TIME was when no gentleman's education could be considered complete until he had attained some reputation as a judge of Port Wine. The levelling tendencies of the age, Sir, have relegated this as well as some other accomplishments necessary to the thorough man of the world, to the limbo of oblivion. Egad, yes-the limbo of oblivion: that was the proper way of expressing one's self when I was myself a young man with some pretensions to being a buck, and hang me if I alter my literary style to suit any new-fangled notions, to please any of your young jackanapes contributors, who may call me an old "put" if they like, or whatever other word stands for that expression in your modern vocabulary of thieves' Latin and stable slang. I heard one of them the other day giggling behind my back as I led the way to the west vault in the London Docks. Why, Sir, the Dock Cellars were an institution before he was born, and I remember very well how a party of us went down in poor old JEMMY TWITCHER's time, and how we were likely to have spent the night there, egad. For it was considered the thing, then, Sir, to give every man that went down a bit of candle stuck at the end of a piece of hoop, and for one of the party who had a "Friend at Court" (you understand ?) to begin with a few glasses of some of the old sherry, and to lead on to the old portsome that had been left in bond, and the warrants lost for ever so many years. By the time that each man had got to the base of the Great Kiln, which is called the Queen's Tobacco-Pipe, most of the party, by Jove, could see a couple of candles apiece; till we, who had stronger heads and didn't mix (twig ?), blew them out; and then says the cooper who had us in tow, "Lights out, gents; but keep your hand against the wall and follow." Hey! That was 'diverting! They went round and round the kiln for hours, and a pretty state some of us used to be in when we got into the air again. There are no such gentlemanly and friendly pastimes now, Sir; it's a hanged utilitarian age, and people don't even go to see the cellars. I don't wonder at

that, for the old bonded wine must have given out long ago; and there's no broaching a cask here and there wherever you like to call for it. Egad, Sir! If some of that old particular bonded was made up from inferior when it began to run low, and if the inferior was made up from next inferior, and so on till they came down to all-ages mixings, and even dock water, no gentleman's stomach could long stand such a blending; and I can easily imagine that if some of the warrants should turn up, after all, from people who have left their '24 or their '48 to ripen, there must be the deuce to pay, and, to use a nautical expression common in my day, "no pitch hot." However, Sir, I was about to say when interrupted by this, as I think, excessively lively diversion, that egad, there's no port wine now, Sir. Why, hang me if wine-merchants even believe in "beeswing," and some of 'em have even gone so far as to keep their butts and hogsheads not in cellars, but in light ranges of warehouses in a temperature kept at one uniform pitch by hot air pipes, or some confounded contrivance. I really couldn't help laughing the other day when one of these individuals on whom I called in Lime-street (I believe he sells claret at less than six shillings a bottle, which is what I consider to be the gentlemanly price)-when he told me, I say, that wine wasn't improved by darkness, nor by what he was pleased to call dirt, nor by those wonderful growths which all of us (us of the old school at least) have seen clinging to casks and bottles, and which have completely draped the very arches of the dock vaults. Why, Sir, I remember the time when the bottles would be brought to table enveloped inches thickyes, begad, inches, Sir-in these wonderful substances, which are not, I am informed, edible, but which are very interesting examples, Sir, of what, by Jove, nature will do if left to herself, Sir, in a cellar. Want of space forbids my enlarging, so I will defer any present discussion of the characteristics of dry and fruity ports.

OUR LIBRARY TABLE.

