THE BURLINGTON ARCADE.

BY OUR OCTOGENARIAN.

TIME, was Sir, by GEORGE, when in the society of wits and men of the world the very mention of the Arcade would call up reminiscences. I speak of the time when men lived in the Albany, Sir, and when they went to listen to songs, by GEORGE-I don't mean JULIA ST. GEORGE, but MADAME VESTRIS; I suppose, Sir, that's what you'd call a joke, but what in our time used to be known as a bong mow-to songs that no more resembled your abominable music-hall vulgar disgusting performances than the stable-boy costume of the present day is like the dignified and gentlemanly apparel that went out, I take it, with SIR JONAH BARRINGTON and ALMACK's, or at all events with FIELD MARSHAL THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. Why, Sir, there's nobody now has the decency to wear straps to his trousers except the young gentleman who is, I take it, an artist, and who may be seen sometimes walking along Pall Mall with legs that should strike shame into modern society, and remind me, by GEORGE, of my own when I was one of the company of bloods who might have been seen any night about Saint James's-street, or on their way to "The Finish," after the theatres. The Burlington Arcade was a favourite lounge of ours at that time, Sir, and some of the finest women in England, Sir, would be seen there at the jewellers' shops or the knick-knack places, and there was a beadle who upon my sacred honour was more after the pattern of a gentleman than your bucks of to-day. A gorgeous creature, Sir, who might be useful as a moral lesson, by GEORGE, against the levelling tendencies of the age, and with a manner that was copied, Sir, from the PRINCE REGENT, and, egad, not badly copied, neither; with a brown wig and small-clothes, and a way of waving his hand that survives only in the portraits of His GRACIOUS MAJESTY GEORGE THE

FOURTH, of which I have one now hanging up in my library, just over my little book-case of French novels, and a curious collection of knockers and front teeth, that I made in my wild days, when a sordid democracy had not succeeded in controlling the evening amusements of officers and gentlemen, or of curbing the eccentricities of genius. I should like to know, Sir, what has become of that beadle, and whether he has retired into private life with a testimonial. Perhaps he has been accommodated with apartments at Hampton Court, where he waits on the ladies of my time who may have found an asylum there. There is no beadle now, Sir; at all events, not at the time I make my daily rounds from the front of the National Gallery, along Pail Mall, and so by Webb's Hotel, where I have my morning dash of "pick me up," and down Piccadilly to the fruiterer's to look at the French pears at two guineas a dozen, and at the hampers at FORTNUM AND MASON's, which remind me of the days, Sir, when, by GEORGE, I tooled a four-in-hand down to Epsom, and called at the Burlington to take up a batch of beauties who have given place to but there, I'm too fond of the sex still to say a word, by GEORGE, against them, and I'll say this, Sir, for some of your modern women of fashion, that they are beginning to appreciate the modes that made them irresistible in my day, and are getting back as fast as possible to the killing costume of never mind how many years ago.

Journalistic Mems.

THE appearance of the Daily News as a penny paper is unavoidably delayed, Hox-ing to the time required for erecting the machinery. There is no foundation for the report that the Turkish journal, the Much-bir, is about to be incorporated with the Brewer's Journal.

A RUNNING COMMENTARY.

THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS:

A

BALLAD FROM HISTORY.

(Dedicated to James, Hannay, Esquire.)

Our minstrel went first when we charg'd on the foe,
And sang "Not for ROLAND, O dear, not for Ro!"
And GOURNAY and MONTFORT, and many a brave knight,
Join'd loud in the chorus and rush'd to the fight;

And DUKE WILLIAM exclaim'd nearly stunn'd by the noise, "Faith you're all out of tune, but O! go it, my boys!""

VOL. VII.

And didn't we go it?

THE Wine Trade Review notices that DAVID GARRICK and MR. TOOLE both quitted the wine trade for the stage. Too many actors take their whine on with them.

Cry of Independence.

IN asserting her independence, Hungary is about to adopt a new battle cry, which we are given to understand is henceforth to be, "Not for Joseph."

The Saxon went down

With the rays of the sunlight let into his crown;
'Twas a matter of course those illiterate churls,
Should go back before Normandy barons and earls;
But the cads they fought well till KING HAROLD fell dead.
Through his "peeper" an arrow had enter'd his head.

The battle was over and England was won,

Wot ye well there were bumpers at setting of sun.
In Doomsday, our blue-book, you'll see how the land,
Was portion'd amongst us by Royal Command,
So boys fill a beaker of mead and we'll sing
The praises of BILLY THE NORMAN, our King!

LIVERY OF SEISIN.

TO THE EDITOR OF FUN.

SIR,-This is an age of invention and discovery. If you doubt me, ask TIMES. My grandmother would have set you down as an idiot if you had spoken to her about a sewing-machine. All that inventive genius wants in these days is an impulse-the suggestion of a wantand it immediately creates something to meet the requirement.

I have therefore much pleasure, in the interests of science, civilization, manufactures, and my own comfort, in opening a new field for the inventive genius. I have a liver, sir, a torpid liver-in fact, torpid is hardly the word. It has been attacked with all the drugs in the Pharmacopoeia, but with no result. The faculty have given it up in despair, and I am convinced that nothing but a terrier-dog, taken internally, will ever succeed in shaking it as it requires. Well, sir! we have beef lozenges, the strength of an ox, in short, condensed for the convenience of deglutition. Do you mean to tell me that there is no way of rendering a terrier swallowable? Nonsense! I present the suggestion to the inventive genius of Great Britain, and all I ask in return is the first dog-for-deglution, and I should like it silvered. Yours, etc.,

A LIVERYMAN.

