OUR LIBRARY TABLE. the poor souls who visit the Royal Academy on the opening day or try to obtain an early peep at the Cattle Show. The comedy, in fact, is too densely populated; it is a standing rule in dramatic affairs that the number of actors engaged in a play should never exceed that of the audience. We cannot undertake to say that this rule was infringed on the first night of Humbug (because the house was well filled) but we mention it as a useful warning to the managements of small theatres. The plot of the comedy is too involved for dissection; a couple of lords, a couple of artists, and a couple of young ladies pursue the confusing diversion of "cat's cradle" until the brain of the spectator is quite giddied by the problems of " a pound of candles" and "fish in a dish." MR. BURNAND gives us two or three sketches of character; they are only sketches, however-in such a crowd it is imcynical, and the witticisms are more suggestive of the burlesque school than of the higher vein requisite for comedy. MESSES. RAY, DEWAR, DANVERS AND P. DAY do the best they can to fill up the author's outlines; MISS CARLOTTA ADDISON and the two other young ladies-we have mislaid the bill, and, consequently cannot name them -are charming. The two scenes are admirably painted, and the comedy will no doubt be effective when four or five of the least interesting people are withdrawn. The Savage Club Papers for 1868 (MESSRS. TINSLEY) come late, but may fairly plead the old proverb, "better late than never," for they form a pleasant addition to the literature of the season. On the whole, we think they show a marked improvement. The contributors this year, if they are not all of them members of the club, are men of known literary position. Last year, those one or two members who were not well known or literary, of course availed themselves of the chance of appearing in print-not to the advantage of the volume. The illustrations this year are excellent, with scarcely an exception; and the engraving, printing, and general get-up of the book, deserve the highest praise. The only thing with which, in our opinion, fault can be found is the preface, which is injudicious, insufficient, and want-possible to individualize distinctly. The tone throughout is rather ing in taste: The gem of the collection, to our thinking, is the "Model Child," with its illustration, both by MR. E. C. BARNES. The Pigeon Book (MESSRS ROUTLEDGE AND SONS) is a most tempting and dangerous volume. We will defy any one to read its pleasant pages or look at its beautiful illustrations without being affected with "philoperistery," and wishing to set up as a pigeon-keeper. And no wonder, MR. TEGETMEIER and MR. HARRISON WEIR, the two greatest authorities on pigeons, could not fail to make the subject attractive when they combine forces, and when the latter is as admirably supported as he is by the colour-printer. MESSRS LEIGHTON have seldom or never turned-out colour-prints of such excellence-the burnished metallic crop of the pouter, the soft plumage of the fantail, and the delicate hues of the ice pigeon are rendered with surprising truth. A CHRISTMAS PAST. A CHRISTMAS PAST! was it not, old fellow? And said that the juvenile mind was fast, And started afresh on the lowest rung, And looking one steadily through at last, If prodigal-like I had sat confessing. The old conventional boyish sin, You wouldn't have thought my crime distressing, But when you knew why my heart was sighing But called love folly, and Christmas past. I thought you an obstinate owl to doubt her, We were never the same from that Christmas night, But, after a little, you asked about her, And then I knew I had won the fight. On the great event it was even betting, Though you owned a man should have oats and sow them, But here she comes with a smile to melt you, FROM OUR STALL. THE stage of the New Royalty Theatre is not sufficiently roomy for a piece containing so many characters as MR. F. C. BURNAND's last comedy, Humbug. It is painful to see about fifteen performers crowded in a compact mass before the footlights and struggling for front places in order that they be seen of the public. MR. BURNAND'S dramatis persona, wedged and perspiring-patrician and commoner shouldering each other for dear life-mother and daughter fighting for precedence at the point of the elbow-are as much to be pitied as The reception of MR. BOUCICAULT's five-act play, How She Loves Him, was mixed. A galvanic battery and a live baby proved rather too much for the audience's temper; the hissing grew more and more general as the piece went on, and became quite a tempest at the fall of the curtain. It is a great pity to see a work of genius marred by bits of horseplay that are fit only for the wildest farce. Parts of the dialogue are in the happiest vein-quite worthy of the pen that wrote London Assurance. The blemishes can easily be got rid of no doubt; it is almost inconceivable that a practised hand like MR. BOUGICAULT should have allowed them to creep in at all. The comedy is admirably played by all concerned in it, except MR. BLAKELY; this gentleman is much too loud, and his performance is exaggerated so painfully, as to resemble a caricature. MR. BANCROFT has taken a great stride, and