much a head for their meals, and then watch the Steward's face after in the distance, and the scene is illuminated with vivid flashes of Erith. If you see the Steward smiling, beware,if he chuckles and lightning." We descend below. rubs his hands gleefully, prepare for squalls and if he laughs outright, disappear to your berth, and make such arrangements as your past experience may suggest.

HOBSON is a capital companion. He is most anxious that nothing should even have the appearance of any likelihood to go wrong. He never attempts forced jollity, but, naturally enthusiastic, he has cultivated enthusiasm; and naturally sympathetic, he has cultivated the art of sympathising. I confess to being very soon depressed, especially with the probability of nasty weather in view.

The sky appears lowering.

66

"We shall have a storm, I think," is my melancholy foreboding. Oh, no," replies HOBSON, cheerily. That dark appearance is due to London smoke." And then he dilates on the subjects of smoke consumption, fogs, chimneys, gas, storage of force, and so forth. In the meantime, I am watching the clouds.

It

"If it's going on like this- "I begin, grumbling, "It won't," HOBSON assures me. "The effects of this storm will be to make the sea perfectly calm, and with the wind in a rather rainy quarter, we shall have a splendid passage. You'll see. will be beautiful! beautiful! You won't feel even a qualm." And if I did, he would tell me that the qualm I felt was the best qualm in the world, and that a calm would follow on a qualm, and then, if I were very unwell, he would prove to me scientifically that nothing could be more beneficial to my general health than this short sharp attack of mal de mer.

We are steaming down the Thames, with every now and then a stoppage (the signal "Stop her!" being given by a sharp bell and a gruff voice, as it appears to me,-a similar method being used to indicate" Go ahead again!"), in order to allow time for various huge unwieldy barges,-laden or empty, which are generally in charge of "It's raining, I think," I say, not liking to be certain, and still an inadequate crew, consisting of a dirty man clinging to a prodihoping against hope, as I see the marks of heavy drops falling, as if giously long pole, with which he is stirring up the mud, a barking nails had been driven into the deck at equal distances. dog very angry with our steamer, and an unkempt indolent boy,-to "Rain!" exclaims HOBSON, putting on his glasses, and looking get out of our way and save themselves from being run down or about him with an air of the utmost incredulity at the bare idea of swamped; and we are rapidly passing landmarks familiar to the possibility of such a thing. "Rain? No. I think it's the spray Londoners who dine at Greenwich, and many more quite unfamiliar from the engine." And he looks round with a chirpy and perfectly even to them. I am beginning to feel hungry. Good or bad sign? satisfied smile (being much pleased with his own ingenious explana-"First-rate sign, dear friend," replies HOBSON, enthusiastically. tion), just as a heavy rain-drop as big as a pea hits him sharply on "First-rate! Shows it's agreeing with you." Glad to hear it, the tip of his nose. He looks up with an expression of childlike but I have my doubts. surprise, as if this were some part in a funny juvenile game, and he had to turn round twice and find out who had touched him on the

nose.

"There's more where that came from," I say, seizing the campstool and making for cover under the awning. There is: it comes down heavily.

He follows me with his campstool, and his waterproof buttoned up for in spite of the sanguine tone of his consolation to others, he himself is never without a handy and really serviceable Mackintosh -and looking round on the people all huddled together like sheep in a storm, he says beamingly, as if he took rather a pride in this downpour, "Ah! that's something like a shower!"

Then he continues:

"You'll see, this will clear the air; it's just what was wantednot by us," he puts in, finely anticipating the general objection, "but by the atmosphere, and it will be for our benefit, as we shall have a lovely passage. Wind S. by S.W.!" he exclaims, in an ecstasy of

OVENLY!

A CORRESPONDENT, signing himself "A HAUGHTY CULTURIST,"

sends us this cutting from The Garden, which we at once proceed to plant within our own borders:

MPROVER.-A lady highly

I recommends a youth, age 17; three years' good general experience under glass in her garden.

Three years under glass! The lady doesn't mention his height, nor his temperament. which must be somewhat of a hot nature associated with

delight, turning in that direction; "couldn't be better, dear friend; Bedded Out; or, "Cometh up as a Flower!" the Sunny South.

couldn't be better!"

