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"ROBINSON CRUSOE" AT THE HAYMARKET. OUR readers will, we feel sure, be glad to learn that the performance on the 6th instant was completely successful, and that a handsome sum has been realised for MRS. GRAY. Of the merits or demerits of the burlesque or its actors we cannot of course speak, but we have to acknowledge the most kindly recognition of our efforts by the Press generally. FUN, as a comic paper, has occasionally to say sharp things about its contemporaries, which might well beget enmities; but to the honour of journalism in every instance we have met with more than fairness-with generosity!

Our labour of love over, we have only to express our gratitude to those who assisted us in it. The idea of a performance was mooted at Christmas, but circumstances to which we need not further allude interfered; and in the end the burlesque had to be written and produced in three weeks. Our readers will judge from this how indefatigably MR. ROBERT SOUTAR must have worked as stage manager, and what an amount of labour MR. WALLERSTEIN must have bestowed on the arrangement of the music. We were-and ever shall be indebted to MR. O'CONNOR and his assistants for the scenery he painted for us; the Island was a masterpiece of scenic humour. MESSRS. MAY, SIMMONS, and NATHAN must also have our warm thanks for the gorgeous dresses, and MR. CLARKSON for the miraculous head-gear, which gave such grotesque effect to a performance to which Miss FURTADO 80 charmingly lent the redeeming graces.

To those members of the theatrical profession who generously gave us their services in Our Wife and The Goose with the Golden Eggs, we owe a debt of gratitude for allowing us "to slip our little bit o' nonsense under their honours' kiver," as WINIFRED JENKINS puts it. We would also record our sincere acknowledgments of the zealous co-operation afforded by all connected with the Haymarket, both in front of the house and behind the scenes.

Town Talk.

BY THE SAUNTERER IN SOCIETY.

NAVAL REVIEW, a Great Invasion of Belgian Volunteers, a Sultan, "with which is incorporated" an unprecedented display of fireworks at the Crystal Palace, with I should be afraid to say how many more brilliant dissipations connected with each and all of these! I rather fancy this is enough to finish up the season with brilliancy, not to mention that we have a Tory Government passing a Reform Bill of such wildly democratic tendencies that the advanced Liberals are all shaking in their shoes. Such times may well be heralded by portents, and no one, it is to be presumed under the circumstances, turned grey in a single night upon hearing that the gigantic sno, I mean, firm of PETO, BETTS, and others, has kindly consented to allow itself to be conducted through the Court of Bankruptcy by a body of friends. The bankrupts' solicitor set the ball rolling. MESSRS. COLEMAN, TURQUAND, and Co. are accountants in the matter-it being a convenience, of course, that MR. COLEMAN is one of the auditors of the L. C. and D R. The official assignee is MR. E. W. EDWARDS-late director of the L. C. and D. R. The first meeting of creditors will be held in Commissioner HOLROYD'S Court-a MR. G. F. HOLROYD, said to be the Commissioner's son, being also late director of the L. C. and D. R. The bankrupts evidently desire to act in accordance with the old maxim, which directs people not to wash their dirty linen in public. Whether the creditors of the firm will be as well satisfied that this very private and select laundry will "wash" is a thing that remains to be seen.

A ROYAL warrant is always a pleasant study for lovers of the English language. There has just been issued such a document touching "Increase of Pay in the Army." It is given at "our" Court of St. James's, and signed, "John S. Pakington." It deals minutely with 48. 4d. and 28. 94d., and 28. 04. It treats discursively of troop corporal major, and kettle drummer, saddler corporal, and shoeing smith. It is altogether a diffuse and delightful document. But when one reads it, parallel passages will suggest themselves. One cannot help contrasting

a

twopenny-halfpenny increase of pay with the utter lack of care and decency, which left the poor fellows at Hounslow from morn till night without provisions, yet within easy distance of London. Nor is that the only thing. Some one belonging to a crack regiment wrote recently to the United Service Gazette, and here is a summary of what he says:

"If any vindictive underling will put a man's name down in the 'Minors' every day, the strange result may be obtained of a good, obedient soldier kept at punishment-drill all the year round. A towel or blanket with a wrinkle in it, a brush placed on the wrong side of the boots under the cot-these are samples of the minor irregularities' which, if reported, subject a man to so much punishment drill, or club drill, or third-class drill. The writer has seen a man with twenty years' service, and four good-conduct badges, at club drill. He has seen men who respectively, at recruits' drill, which consists principally of abuse. Such is the had volunteered into the regiment, with seven and eighteen years' service dread of this martinet system that, we are told, not ten men, on the average, in this unhappy regiment, undid their beds at night through a whole winter, for fear they should not have time to fold them properly before turning out to drill before daybreak."