IN Vivien and Guinevere, MESSRS. MOXON AND CO. carry on the series of Idylls of the King, illustrated by GUSTAVE DORE, which they commenced last year with the publication of Elaine. The new volume, as splendidly got up as its predecessor, with fine paper, clear type, and handsome binding, is far beyond it in respect of illustration. We cannot tell whether it is that the subjects appeal more to DORE's artistic tendencies, or that he has become better acquainted with TENNYSON's poetry and the Arthurian cycle, but it is certain that the present illustrations are at once grander and more accurate than those of Elaine. The steel engravings are admirable specimens of the skill of the first steel-engravers of the day, who have had no light task to translate DoRL's drawings, with the material in which they work. DORE's genius is essentially that of a wood-draughtsman, in our opinion, and we, therefore, giving all due credit to the steel-engravers, confess our preference for the photographs, taken from the original drawings, with which one issue of this splendid work is furnished. The "Disembarkation" and the "Sea-fight" in Vivien, and the "Terrace Scene" and "Dawn of Love" in Guinevre are admirable examples of the great Frenchman's genius. With regard to the poems they illustrate, we need only say that we presume there are no two opinions as to the fact that the Idylls are the grandest things the Laureate has written.

MESSRS. WARNE AND Co. follow up their last year's beautiful gift book, The Spirit of Praise, with Golden Thoughts from Golden Fountains, an exquisite specimen of engraving and typography. The whole volume is printed in a sepia-brown ink, which does away with the harsh contrast of black and white which so often pains the artist, who finds in his engraved work none of the half-tones which existed so profitably on the block. The inexperienced in printing are not aware of the difficulty of keeping the ink one uniform tint-a difficulty they would not be led to suspect from the aspect of the book before us. The title-page is as delicate and beautiful as a bit of Maltese filagree jewellery, and the capital letters and finials abound in grace and

originality of design. The illustrations are by the first artists of the day. MESSRS. HOUGHTON, SMALL, J. LAWSON, PINWELL, and DALZIEL contribute figure subjects, while the landscapes, which come with a rare tenderness in the new colour, are by MESSRS. NORTH and BURTONneed we say more? The engraving is worthy at once of the book and the well-known firm from which it emanates. The literary part of the book consists of a wise selection from serious and religious writers of all ages. The only thing out of place among them will be found to be some halting and not altogether apposite verses about an Australian stockman.

The Champagne Country (ROUTLEDGE AND SONS) is an amusing book by a thorough-going American, who cannot, of course, talk reasonably, or even decorously, when he gets upon Old World notabilities and creeds. But he is very instructive and entertaining when these subjects are not present to irritate him, and when he is talking about the growth of the vine and the manufacture of champagne. Our readers may safely take a glass of "the sparkling" with him, for he is a good judge of wine, but we should not recommend them to propose to him the health of his Holiness or of the old aristocracy.

Standard Quotations.

"I GIVE thee all, I can no "-MORE. "A famous man was Robin"-HOOD.

"If I were King of France, or, far better "-POPE OF ROME.* "The ploughboy is whooping"-ANON.

"A poet could not but be"-GAY. "And so does Mrs."-JOHNSON.

"It was a Friar of orders"-GRAY.

"Two of a trade can never agree."-This does not apply to gin and bitters.

• Alexander Pope was a Catholic.

Tobon Talk.

BY THE SAUNTERER IN SOCIETY.

WO! there can, I fear, be no use in disguising the fact that the LORD MAYOR has been "found out." The abandonment of ceremony and pageantry has induced people to pluck up courage and look behind the show-and the ghost turns out to be only a turnip and a sheet after all. This sounds like civic treason, but I fear it is only too trueas it is too sad-a case. I began to fear it when I learnt that "the worshipful" had been hooted from Cheapside to Westminster and back. I felt a growing conviction when I saw in Fleet-street the veritable shells of the eggs that

had been thrown at him. But I was convinced of it when I saw his portrait in one of the cheap illustrated papers, for I saw he had not been considered of sufficient importance to call for a new block. The picture of a previous Lord Mayor had been pressed into the service -his head had been removed (I don't mean actual decapitation but the cutting away of part of the engraving) and a fresh block let in, whereon the new Mayor's face had been drawn and cut. Unfortunately a little difference in the gauge of the tint and a few minor discrepancies remained to tell the story too plainly. No! I repeat with tears in my eyes (I have just been looking at the portrait again), the LORD MAYOR is no longer the great creature he was. A blow has been struck at the root of civic glory that must make the mace tremble and breathe faint hopes of emancipation to all the devoted turtles of Ascension Island.