THE SPOON-BAIT.-Croquet. | TIDY TIPPLE.-Spruce Beer. PAPER COLLAR.-Serving a Writ.

THE DRESS AND THE DREAM. A Story in Three Shudders.

I. THE DUFFER.

ALGERNON LARDY was a poet and a spoon. The terms are ineongruous, but not contradictory.

FAIRY FOLLY hovered about his walks, and from his earliest childhood marked him for her own.

He was beloved by his sister's governess, and great at WATTS'S hymns. What wonder that in those early days he was scorched with the fire of poetry. It must indeed be a prosaic child who can resist the fascination of the fatal doctor, or the tender blandishments of kindly poets BRADY and TATE.

We will pass over the eccentricities of ALGERNON's childhood. To sit at an open window in a night-shirt, composing sonnets to the moon is not an enviable occupation. But we may have done the same thing ourselves. In one important particular the boy ALGERNON may be fairly pronounced singular. Soothed by the silky softness of its caudal extremity, at the early age of six he dedicated a whole volume of poems to his grandmother's cat. This was indeed a recognition of genius.

Years rolled away, and ALGERNON grew up. It is an extraordinary circumstance, but years will roll away, and ALGERNONS will grow up. Detestable in his childhood, he was even more hateful in his youth. In addition to his other ills, he became pragmatical and spotty. Boys will be boys.

Still years rolled away, and still the poet grew. At least, his hair did. The poet may be pronounced to have been dumpy, if not insignificant.

Careless of a greasy coat-collar and a generally dishevelled appearance, ALGERNON LARDY discovered that he had an aching void. He tore his long hair, and tossed about on his tumbled bed, but still he had an aching void.

A generous friend interposed to fill up the hateful gap. CORNELIUS MULLANY was determined that society should not lose one of its brightest stars. Pardon his enthusiasm. He was of Celtic origin. At eight o'clock in the evening of 10th January, ALGERNON LARDY received the following important document:

Mrs. Parkins,

At Home.

Brixton Hill.

Eight o'clock. Small and early.

An answer will oblige.

The poet sighed, and wrote a sonnet to an imaginary being. 2.-THE DRESS.

Now PARKING was a publisher. The morning before MRS. PARKINS'S dance, he had sent to a neighbouring butterman an unsold edition of LARDY's poems. I am in error, it was an edition minus three copies. Three bosom-friends of the poet having been privately supplied by the poet with cash, ordered The Trails of a Wanderer, in three distinct suburbs of the metropolis.

How sacred are the ties of friendship!

ALGERNON only fell down four times in the first valse, and tore ten dresses in the first quadrille. Practice makes perfect, and why should

Mr. C. (gravely):-"FINE HEALTHY WEATHER, DOCTOR!"

THEY met and met again. The fated muslin was washed, turned, dodged, contrived, altered, patched, and pieced. Wherever the lovers met the muslin appeared in some form or other.

MARIA was not rich, but a good manager.

She certainly must have been a clever girl, for she induced ALGERNON to ent his hair, and instructed bim in the mysteries of the three-step valse. There is no good mincing the matter. They married. Years rolled away more rapidly than ever; so rapidly, indeed, as to drag along with them every atom of poetry out of the poet's composition. The dark realities of life deaden sentiment, and ALGERNON's married life was one long fight between the rival claims for payment of the butcher and the baker. He was tortured by mental calculations of the relative advantages of the retail grocer and the Civil Service store. The grocer won the day, for ready money was not a luxury of which the poet boasted.

Dr. B. (with a sigh):-"AH! DELIGHTFUL, ISN'T IT?"

So days and years rolled on, and ALGERNON LARDY became a middle-aged, prosaic nonentity.

MARIA did her duty by him, and nagged his head off. In spite of her harsh ways, there was still a scrap of poetry left in ALGERNON'S composition. He dreamed one night of the days that were. That night MRS. LARDY was awakened from her slumbers by a terrific crash. ALGERNON was not by her side. Chairs and wardrobe, dresses and towel-horse were flung about the room in reckless confusion.

And where was ALGERNON?

Horror of horrors! He was waltzing madly about the room with the dressing-table!

No, he was not mad. She had done it all.

Sweet memories lingered yet about the well-remembered muslin dress, converted now into a petticoat to hide the hideousness of a plain deal dressing-table! He loved her still! And the husband and wife were reconciled.

THE END.

The Seat of Learning.

SCRIBLERUS was endeavouring to console a friend who had been severely handled by the reviewers. "'Tis useless" said SCRIBLERUS, "to inveigh against the critic, who can but write according to his bilious snarling, he has only been writing according to his liver!" lights." "But in this instance" replied his friend "to judge from his

Horticultural Note.

A FRIEND of ours who is devoted to his plants tells us that he is convinced that certain flowers of his acquaintance are called "Sinnerarias" because they are such sinners in the matter of bringing greenfly into the conservatory.

THE LAND FOR THE COMIC.-Cape Grin-ch?