"The rain makes the deck so sloppy; that's the worst of it," I grumble.

"That is the worst of it," returns HOBSON, triumphantly; "I quite agree with you, that is the worst of it; but there's no mud, as

THE SYSTEM.

"Lord CHARLES BERESFORD says, indeed, that the fault is not theirs, but

there would be ashore, and in five minutes the sun will come out and that of the system."-Times.
the Captain will send a man with a mop, and the deck will be as
dry as a bone. Look, it's stopped now. And there's a dry place
right in the middle of the vessel, where you will scarcely feel motion
at all."

We enjoy sunshine for a while. But the wily man with the mop
does not make his appearance as the clouds are once more gathering.
"Looks threatening," I observe; and I mean it.

66

Oh, no," HOBSON replies, rubbing his hands gleefully; "when it begins like this, it's always fine afterwards."

"Rather misty," I say, pointing ahead to a dense grey mist into which we are rapidly steaming.

"Yes, rather misty," he returns, for the fact is undeniable; but as he has a good word even for a river-fog, he at once adds cheerfully, "But what a wonderful effect! Look at that boat emerging from the mist like a spectre!"

66

"Subject for Mistler,-I mean WHISTLER," I observe, gloomily. "Exactly, dear friend, exactly," he replies, delighted to find me willing to enter into his artistic views of this arrangement in fog and smoke. Then he points towards the dense mass of grey vapour which we are now approaching, and exclaims, Look!" After which he throws back his head and folds his arms with the air of a connoisseur regarding some great masterpiece of Art, and says, "There! There are wonderful effects! Wonderful! wonderful!" And, as a wandering black barge slowly emerges from the fog, he repeats to himself, sotto voce, "Wonderful! Beautiful!" in a subdued tone of the most intense admiration. His tone of unqualified approbation reminds me of the old Herr VON JOEL, who used to go about at PADDY GREEN's selling twopenny cigars for sixpence apiece, and exclaiming, "Pewtiful! Pewtiful! Then, as the clouds gather thicker and thicker, and the fog becomes more and more dense, he turns towards me, smiling brightly, and says with an air of conviction that deceives nobody, "Ah! dear friend, we shall have a very fine passage."

WHAT is it, when the Country facts appal,
And men for explanation loudly call,
Delays, impedes, and paralyses all?
The System!

What is it makes our training course effete,
And leaves us, should a foreign foe we meet,
To face him with a makeshift patched-up fleet?
The System!

What, spite the ample millions it obtains,
The public clamour scornfully disdains,
And takes good care the Navy nothing gains?
The System!

What is it hoards up useless stores by tons,
What falsifies on measured mile the runs,
And turns out fighting ships without their guns?
The System!

And what, if peace to war by chance give place,
And bring us and our dangers face to face,
Would launch on us a national disgrace?
The System!

So what should Englishmen, without a doubt,
While yet they've time to know what they're about,
Destroy, tread under foot, smash, trample out?
The System!

"HOMBURGING THEM."-Last season H.R.H. the Prince of WALES found that all the American Dudes at Homburg were sincerely flattering him by closely imitating his costume, whatever it might be. But a genuinely happy thought occurred to H.R.H. He arrayed himself, so the Liverpool Post informs us, in hideous attire, the like of which Hardly are the words out of his mouth than down comes the rain was never seen in Tweed or out of it. The Dudes were done, and in bucketsful. " Thunder," as the stage-directions have it, "is heard | H.R.H. bears the distinguished title of the Prince of Wiles.

THE

66

IRREPRESSIBLE CHINEE"!

"PING-WING, THE PIEMAN'S SON,

WAS A TROUBLESOME CUSS FROM FAR CANTON.

HE LABOURED HARD, AND HE LIVED ON RICE,

BUT HIS TRICKS WERE DARK, AND HIS TASTES NOT NICE.

HE BURNT THE CONVENTION, AND THEN SAID HE,

'ME WONDER WHAR DAT TREATY BE!"-American Nursery Rhyme revised.

PLAY-TIME AT THE HAYMARKET.

and Captain Hawksley; it is singularly pointless in an analogous scene between Mr. Gardiner and Captain Swift.