WHAT between Fenian threats and Clerkenwell misconduct, the Government is like to be compelled to hang the Manchester prisoners, if it wished ever so much to pardon them. The misguided persons who think they aid the cause of the unhappy men, either by menace or by uproar, are just the people to confound clemency with cowardice. It would be well if MR. JONES or some of the legal gentlemen who have connected themselves with those who brought the name of the working men into disgrace at the Home Office the other day, would look after their protégés. What answer is left for the sincere friend of the working classes when their enemies can point to the fact that the official residence of an English Minister was invaded by a hooting and ill-mannered mob, calling itself a deputation of working men? And then, what nonsense they talked-it is giving it too high a name to call it treason. But how odd it is that these men, whose intelligence one may safely presume is more developed than their manners, should so utterly miss the issue, and rant about executions for political offences! The condemned men at Manchester were not tried even for political offences. They were tried, found guilty, and sentenced for as plain a case of coarse and cowardly murder as was ever committed. I have spoken up in this column often enough for the working classes, and for Ireland, and my sincerity should not be suspected, but I cannot help speaking out plainly on this subject, for I am grieved, as well as disgusted at what has taken place; a good cause has been often enough imperilled, throughout the Reform struggle, by the self-elected advocates who have upheld it, but it has received a grave injury now, and I am truly sorry for it. I dare say I shall be abused!

I PAID a visit the other day to the French Gallery, the sceptre of which the enterprising and courteous M. GAMBART has resigned into the able hands of MR. WALLIS. The exhibition contains a very fair show of Cabinet pictures by English and foreign artists, and a large and ambitious work by MRS. BENHAM HAY. The subject is a Florentine procession got up by SAVONAROLA for the burning of vanities-for further particulars please see catalogue, or better still, GEORGE ELIOT's incomparable Romola. The picture is a large and laborious work, full of

CORRECT SOLUTIONS OF ACROSTIC NO. 36, RECEIVED NOV. 20:-'Plyown P.; Edipus Brothers; A. W. C.; The Ghost; Martin; Three Monkeys etc.; Joe B.; B. T.; Moggins; J. B.; N. N. N.; Breakside and Hamish; Pluff; Lisa and Beppe; Tosh; Jas. M.; Knurr and Spell; O. K., Brighton; Emsworth; Peggy; Polar; L. C. T.; M. A. L. R.; Tiny; Margaret and Mary; J. R.; Dio dell'or; Faggot; B. A. T. C. D.; D. E. H.; A Windsor Pair; Tiverton; E. L. O.; H. C. B.; Harrow Weald; Nanny's Pet; 2 Duffers; Katie; Clunch; Artful Dodge; Sid; Long Jack; Knights Templar; Constance; Tall Comm.: Bella; Hurricane; Maniac; Cuta Youth; C. J. F. B.; E. M. H.; J. W. H.; Columbus; Darkey; Betsy H.; Gena A. D.; Engineers Out of Work; S. J. H.; Trissie; Ayz; B.; Zeta; Royal Hill; Llewellyn; 3 Cockroaches; Gleeful Guineapig; Hampshire to Wit; Red Mullet; L. M. N. R.; Bunnie Price; Hythe; Elton; In Copiâ Cautus; Valentine; Merry Sharps; Duo Horatii; 3 Carshalton Fools; Curly G.; Loughbro'; J. G. F. S.; Andrew; Holdfast; Tolkimsha; Peto; Special; Merryman; Pedro; Smedley Card Cadi; Timber; W. E. H. D.; F. W; A. J. A. W.; Gyp; Bokes; 89th.

Bully for You.

THE press of Madrid is writing down bull-fighting. But the motive is not humanity but economy. It seems that bull-fighting costs the nation about two hundred thousand pounds per annum, so the papers have determined to take the bull by the horns. We wish them success, no matter what their motive is, for the extinction of the brutal sport will be "a good Mad-riddance of bad rubbish."

