spoils by failing to exercise that repression which is an index of power.

In Hamlet, Mathias, in the remorseful rant of Eugene Aram, and the rest, Irving has proved himself histrionic to a degree that will always command intelligent recognition.

All have seen Sothern! What a Dundreary the world has in him! What witty conceits that pleasant creature has to trifle an hour or two away!-he whose ineffable fooling, if done by another, would partake of the essentially ludicrous. Then there is my beloved Toole, whose quirks never left a sting, who drolls inimitably, and whose quality is so irresisti

ble that like a sunbeam, he exists but to cheer-a touching function, reader. My beloved Toole is, in his walk, in no way inferior.

Shakespeare foresaw the existence of Miss Ellen Terry when he created Portia, as Sir Walter might that of Miss Neilson when he spake in Kenilworth.

There are who say that Barry Sullivan is the leading legitimate actor of the British stage a big distinction, which few will, perhaps, be disposed to deny him. But the difference between Sullivan and Irving is, I take it, this: Sullivan has the toga virilis, and the old and obvious canons of his art; Irving is an actor less by tradition than instinct. Sullivan's rich baritone, with its harmonious and not-without-skill-delivered periods, stirs the whole house like the sound of a trumpet: Irving's shriller pipe is fuller of Nature's own rhetoric for a finer few. Sullivan may fill the theatre; Irving may find an empty seat or two in the gallery. CYRIL. (James Silvester.)

LORD MACAULAY.

The Quarterly Review, for April 1868, contained a review of Lady Trevelyan's edition of the works of Lord Macaulay, in which the following passage was quoted as a specimen of his style:

"THE misgovernment of Charles and James, gross as it had been, had not prevented the common business of life from going steadily and prosperously on. While the honour and independence of the State were sold to a foreign Power, while chartered rights were invaded, while fundamental laws were violated, hundreds of thousands of quiet, honest, and industrious families laboured and traded, ate their meals and lay down to rest, in comfort and security. Whether Whig or Tories, Protestants or Jesuits were uppermost, the grazier drove his beasts to market; the grocer weighed out his currants; the draper measured out his broadcloth; the hum of buyers and sellers was as loud as ever in the towns; the harvest-home was celebrated as joyously as ever in the hamlets; the cream overflowed the pails of Cheshire; the apple juice foamed in the presses of Herefordshire; the piles of crockery glowed in the furnaces of the Trent; and the barrows of coal rolled fast along the timber railways of the Tyne."-(Vol. iv. p. 189.)

There is no reason why this rhetorical diarrhoea should ever stop so long as there was a trade, calling, or occupation to be particularised: the pith of the proposition (which required no proof) being contained in the first sentence. Why not continue thus :

"The apothecary vended his drugs as usual; the poulterer crammed his turkeys; the fishmonger skinned his eels: the wine-merchant adulterated his port; as many hot-cross buns as ever were eaten on Good Friday, as many pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, as many Christmas-pies on Christmas-day; on area steps the domestic drudge took in her daily pennyworth of the chalky mixture which Londoners call milk; through area bars the feline tribe, vigilant as ever, watched the arrival of the cats'-meat man; the painted

courtesan flaunted in the Haymarket; the cabs rattled through the Strand; and from the suburban regions of Fulham and Putney the cart of the market-gardener wended its slow and midnight way along Piccadilly to deposit its load of cabbages and turnips in Covent Garden."

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A PAGE BY MACAULAY.

(From the History of the Beadleship of Brown.)

WHEN Brown grasped the staff of office, he was in need of the staff of life. Raised at once from want to wealth, from obscurity to renown, from the practice of submission to the habit of command, he did his work sternly; but not too sternly to do it well. The unexpectedly chosen Beadle became a correspondingly energetic Beadle. The new broom swept clean. A week had not passed ere abuses were remedied—the indolence of one portion of the parish officers pricked into action-the disaffection of another crushed into obedience. A benevolent despotism is the best form of government-Brown was despotic, benevolent, and a Beadle.

