FATHER THAMES PURIFIED AND GLORIFIED, AS PROMISED BY L. C. C.

Tuesday.-Just before eight bells, when all hands were piped below, Admiral FIELD turned up in favourite character as the honest British sailor. Rather modelled on transpontine style; a little unnecessarily noisy; too humorously aggressive; hopelessly obvious. But in present circumstances House grateful for anything; gleefully laughed whilst the Admiral shivered his timbers,

should do without TOMMY BOWLES. The spectacle of his white ducks is to me as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. They talk about an army of men in the basement working machinery that keeps the temperature ten degrees below what it is marked on the Terrace. Also there is, it seems, a ton and a half of ice melting in ventilating chambers at the taxpayers' expense for our comfort. But I don't think ice is in it with TOMMY's ducks. Even if they were stationary it would be something. But observe how, coming and going, TOMMY's brain an argosy of great thoughts, the ducks seem to skim over our prosaic floor, calling up even to the unimaginative mind a vision of deep, tree-shaded, quietly-rippling Broad, over which the wild duck swiftly moves, waving white wings."

Only PLUNKET, I fancy, could evolve poesy out of to-night's scene; hot above precedent, dull beyond endurance.

"PLUNKET'S duck picture cool and refreshing. But," said EDWARD OF ARMAGH, drawing on his military experiences, what we 're doing just now may be much more accurately described as the goose step.'

Quite so. We sit all afternoon and far into the night, always talking, sometimes dividing; every appearance of motion, no advance; feet lifted with due sign of walking, but when midnight strikes and parade dismissed we are found posted exactly at the same spot as that on which we took our stand at half-past three in the afternoon.

If Mr. G. means business the sooner he gets about it the better. Business done.-None.

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Friday.-Mr. G. does mean business. Commences on Monday, when Motion will be made to close Report Stage of Home-Rule Bill. Mere reference to it set House bubbling with excitement. Mr. G.'s proposed Resolution not yet drafted. You know how it is," he said, smiling blandly at PRINCE ARTHUR ; 'you've had a good deal of experience in drawing Resolutions of this nature." But if Ministers not ready with their Resolution, JOSEPH prepared with Amendment. Read it out amid lively interruption.

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Conversation later conducted with much vigour across the Gangway, where, a fortnight ago, GUNTER received an Irish Member (not iced) full in pit of stomach. Once the Blameless BARTLEY signalled out Member for South Donegal, mentioning him by name as respon

LIKA JORO

Admiral Field as the honest British Sailor.

talked about losing his soundings in a fog, declared against all shams, referred to himself as "honest and modest sailor who believed in straightforward action, and refused to have his eyes blinded by abstract proposals."

That last phrase didn't sound seafaring, but, as another honest sailor was accustomed to say, its bearings lay in the application of it. Motion before House was to eliminate Second Chamber from Home-Rule scheme; brought forward by Radicals; situation difficult for Opposition. If they voted against the Government they would be declaring against principle of House of Lords. If they voted with them they would be approving a proposition of the hated Bill. JOSEPH judiciously got out of difficulty by declining to vote at all. PRINCE ARTHUR elaborately explained that in going into Lobby with the Radicals he was voting against a concrete proposal and in favour of an abstract principle. This too subtle for COURTNEY, who announced his intention of voting with Government who happened to agree with him in approving principle of Second Chamber. It was amid these cross blades that the Admiral, hitching up his trousers, danced a hornpipe. TOMLINSON attempting to bring House back to more serious views, Members with one accord rushed into Lobby, and Government came out with majority of 83.

Business done.-Seventh night in Report Stage Home-Rule Bill. Thursday.- "Whew!" said the Member for SARK. "I don't know what will become of us if things go on much longer like this. With a PREMIER over eighty. and the thermometer over 90, the situation is at least unusual. Even JOSEPH not able to maintain his favourite attitude, grafted on the iced cucumber. Just now Mr. G. made a passing remark, quite mild compared with JOEY's own sly hits. J. C. up on instant, with boding brow and angry plaint that Mr. G. had attempted to slay him with a sneer." "Yes," said PLUNKET, "times are hot. I don't know what we

Swift MacNeill refuses to be named.

sible for particular exclamations. "Don't presume to mention my name," said MACNEILL, leaning across gangway.

"Look here, BARTLEY," said TOMMY BOWLES, "if you're going on that tack, you must come and sit at this side. When I saw MACNEILL open his mouth to speak, I confess I thought I was going to be swallowed whole. You sit here; there's more of you."

Business done.-Notice given that business is about to commence.

LETTERS TO ABSTRACTIONS.

TO FAILURE

EcoE iterum! Well, why not? So long as I do not exanimate you with my letters, I remain content. Besides, I have not yet fullydeveloped all my theories. Let us, therefore, continue to chat together for a little.

I cannot proceed for ever by the negative method. No doubt I might in the end, exhaust the list of those who are not your subjects, but the process would be long, and, I fear, tedious. No; I must come to the point and produce my cases. What shall we say of them, then? HOOD declares that

"There is a silence where hath been no sound,
There is a silence where no sound may be,
In the cold grave, under the deep, deep sea."