NOTES BY AN OLD GENTLEMAN UNBORN.

(COMMUNICATED THROUGH A YOUTHFUL ANCESTOR.) THE venison riots in the south-west of England suggest many curious reflections. The price of deer's flesh, taking the average throughout Great Britain, is about thirty-five shillings and sixpence a pound, for the best parts, and is as low as twenty-six or even twenty-four shillings for inferior portions of the beast. These figures are quoted from market lists which do not differ considerably, from one end of the land to another; but, if anything, they tell in favour of those very districts where complaints have taken a threatening form. The price of venison is lower than it was this time last year, and only a shilling a pound higher than at the same period of the year before last. Wages certainly have not fallen. The earnings of an ordinary labourer, which we may put at something like thirty pounds a week, or ten pounds a day, assuming the number of working-days in a week to be three, cannot be called bad. Many a curate with a large family struggles on from year to year on a slenderer stipend, eking out his haunch of pony or ribs of venison with turtle and other things at which the labourer turns up his nose. There is really no excuse, in the present scale of market prices, for a popular show of discontent. A few kinds of provisions are dearer than we might wish them to be; such, for instance, as kittens and snakes; but they are scarcely necessaries, and if working-men would be content to eat turkey, pheasant, blackcock, ptarmigan, and other wholesome though not costly food-nay, sometimes to overcome their. prejudice against ortolans, which are none the worse because they may be had almost for the asking, and are a staple item in prison and workhouse dietaries-there would be no need of any outcry on the score of scarcity.

I have before pointed out the unreasonableness of objections to eating the flesh of elephants. Repeatedly have I dined off elephant, and can truly say that it is quite as palatable as horse or chimpanzee. Walking yesterday with Lord and Lady on the terrace of Tower Hill, my lord pointed out the spot where the Mint stood in his father's time, and observed that there are persons now living who can remember the days before a metallic currency was abolished, and when gold and silver were still called the "precious metals." This puts one in mind of the frauds lately discovered in connection with the Hyde Park railings, which, for reasons of economy, were to have been made of silver instead of bronze. Suspicion was first excited by the great weight of the rails; and one of them, being tested, was found to be merely gold, with a coating of silver upon it. I hope that the contractors who were guilty of this nefarious proceeding will not escape punishment.

AGAIN!

AGAIN the Parliament's in swing,
And scandal rife at BOODLE'S-
Again the giants have their fling,
And scarify the noodles.
Again the lobby's full of bores,
And agents full of papers,

And CRANBORNE Scowls and RUSSELL Snores,
While OSBORNE cuts his capers.
Again tuft-hunters button-hole-
Your Irishman has failings-
Again does ELCHо fire at COLE,

And CowPER "slates" the railings.
Again poor WHALLEY plays the fool-
Will nobody unseat him?-
And Dizzy still keeps very cool,
While GLADSTONE longs to eat him!
Again with heavy heart and head
Reporters sit and scribble-
Again old members sigh for bed

When special pleaders quibble-
Again great promises are broke-
And members dine at seven,
Though ragged beggars starve on "toke,"
And paupers cry to heaven!
Again is left the country home-

The gun, and basket-carriage,
And mothers long for Nice and Rome,
And daughters sigh for marriage.
Again do Folly's bells and cap

Go splashing through the gutters,
Again hall-porters take a nap,

And paper from the shutters.
Again come little days and nights,

Rich dinners, indigestion;
The jolly friends, the silly fights-
Again comes back the question-
Allotted days for work we keep,

And calculate their number;
They wake us from our beauty sleep,
And rob us of our slumber!

AN ECHO.