Since Mr. TOOLE made The Butler a popular character on the Nor by any means a model of construction, conventional in its stage, there has been a run on butlers. Nowadays, no piece is perdialogue and action, with scarcely a line worth remembering, with fect without a butler in it of some sort, comic, tragic, melodramatic, only a glimmer of comedy-humour here and there in the characters of or demoniac. It is this last type that Mr. CHARLES HADDON has Lady Betty and old selected for his play of Captain Swift. Mr. HADDON must have had Seabrook, and with butler on the brain,-can he affirm that he Haddon't ?-as the groone strong dash of tesque demoniac character has so little to do with the essence of the misplaced burlesque plot, that he may be at once set down as superfluous. This Superfluous melodrama in the Demon Butler, as impersonated by Mr. BROOKFIELD with genuine character of the burlesque melodramatic humour, just gives the necessary comic relief Demon Butler, to the play. When Captain Swift is heard making a bag of himself whose part is con- in September by blowing out his brains off the stage, it is a pity that siderably damaged the comic countryman Detective (new type, created and patented by by the absence of Mr. CHARLES ALLAN), and the helpless old Foozle, capitally repretopical song and sented by Mr. KEMBLE (another version of Brother Potter, also from dance, à la LESLIE, Still Waters), should not have descended all together by a trap as Jonathan Wild-licensed to hold three comfortably, with the Superfluous Demon with all these de- Butler standing over them; and perhaps, if there were room in the fects, and in spite trap for four, I should add Lady Betty to the group. of them, Captain The Demon Butler, who is made up rather after one of the acroSwift is, in itself, a batic GIRARDS, disappoints every one by not sliding over the tables Drama of powerful and chairs as a genuine GIRARD would certainly have done. He dramatic interest, is, as I have said, Superfluous; all the use he can be put to is and so admirably to help the Detective, and, as far as that goes, the Detective, acted all round, that "from information received," could get on just as well, even it holds an audience better, without him. Unless the Demon Butler has a prologue, enthralled from the an entr'acte topical song and dance, and an epilogue, with final disDance of the Victim Master and Demon Butler, as (it rise to the fall of the appearance down a trap-door, he will always be superfluous" as long ought to be) performed at the T.R. Haymarket. Curtain. The story as Captain Swift shall run, which ought to be, and I sincerely hope is clearly told, and the acting is excellent-herein is the open will be, for many hundred nights. When the inevitable Country secret of its success, for success it must have already achieved. Company go on tour with Captain Swift, the superfluous Demon Occasionally marred by some conventional melodramatic starts- Butler might be played without words by a clever pantomimist, and false starts-which with melodramatic asides of the old-fashioned called the " Dumb Waiter." This would be at once economical and "Ha! that face!" or, "Ha! that voice!" "Strange!"""Tis he!" effective. Every lover of good acting should go and see Captain pattern,-wrongly supposed to be necessary for emphasising a Swift, on the recommendation of JACK IN THE PRIVATE BOX. situation,"-Mr. BEERBOHM TREE'S Wilding, alias Captain Swift, is a very fine performance. Certainly, the touching and impressive scene of the farewell in the last Act could not possibly be better rendered than it is by Mr. and Mrs. BEERBOHM TREE; indeed, the latter I have never yet seen to so great advantage. I do not think Mrs. TREE ever succeeds in her make-up" for the stage,-too white, I should say. But to find fault is easy, to suggest the improvement is difficult. There is a great natural charm in Mrs. TREE'S impersonation of the otherwise conventional character of a love-sick, romantic young lady. The faults of this part are the author's; its virtues the actress's.