My dear SIR JOHN PAKINGTON-"if he will allow me to call him so"-we may give all sorts of increase of pay at "our" Court of St. James's, but as sure as our name is "JOHN S. PAKINGTON," while this neglect and this cruelty are permitted, we may whistle for recruits. THE EMPEROR OF THE FRENCH has gilt his gingerbread with infinite trouble, and at no small expense. His gingerbread doll, made in the image of Peace and all a-flutter with Dutch metal, must have had a good deal of the gilding rubbed off by the news of MAXIMILIAN'S and left to be murdered, that man was the late EMPEROR OF MEXICO. death. If ever a man was placed in the midst of a gang of assassins Experiments in civilization are charming and interesting, but your civilizing chemist when he shuts up his laboratory, should at least be careful to remove his utensils The French Emperor with a French army placed MAXIMILIAN-who did not seek the Mexican crown-on the throne of Mexico, and the French Emperor should never have withdrawn the French army without also withdrawing MAXIMILIAN from the false position into which he had seduced him. That is the plain state of the case, I take it!

So "Bart." is simply a synonym for barter-the "open hand" of the Baronetcy nothing better than the greedy claw of ambitious snobbism. MR. COLE is to be raised to the Baronetcy-or rather that (in spite of some esclandres) noble order is to be dragged down to him. Talk of your BRIGHTS and BEALESES who want to degrade the aristocracy of which we are all at heart proud, though we may grumble at times; they do not-cannot inflict on it one tithe of the harm that is done when toadyism gets promoted in this way. Lord Mayors who do infinitely better things than the Beadle of the Boilers, have to be contented with a knighthood. Would not an upper footman's place at Buckingham Palace have met the case?

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ODE TO THE COUNTRY:
BY A COMIC WRITER.
FOR pensive bards it's very well
To sing of wooded hill and dell,
The cornland's scarlet poppy,
The hedgerow elm, the trysting tree,
The prattling brook-but then you see
It isn't comic copy.

You praise the serious poet's words
When in his lay the song of birds
He tenderly rehearses.
The soaring warbler, who the dark
Disperses, is not quite the lark

You want in comic verses.

His muse can chant the moos of cows, As in the pasture-land they browse, And give you deep enjoyment. Though cattle-language low may be, It's not low comedy, you see,

And that is my employment. The country may be very well, And suit your grand, poetic swell, But if by cruel fate you're A comic writer driven to beNo joke, I fancy, will you see In poking fun at nature.

Hai-reemarkably Good!

THE Sultan has made a joke! Passing the shop of a well-known eoiffeur, where chignons were exposed for sale, he inquired if it was a hair-'em.

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THERE is not a more charming book in its way than Boswell's Life of Johnson. It is not a book to sit down and read through, but a "companion volume," one to keep on your bedroom table, where you can take it up for an odd half-hour, or during that mauvais quart d'heure, when sleep will not come at your call. To say nothing of the interest one takes in reading about the literary society of the times, and the wonderful tyranny the Doctor exercised over his circle, there is something peculiarly attractive for the student of character, in the part BOSWELL plays. No writer ever won such suicidal immortality as Bozzy Few would gibbet themselves as fools in order to ensure posthumous recognition-would rather be kicked by posterity than allowed to pass unnoticed. And Boswell's Johnson being such a book as we have described, we are glad to see that a cheap edition of it has been issued by

Messrs. ROUTLEDGE and SONS. More than five hundred pages, good |

type, capital paper, neat binding, and illustrations-and all for the small charge of three-and-sixpence! The same firm also publishes a sixpenny edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and Mr. MECHI's Farm Balance Sheets and Lectures, as one of their "books for the country," and a most useful one, too, to those who are agriculturally inclined. But it contains a good deal of sound sense, and so its perusal will benefit those who are not on agriculture bent. Of Mrs. Brown's Visit to the Paris Exhibition what need we say more than that that estimable lady is as pleasantly communicative as ever, and quite as prone to buy experience in the dearest market and sell it in the cheapest. In Miss Tomkins's Intended, Mr. SKETCHLEY strikes out a new line, in which he succeeds admirably, telling a story with quiet humour, heightened here and there with homely pathos in a way that will commend the book to all readers.

ANOTHER new magazine, Tinsley's Magazine, is announced. It is to open with a story by Dr. RuesELL, and a story by Mr. YATES, who, we believe, is to be editor. If he conducts it as well as he has Temple Bar, the proprietor will not have to complain of want of popularity. The writers whose names are mentioned in connection with the new venture are another guarantee of excellence. It is announced that Fashion and work plates will be given with it to propitiate the ladiesa bold experiment. Good literature has never been tried with these supplements, the magazines which supply such feminine requisites being as a rule contemptible from a literary point of view.