We should really have thought that THOMAS HOOD's verses, begining:

"No sun, no moon;

No morn, no noon;

No dawn, no dusk, no proper time of day,"

and proceeding through a host of negatives to the sum total of visible darkness, the aggregate nothingness comprised in the word "November,"-would have been too well known for the most unscrupulous plagiarist to hope that any attempt at appropriation could possibly pass undetected. Such an attempt, however, appeared in Echoes of the Clubs the other day, the very name of the original poem being conveyed. This is not the first time these verses have been "annexed"-they were scribbled on some prison wall by a scamp of a cadger, who was credited with the authorship by many papers. DR. WYNTER quoted this garbled version in a paper in Good Words, and dubbed the tramp "the laureate of the beggars" :-and DR. WYNTER should have known better and should have been more careful, having himself fallen a some years since appeared an article on "Mourning Establishments," victim to the plagiarist. For in the feuilleton of the Illustrated Times sent in as original by some one in Ireland-and paid for, before that irrepressible" constant reader wrote to inform the Editor that it was

a crib from Social Bees. But the joke did not end there, for a yet longer memory, referring back, discovered resemblance between the Social Bee essay, and a sketch in Hood's Magazine (to which, to make the coincidence more extraordinary, DR. WYNTER was a contributor) entitled "The House of Mourning, by the Editor."

Tell It to the Marines.

clusively to the Horse Marines, we reply-Call at Whitehall and make To the correspondent who inquires if rear-admirals belong exthe inquiry personally.

Up to the Nines.

SKITTLE-SHARPERS too often escape conviction in our Courts of Justice; is this because the evidence invariably discloses an alley-by?

THE ART OF POETRY.

You take your paper, pen and ink-
Poob, any fool can do it;

And then you settle down to think
Of how to rattle through it.

You get a fancy ready-made,
You set the verse a-flowing;
And Poetry's as good a trade
As any trade a-going.

A bit of PRAED-a bit of MOORE-
Or else a bit of BAYLY;

And then a bit of HORACE, or

The "Verbum personale."
You hunt about for double rhymes
(Which BARHAM will secure you);
I've done the trick a dozen times--
It's easy, I assure you.

Alliteration is the "go,"
Antithesis the fashion;

A lot of elegance, you know,
And jolly little passion.

Perhaps you'll get a bob a verse,
As magazines are many;
Perhaps you'll fare a little worse,
And only get a penny.

A Suggestion.

THE police are now taking extra precautions for their own-and, let us hope, for the public-safety; may we hint that it would in no way impair the efficiency of members of the force if they were supplied with a dram of mountain dew before mountin' du-ty?

L'Empire C'est-"Le Pays."

THAT impartial and experienced journal Le Pays has been devoting its consideration to England of late. In a recent article-headed "Starvation and Hanging in England,"-in which it tells the French poor that they are hungry and cold, "but over there they starve "-it thus addresses the "philosophers, moralists, and politicians" :

"Look at Manchester! What do you see there? A scaffold, is it not? and five gibbets black and dismal against the grey sky. There before long will be executed the five condemned Fenians, the five Irishmen who claim the independence of their unhappy country . . . . do you who wish for liberty desire that you were Englishmen ?"

....

Le Pays is evidently so well-informed on English subjects that it seems presumptuous to tell it that the five Fenians were not sentenced to death for wishing liberty to their country but for murdering an inoffensive policeman in the execution of his duty. Let us change the scene-if those five Fenians were five Frenchmen desiring the liberty of their country-and not guilty of murder but merely of a political crime-should we not see a scaffold then? Well, no! probably notthey manage these things better in France, and the five would have been shot down in the streets without the bother of a trial. We borrow the last sentence of the Pays' article: "Do you, Fenians and FINLENS, who wish for liberty, desire that you were Frenchmen ?"

A Wise Saw and a Modern Instance. "The Ancients were very careful of their Dramas, and I hope the Moderns will be so to."-Mr. Benjamin Webster.

MANAGER WEBSTER thinks "Why should I pay
Stupid live authors? The dead'uns I'll try on."
Perhaps he won't find, what is proved every day,
That a live ass outvalues, by far, a dead lion.

THE first thing a hen says to her brood, and not the last thing a child says to his father.-"Shell out!"