T

would stay on at Cambridge. But he did. A few years after taking his aegree he published a monumental edition of a Greek classic, which is still one of the fountain-heads of authority, even amongst the severe scholars of the Fatherland. And after that there was an end of him. Nobody quite knew what had happened to him, and as the years rolled on fewer and fewer cared to inquire. He went to hall, he sat silent in the Combination-room, he withdrew himself changed, he became dishevelled, his face grew old and wrinkled, and gradually from all intercourse with friends. His whole appearance his hair turned grey before his time. And thus dwindling and shrinking he had come to be the pitiable shadow who, as I have related, faded dismally across the College Court before a knot of cheerful Undergraduates on an October morning many years ago. What was the reason? I have often wondered. Did his labours over his book displace by a hair's-breadth some minute particle of matter in his brain? Or was there in his nature a lack of the genuine manly

"But in green ruins, in the desolate walls

Of antique palaces, where Man hath been,
Though the dun fox, or wild hyena calls,
And owls, that flit continually between,
Shriek to the echo, and the low winds moan,-

There the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone." As with silence, so with failure, say I. The man who has never felt the spur of ambition nor the intoxication of a success, who has travelled always upon the level tracts of an unaspiring satisfaction, on him, surely, failure sets no mark, and disappointment has for him no stings. But the poor souls who soar only to sink, who melt their waxen wings in the fierce heat of the sun, and fall crashing to earth, theirs is the lot for pity. And yet it is not well to be too sure. For in the eyes of the world a man may be cheated of his purpose, and yet gain for himself the peace, the sober, contented joy, which is more to him than the flaunting trophies of open success. And some clasp the goddess in their arms, only to wither and decay in the embrace they sought with so eager a passion. But I tarry, while time creeps on.

A

From the mist of memory rises a scene. knot of laughing Freshmen is gathered in the ancient Court outside the lecture-room staircase. It wants a minute or two to the hour. They are jesting and chaffing with all the delightful unconcern of emancipated youth, and their cheerful faces shine brighter in the October sunshine. Some thirty yards away from them a strange figure, in dingy cap and gown, paces wearily along. It is that of a prematurely aged man, his back bent, his head sunk upon his chest. The Freshmen begin to knock one another about; there is what we used to call a "rag," and one of them, seizing a small lump of turf, throws it at a companion. It misses him, and strikes the old, weary figure on the back of the neck. He totters forward

with outstretched hands, just saves himself from falling, and turns round. There is a terrible, hunted, despairing look on the face, made more pitiful by the grey, straggling beard. The Freshman has darted forward with an apology. The old man mutters, half to himself, "What was it? Did some one call for me? I am quite alone, and I scarcely remember- "and then shuffles away quickly, without listening to the words of apology. The adventure chills the laughter of the young men, the clock strikes, and they vanish to the lecture-room.

recoiling from the larger life of which the triumphs seemed to be within his grasp, if only he would stretch out his hand and seize them ? I know not. Somebody once hinted that there was a woman at the bottom of it. There may have been, but it is a canon of criticism to reject the easier solution. When he died a few years ago, it appeared to be a shock to all but a few to remember that he had not died ages before.

And as I write this, I am reminded, I scarce know why, of poor Mrs. HIGHFLYER. Poor Mrs. HIGHFLYER! I hear somebody exclaim in astonishment. Why is she poor? Why must we pity her? Is she not rich? Do not the great and the titled throng to her parties during the London Season? Has she not entertained Princes in the country? What lot can be more enviable? Granted, I reply, as to the riches and the parties. But can it be seriously supposed that a life spent in a feverish struggle for recognition, its days and nights devoted to schemes for social advancement, to little plots by which Lady MOTTLING, the wife of the millionaire Member of Parliament, shall be outwitted; or Mrs. FURBER, the wife of the returned Australian, shall be made to pale her ineffectual fires; to conspiracies which shall end in a higher rung of the giddy ladder of party-giving ambition-can such a life, I ask, with all its petty miseries, its desperations, its snubs, and its successes no less perilous than desperation, be considered an enviable one? Ask Mrs. HIGHFLYER herself. Visit that poor lady, as she is laying her parallels for her tenth attempt to capture some stout and red-faced royalty for her dance or her country-house, and see for yourself how she feels. She may bear aloft a smiling face, but there is unhappiness in her heart, and all her glories are as nothing to her, because she has read in the Weekly Treadmill that Lady MOTTLING's latest party was attended by a Royal Duke, two Ambassadors, and a Kamtchatkan Chieftain. There is failure in the meanest shape. Was I right to pity her?

Are there not, moreover, critics and literary celebrities whobut I dare too much, my pen refuses its office, so tremendous is the subject on which I have rashly entered. And with that, farewell. D. R.

EFFEMINACY OF THE AGE.

MR. JAMES PAYN says that "some boys are really missed at home." Well, Mr. Punch has observed that some fond and foolish parents tog and tittivate their boys till they look behind like girls. But to "miss" them, as though they were maidens or barmaids is too To adapt Ko-Ko's celebrated song, he would say:

A boy may wear his hair in curls, or bear a pudding face,
Some mothers, as you wist, that folly can't resist!

Of true boy in dress and manners they may leave him scarce a trace,
But he never should be "missed"-he never should be "missed."
Maternal idiots molly-coddle little lads they own,

Till they're girlish in demeanour, and effeminate in tone,
But the mater who her "TOMMY" spoils, and dresses like a guy,

Till he doesn't think he crickets, and has no desire to try;

Is a silly, weak anomaly who ought to be well hissed;

Boys never should be "missy," and they never should be "missed."

MRS. R. is delighted. "My youngest niece," she says, "has lately become engaged to a very illegible young man."