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BOWLED, Sir, bowled !" "Hit, Sir-oh, finely hit, Sir!" "Fielded!" Does the reader recollect these war-cries of Eton and Harrow contending on the classic arena of Lord's? If not, he has missed, during all that has yet elapsed of his shockingly incomplete and uncultivated existence, one of the prettiest sights that England has to show him. If, however, like a sensible man and an honest cricketer, he has gone up to the School Match every year, he will be glad to hear of a pleasantly gossipping little book on the subject. The Public School Matches and Those we Meet There" is published by MESSRS. ROUTLEDGE. The author, "An Old Wykehamist," prefers to be anonymous; but ho gives his initials," F. G.," and those who are specially interested in the matter may easily hunt him down by looking at the list of Wykehamist elevens some six-and-twenty years ago. To less ardent inquirers after truth, we may simply say that the book is one of the pleasantest of its kind that has been published for many a day. Its humour is genial, unforced, and eminently sympathetic; the author's thorough knowledge of the grand old game is shown by incidental touches much more effectively than by any formal or pedantic preachments; and no good cricketer will like it the less because the author gushes into Latin verses at the end. Cricketing and scholarship have gone well together in many other cases than that of "F. G." A better book for those glorious old country parsons who come up to Town to see the School Match could hardly be desired; and as there can scarcely be less than three thousand British parsons present at Lord's on the great days, the mere clerical circulation of the book should be something enormous. Apart from its cricketing chapters, there are some sketches of school-life at Winchester in the old days which are eminently bright, fresh, and readable. In a word, the book is one by a clever and genial gentleman on an unhackneyed and most interesting theme.

COVENT-GARDEN.

BY A LOVER OF POE-ETRY.

A GARDEN of gardens, it teaches

The bard, ever blatant, to bless

The pumpkins, the plums, and the peaches,
The salads not easy to dress;-
Pears, pumpkies, and pulpiest peaches,
Camellia, and cabbage, and cress,
The pumpkins, the pippins, the peaches,
Cut cabbage, and crisply-curled cress!

Oh, of luscious luxurious lunches,

The poet loves one lunch, and that's Of bananas in bountiful bunches, And melons as big as your hats, Black currants, bananas in bunches, And cocoa-nuts, mothers of matsFor of science if you are a lover You'll know they're the mothers of mats, That the cocoa-nut's cortical cover Machinery makes into mats,

Into fuscous and fibre-fringed mats.

Painful Nonsense.

déjeûner :Ar the opening of the Alexandra Orphanage, we read that after the

"Other toasts were given and speeches made. Mr. Tite, the honorary architect, and Judge Payne, were among the speakers-the latter proposing The Ladies,' and reciting one of the humorous rhymes of which he has, on similar occasions, composed and delivered more than two thousand.”

Really the Humane Society, or the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, ought to prosecute such a bad Judge as he must be who has so often inflicted PAYNE on his fellow-creatures!

A Chip.

Ir is a well-known fact that in America the greatest amount of drunkenness prevails in those States where the Maine Liquor Law is in force. This is doubtless owing to the number of unlicensed "whittlers" there.

City Intelligence.

WE see that there are to be great" Fes"-tivities in Guildhall on the occasion of the Sultan's visit. We do not believe, however, that it is the intention of his Highness, as has been rumoured, to present the Lord Mayor with the Order of the "Turkish Bath!"

Jedburgh Justice.

JEDBURGH has been doing justice to the good which Sabbatarianism and the Forbes-Mackenzie Act have done in Scotland. A meeting has been held there to consider what steps can be taken to repress the immorality of the young people of the town. It was stated there, over and over again, that boysmere lads-were seen reeling about the streets on Sunday in a horrible state of intoxication, and using the worst language. One speaker, who was, by the way, the most sensible and practical man at the meeting, said that the immorality in Jedburgh was very bad, but he did not think it was worse than other towns! This is a charming admission for an "unco' guid country like Scotland! Are all Scotch boys carboys of whiskey?

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Latest from the Lords.

IT is believed that the Peers will reject the lodger franchise when the Reform Bill comes before them. If so, they will have a difficulty with JOHN BULL, who is the lodger-of many complaints against them already.

Really Wanted. To judge from recent disclosures, we should think that Railway Companies might copy theatrical companies, and insert, with the difference in one syllable only, an advertisement often seen in the Era. They should advertise, "Wanted, Principles."

UN FAIT ACCOMPLI: The Dramatic Fête.

To Arms.

THE Court Journal states that "eight of the senior Generals of our army are bedridden-three speechless, all well past eighty." What does that matter? If the old boys were called on they would appear"in arms,"-it's their second childhood with them.

AN EYE TO BUSINESS. Painter (addressing fellow-visitor to the "Zoo"):-" LOR, BILL, WHAT A STUNNER HE'D BE TO DO DOWN THE SIDE OF A 'OUSE!"

Vich must be Perfection.

MESSES. VEITCH AND SONS, the well-known Chelsea nurserymen, have introduced a new pea this season. In recognition of the eminent services of our well-beloved COLE AND Co., and to preserve a name the world would not willingly let die, they have named their new variety THE BROMPTON BOILERS.

The Game of Goose.

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A WORD FOR A Blow.- Half-a-crown -to Sheerness and back.

THE Minister of Agriculture has addressed a circular to the mayors of France, enjoining them to punish all people caught destroying small birds. He is quite right. The sparrow-clubs have no defence for their destructiveness. They cannot even plead that the anserines (for a sparrow-club is but a goose-club) prey upon small birds.

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"RIFLEMEN, FORM!"

THE RIGHT FORM FOR RECEIVING A FRIENDLY INVASION.

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