LADY MONCKTON is heart and soul in the very trying part of Mrs. Seabrook. She seems to be oblivious of the audience, and actually to be the character she impersonates. The art is less completely concealed than in that exceptionally finished performance of hers as the wife of Jim the Penman. But this again is the author's fault. As I consider it all round, I must own that I do not remember ever having seen a piece so lifted above the commonplace and conventional by the talent of the actors, as is this play of Captain Swift. There is a jarring note in the scene in Act III., between Wilding and Mrs. Seabrook, and it is this: the audience share with Mrs. Seabrook the knowledge that she is Wilding's mother. Wilding is in ignorance of the fact; so that when Mrs. Seabrook makes affectionate advances towards him, the unscrupulous Bushranger would see in this what Captain Hawksley saw in Mrs. Sternhold's affection for him; that is, additional profit and safety out of this middle-aged woman's vanity. The audience, undoubtedly, must take this view of the scene, and so, when Mrs. Seabrook sits on the sofa, and says, in a comparatively light and airy tone, "Come and sit beside me," there is a titter through the house just at a critical moment when the scene, which requires the most delicate handling by the actors, without any help from the author, can least bear it. I fancy both Mr. TREE and Lady MONCKTON will agree with me on this point.

Melodramatic music played throughout the dialogue of this same great scene in Act III. is, emphatically, a mistake; it interrupts the action, and distracts the attention, tires the audience, and hence it happens that the charming song of Mrs. TREE'S, subsequently "heard without," which should be so effective, becomes an anticlimax. This Act should have ended with the exit of Wilding, which should have been simultaneous with the last note of the song, and the fall of the Curtain. The letter-reading is another anti-climax. Miss LECLERCQ'attempts too much with the very common-place and, for her, very poor and uncongenial part of Lady Staunton, who, after all, is a mere type of the "confidante," or "Charles his friend," in petticoats. In make-up, Mr. TREE, Mr. MACKLIN, and Mr. KEMBLE are perfect.

Having naturally alluded to Captain Hawksley, I would ask why adapt the well-worn business of the cigar-lighting from Still Waters run Deep? It was highly effective in the scene between John Mildmay

66

ALDERMANO ITALIANO.

At the Guildhall. Prosecution by the National Vigilance Society for publishing Boccaccio's "Decameron."

for over 400 years, and at the present time there were three copies of the work "The book,' said Mr. AVORY for the defence, had been in publication in the English language in the Guildhall Library, and about 200 in the British Museum.' Mr. Alderman PHILLIPS, who had previously mentioned that he had read The Decameron, both in Italian and English, said he did not intend to send this case for trial, because he did not for a moment believe that jury would convict. The case was then dismissed."-Daily Telegraph.

a

Rather a change from what would probably have happened some forty years ago, in the good old days of JOHN LEECH's and DICKY DOYLE'S when no Alderman could have been alluded to physically as a Aldermen, when there were Corporations within the Great Corporation; No-body, when Wenison was their Wittles, and Tuttle was their only soup, and like Sir John Falstaff, they "babbled," not of "green fields," but of green fat." In those good old days, had this case come before Mr. Alderman and Sheriff GUZZLER (of the firm of BOOZER, SWILLY AND GUZZLER, Portsoken Ward), the report might have

66

been on this wise:-
:

Alderman. Eh? D. CAMERON? DONALD CAMERON, of course. Counsel (explaining). The Decameron of BOCCACCIO, your Worship. Alderman. Ah! I didn't catch his title-DONALD CAMERON of Bock-what was it? There's a CAMERON of Loch Something, and there's a CAMERON in the Ward, a most respectable Councillor and Vintner.

Counsel (further explaining). No, Mr. Alderman, this is a Book. Alderman. A Book ?-eh? Oh, not Bock. Book? DONALD CAMERON, of Bookcadgers, did you say?

as

And so forth. And then the publisher would have been fined, and the editions confiscated. And now, "on a changé tout cela," the Belgian LORD MAYOR would say, and be immediately understood by more than one decorated Deputy. Did the prosecution of the ZOLA translations come before Alderman PHILLIPS? No doubt he has put his knowledge of the French language to as good a purpose as he has his proficiency in Italian. Pity that he didn't have the opportunity of saying, "I've read all these in the-ahemin the original French (applause in Court, immediately suppressed by the usher), and I really do not think that a jury, who couldn't possibly possess my educational advantages, ought to have a chance of convicting,-as I am sure they will, if I send the case for trial." That's the sort of Alderman and Sheriff. "Sheriff thou art, and shalt be more hereafter! All hail, Future Lord Mayor! The expiring Mayoralty wants a few little Italian olives, just to give it some fillips.