Let us review the state of affairs as they existed when he first assumed the cocked hat of office as Beadle of St. Tomkins. Apple-women usurped the pavement. Piemen obstructed the roadway. Professed beggars demanded alms at every door-impostors exhibited artificial sores at every corner. What the parish of St. Giles' is to the parish of St. James, the parish of St. Tomkins was to the parish of St. Giles. Nuisances of another nature throve also and waxed great from day to day. The pew opener grumbled; the turncock muttered to himself; the churchwardens squabbled, and the rate-payers complained. There was murmured disaffection in the vestry-open revolt amongst the charity boys. It was a time of mutual recriminationof mutual dissatisfaction. Jones abused Smith, Smith retorted upon Jones. Robinson hated Thomson, Thomson repaid the compliment with interest to Robinson. There was an unruly license of tongue, a general saturnalia of speech. Whispered scandals grew into outspoken charges, and the malicious reports hatched from the tea and muffins of old maidish parties were repeated with envenomed aggravations over the port and sherry of parish dinners. Then it was that short weights were publicly attributed to Smith, and a false steelyard confidently asserted to belong to Jones. Johnson, heated with gin, said that Jackson beat his wifeJackson, inflamed with rum, said that Mrs. Johnson beat her husband. Charges, counter-charges, insinuations, inuendos, ran riot. No man looked with complacency on his neighbour no husband looked with confidence upon his wife; no wife looked with respect upon her husband. As yet the band of Reformers who were shortly to arise was unheard of. Thomas Styles was but sixteen; John Nookes but thirteenand-a-half. The pen of the great Smythe Smithers was yet employed upon half text. No word indicating his future destiny had fallen from Tomkin's lips-Gubbins had not yet been born-Snooks was in long clothes--and Trother yet unemancipated from parish leathers.

On Brown then it alone devolved to grapple with the task. He was the dauntless pioneer of a dauntless army, a champion destined to show the world that the glitter of a Beadle's staff may outshine the splendours of a Marichall's baton, if it did not dim the magnificence of a Monarch's sceptre.

From The Man in the Moon, edited by Angus B. Reach. February, 1849.

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A BIT OF WHIG HIS-TORY.

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(From what we 'Macaulay" History of our own.)

THE King had been thrown from his horse at Hampton Court, and was dead. Great were the rejoicings in Paris and Rome on receipt of the tidings, and the hopes of the Jacobite party rose; however, the accession of the second daughter of the last Stuart monarch to the throne as Anna Regina once more clouded their prospects. Her Court, adorned by Marlborough (who did not sell his pictures), Bolingbroke and Swift, would have been as nothing without the genius of one whose name does not figure in the accepted histories of that reign, but whose influence at Court not even the imperious Sarah Jennings, nor her rival, Lady Masham, nor any of the Whigs or Tories of that distracted period, could afford to ignore. A peaceful citizen, whose Hair Preparations gave that graceful brilliancy and tone to the brown hair of the Sovereign, and whose marvellously manufactured Wigs adorned the heads of the noblest in the land, was not one to be lightly passed by, and thus it was Professor Browne was the ruling spirit at the Court of Queen Anne. No Wigs could equal his in form, graceful folds, and luxuriant masses of hair; they covered the heads of the wisest and best in the land, so that it was no wonder the Professor, who had long studied the heads of the people, was universally consulted on all matters of such vital importance. Unfortunately, however, Prince Eugene of Savoy, who at this time came over on a secret mission from the Emperor to the Queen, foolishly declined to pay a visit to Fenchurch Street, and procured from some opposition hairdresser a short campaigning Wig in which to appear at Court. The same evening, the Prince, smoking his cigar at his hotel, happened to be trying on this new head gear when the Hanoverian Minister, Baron Hoffman, called, and seeing that neither in style, make, nor effect was it equal to BROWNE'S. endeavoured to induce the Prince, but in vain, to discard it and patronize F. B. Bye and bye Bolingbroke, who had a secret partiality for the Jacobites, and mistrusted the Prince's mission, arrived, and affected such admiration for the periwig that the Prince actually did wear it the next day in the throneroom, to the horror of the Lord Chamberlain and Gentlemen Ushers, while the crafty Bolingbroke took care himself to appear in one of BROWNE'S most artistic and luxuriant headcoverings that could possibly be procured; the result being a perfect triumph for the Professor. The Queen expressed high disapproval of the Prince's Wig, whose mission thereby failed, and once again the hopes of the Jacobites fluttered. At length the wily Bolingbroke was dismissed from Office, and Her Majesty, who had secured the succession to the Crown of the son of her cousin Sophia, ordered that Professor BROWNE, should henceforth be appointed Wig Maker in ordinary to the British Public.

