IRELAND'S OPPORTUNITY. Erin (to Mercy) :-"SURE IT'S MIGHTY KIND OF MY SISTER ENGLAND-BUT I HOPE IT'S NOT ALL SHE'S GOING TO DO FOR ME!" [And perhaps if England would do her Justice, we should hear no more of disaffection. VOLUNTEERING ADVICE. *k*ngt*n) :-" COME, SIR, THE VOLUNTEERS WERE NOT INTENDED AS TOYS FOR HADN'T YOU BETTER TEAR UP THAT CIRCULAR OF YOURS?" ALL.-Then away to Dead Man's Gully! SCENE THE LAST.-Dead Man's Gully. ALL THE CHARACTERS (to each other).-YOU here!!! [Pitches him into a waterfall (Everybody discharges pistols. General engagement. Defeat of both sides. and concluding tableau suggestive of the TRIUMPH OF PHYSICAL, SUPERIORITY. Curtain. OURSELVES.-Disconnected nonsense, made up of Never Too Late to Mend, Flying Scud, and the tossing halfpenny from Box and Cox. Very well played by MR. EMERY, but he should remember that he is duckfingered; nicely by MR. E. PRICE, pleasantly by MISS E. TERRY— poor Miss SAUNDERS, the cleverest lady-low-comedian on the stage, has nothing to do. Piece very handsomely mounted, and scenery all good. Iron-ical. A FRIEND of ours has been reading the prospectus which was wrapped round his bottle of Diastatized Iron. In it he has found it stated that the preparation in question is produced by making a certain vegetable seed absorb a solution of iron prepared in such a manner that the iron is made organic-become vitalized by the diastasis of the germinating grain. Struck by the novelty and simplicity of the operation, he has sown some of the preparation in his garden and is looking forward to a crop of nails or a growth of fire-irons. Put that in your Pipe! THE Advertiser the other day gave an account of the appearance of poisonous flies in Transylvania, and stated that the farmers have to keep their beasts shut up, with large fires burning round their sheds to keep off the winged pests. It added:-"The men in charge of the fires have the greatest difficulty in saving themselves from the venemous attacks of these insects, and find tobacco the best preservative." What will DEAN CLOSE say to that? Perhaps the discovery may convert him. We should like to see "a wreath "-of smoke" so gracefully curl" around his head-and no flies! A Suggestion. There IN these days of realistic dramas, we think it would not be a bad "sensation" for the proprietor of the Holborn Theatre to arrange the performance of the Antipodes so that the actors should walk about inhabitants of the Antipodes are doing so at this very moment, as we head-downwards, à la OLMAR. There can be no difficulty, as the should see if we could look through the globe beneath us. would be nothing in this that the audience could object to, since they do not know, owing to the confused construction of the piece, whether they are standing on their heads or their heels. We gladly place the suggestion at the disposal of MR. TOM TAYLOR, who, it is notorious, is always ready to take a hint-or anything else he can get-from any one (foreigners not excepted) for his "original" dramas. VERY APPROPRIATELY.-If Greece and Rome are represented at the French Exhibition, might not their productions be appropriately ranged in "class six”? INTERESTING TO ORNITHOLOGISTS. TIME.-Early Spring. Jan:-"WEATHER'S TURNED MILD, TOM. I HEERD THE GOOKOO YES'DAY!" Tom:-"GIT 'LONG! A TWO-LEGGED GOOKOO, I RECK'N!" Jan:-"NOA, "TWASN'T. "TWAS A PROPER GOOKOO, I'LL ZWEAR!" OUR LIBRARY TABLE. GENIUS never dies! Like the Brahma of Hindoo fable, it may seem to perish, but it only migrates, to manifest itself-not always, it is true, with the same intensity-in new forms. In the bard of "100,000 welcomes" we catch a glimpse of the avatar of PYE; and the now forgotten author of an extinct book called The Season, was a little-not a TOM LITTLE, but a very little-replica of the obscure bard who first brought fame to Holywell-street. The book which suggests these observations is entitled Patriotic Part Songs, arranged and adapted by JAMES TILLEARD. It contains many fine songs and some good music. "Gaudeamus," ""The March of the Men of Harlech," "God Save the Queen"-with other popular lays-may well make up a good book of music, and MR. TILLEARD seems to have done his part carefully and well. But, though we can recommend the publication for these reasons, they are not the only grounds on which it earns our good word. "Ark of Freedom! Glory's Dwelling! A minor genius, untramelled by the necessities of rhyme, would have When France and Spain at dawning." Ordinary people would have hesitated to strike this glorious blow for freedom from the tyranny of rhyme. The author of "Trafalgar rushes in where they fear to tread. Genius solves the difficulty-pronounce "dawning" as if spelt "dorning" and the thing is done, and the shades of STERNHOLD and BRADY, TAIT and HOPKINS smile on the triumph of their intellectual offspring. The same artifice meets us in "Wellington," where "afar" and "hurrah" are wedded together, as if their marriage had been made in heaven instead of Cockaigne! We are We will close our notice with a quotation from "Wellington," which will exemplify the smoothness of MR. PALGRAVE'S versification as well as to the loftiness of his thoughts and style : We have long looked-and looked in vain-for a successor to the genius of STERNHOLD and HOPKINS-of TAIT and BRADY. For a long time we feared that the mantle-it was of fustian-which belonged to those great writers had not fallen upon anybody in our time. glad to hail MR. F. T. PALGRAVE as the intellectual heir of the two brace of bards we have named-he is TAIT and BRADY-he is STERNHOLD and HOPKINS, or rather those "two single gentlemen rolled into one," as our readers, we feel sure, will at once admit when they read his "poems" in the publication under notice. Some of the peculiarities of the old bards live again in these stirring lyrics. We trace their direct inspiration over and over again-when, as in "The Island" our poet speaks of " unfurling a light"-a figure which genius alone could suggest or when, with that lofty disregard for grammar which distinguished the ancient writers, he tells us in "England's Heroes," of people whose "life and death was glory" and "who conquered not though slain as he tells us in another verse, which is an original thought! "Dead men tell no tales" is an old saw-" Dead men win no battles" is a modern instance. In another poem, "a National Song," we have England thus apostrophised : "But his battle fields are over, and Peace crown'd his life: The hero of heroes: we hail bim : hurrah!" To be serious:-it would be too severe, perhaps, to insist that all who slay fat cattle should themselves be fat, but it is not too much to demand that no man should be considered qualified to mutilate the poems of great writers by omitting verses that are " rather ingenious than poetical," until he has proved that he has a sufficient acquaintance with the simplest rules of versification to preserve him from writing such despicable doggrel as CATNACH Would blush to be accused of, and Seven Dials would hasten to repudiate. |