From Professor Browne's Almanack, 1885.

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THE NEXT ARMADA.

A Brief Chapter from the History of Macaulay Junior.

IN the City the agitation was fearful. None could doubt that the decisive crisis was approaching. It was known, from the second edition of the Times, that the joint Armada, carrying everything before it, was continuing its victorious progress up the Channel Ply. mouth had fallen without firing a shot. Portsmouth had speedily followed suit. The former had found itself, at the eleventh hour, unprovided with a single gun. The

latter, at the crucial moment, discovered that it was still waiting the arrival of its ammunition. When these facts, mysteriously whispered at first with bated breath, became, later in the day, authenticated by the appearance of succeeding editions of the morning papers, the public excitement knew no bounds. A hideous panic seized the Stock Exchange. "Goschens" went down to sixty at a single leap. Five well-known Stockbrokers went off their heads, and were removed in cabs by the police in violent hysterics. The Lord Mayor appeared on the steps of the Mansion House, and endeavoured to quell the riot. He was at once recognised by the mob, and pelted with Pass-Books.

But things assumed a most threatening aspect at the Admiralty. A vast multitude had assembled at Whitehall, and rendered Parliament Street impassable. There was an angry howl at the "Board." The Police took

the precautionary measure of closing the gates. The First Lord appeared inside the enclosure, and his presence was the signal for an ominous roar. He was deathly pale and trembling, but he managed to scramble up the balustrade, and gazed feebly down on the raving thousands below. He was understood to say that when next Parliament met it would be asked to appoint another Committee to inquire into the naval administration of the country. His speech was cut short by execrations, and he hastily withdrew. Ten minutes later it was understood that he had escaped by the back way over the palings into the Park, and was hiding himself from the fury of the mob in an unfrequented slum in Pimlico.

But while these events were transpiring in the Metropolis of the Empire, still graver issues were being arrived at on that "silver streak," which, up to now, had popularly, but erroneously, been regarded as its sure defence. What had been left of the British Channel Fleet after its first disastrous encounter with the joint Armada off the Lizard had rallied, and was now awaiting the attack of the again on-pressing and advancing enemy, in what promised to be a decisive encounter for the possession of the Mouth of the Thames, in the immediate neighbourhood of Herne Bay. The Admiral, in his hasty retreat, had collected about the shattered remnant of his forces some auxiliary adjuncts. He had been joined by Her Majesty's ironclads, Styx and Megatherium, and by the belted cruiser, Daffodil; but owing to the fact that these vessels, not possessing any guns, had had to put to sea without their armaments, the recent arrivals could scarcely be counted on by him as an addition to hi's fighting power in any pending action. Nor was he sure of his own ship. Her Majesty's ironclad Blunderer, which carried his flag, was armed with four of the famous 43-ton Collingwood exploding guns, and though hard pressed in the recent engagement, he had not thought it wise to give the order to "fire."

Such was the position of the British Admiral at the commencement of that fatal afternoon which saw the last blow struck for the preservation of the Empire. The fight commenced by a general attack of the enemy. But it did not last long. In a very few minutes seven of the British ironclads, including that of the Admiral, were blown up by the explosion of their own guns. The rest found that they were supplied with the wrong-sized ammunition, and were rapidly put hors de combat. Within a quarter of an hour of the firing of the first shot the action was over, and the last remnant of the British Fleet had practically disappeared. That evening the advance despatch boats of the joint Armada anchored off Gravesend, and 120,000 men were landed on the Kentish coast between Margate and Whitstable.

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