MR. HARE is as polished as usual. MESSES MONTAGUE, REYNOLDS and MONTGOMERY are highly effective in parts of secondary importance. MISS MARIE WILTON is the perfection of archness and vivacity, and MISS LYDIA FOOTE looks only too bewitching; it seems impossible that any mortal husband could have quarrelled with such a wife. MRS. LEIGH MURRAY has a somewhat ungrateful part, but plays it like a true artist. The scenery is charming. A crowded and brilliant audience attended the first representation. [We can take no notice of communications with illegible signatures or monograms. Correspondents will do well to send their real names and addresses as guarantees, We cannot undertake to return unaccepted MSS. or Sketches, unless they are accompanied by a stamped and directed envelope; but we cannot enter into correspondence regarding them, nor do we hold ourselves responsible for loss.] A REGULAR READER.Will not return till the spring. A. J. H. (Forest Gate) sings the "street fusee-soller" very appropriately. His lines are as poor as their subject. X. X. X.-We are not inclined to endorse your selection of a signature. "Small Beer" would be more about the size. DONAN.-Won't do-nan! What do you mean by "meadowy lea"? Wouldn't "leay meadow" or "leaowy mead" mean as much? EXILE.-If we were to notice all the blunders in the D. T. we should be compelled to publish a supplement every week. J. A. C., *Jun. Ath.-Good, but the subject is hardly one for jesting When a Fenian cracks a bottle of Greek fire with you, you will hardly care to crack a joke with him. W. J. S. (Univ. Coll.)-Seven years, of course! Declined with thanks:-R. R. H.; H.; M. G. C., Wotton-under-edge; COLUMBARIAN COMBINATIONS. A THEORY FOUNDED ON THE RESEARCHES OF DARLEY AND HUXWIN. BY OUR ALMOND-TUMBLER. To those who would rather painfully seek for the brilliant coruscations of a hitherto unexplored witticism than accept with unquestioning gratitude the more superficial but not less plenary delights presented by open-handed science, I should appeal in vain were I even to denote the few and easy stages by which philosophy arrives at its conclusions. Let it rather be my task to endeavour to show by irrefragable evidence how the true seer, assisted by the latest appliances of opticianary skill, and rejecting all that is obscure and inexplicable as either fabulous or worthless, occupies himself by following the truest indications of his own individuality, and by a system divested of everything but the phenomenal is set free from those traditional trammels which involve the admission of substance as a necessary condition to the existence of attributes. Let me for a moment direct attention to the vast field of inquiry which will open out to him who, having formed the determination to limit all observation to those objects that lie immediately before him discovers how, by an unerring provision of nature, he carries with him, his own guide to a certain conclusion, how, so to speak, he finds his own nose a gnomon; and owes to it all he knows. Such, Sir, were my reflections with a view to a concise lecture on "The Illimitable Undulations of Co-ordinate Monstrosities," when I received a smart blow on the feature already so lucidly referred to, and discovered (by a chain of reasoning not now necessary to reconcatenate,) that I had come into unpremeditated (I will not say absolutely fortuitous) concussion with the door of the Freemasons' Tavern in Great Queen-street. I have yet to determine, Sir, whether that concussion was or was not one of a series of phenomena instrumental in eliminating a theory for which I claim such honour as properly belongs to him who advances the happiness and elevates the aspirations of mankind. Sir, our philosophers have already illustrated the great theory of natural selection and the development of being by experiments made upon pigeons. I tremble to think of what they were doing when, by the Holding, as I of course do, that mankind originated in the flint nodule (this is obvious even by the ancient structure of our language, which still calls a primitive or simple man a noddle or noodle), I am hovering, so to speak, on the confines of a theory which may require research, but which is fraught with tremendous issues. Sir, I call mine the Columbarian theory of progression, and it rests upon the conviction that man is developed laterally as it were, into the higher order of pigeonhood. I can do no more at present than point to the birds themselves as they appeared at the late pigeon show. Enough, surely, for any appreciative and reflective mind. Sir, there was a cage of Boulogne colonels and half-pay officers there, who were living proofs. I think they are of the so-called Dragon variety. A few bankers and quiet Government officials with two or three family physicians were contemplating mankind, as Ruffs; a very large number of attorneys were in another place, and as to the "Pouters as we very ignobly call them, if they were not once judges of assise, deans of arches, large contractors, with here and there a distinguished statesman, all I can say is-but I must think this out. Taking Time by the Fetlock. ROUGHING horses has given the farriers more work than they could well get through during the late frost. The MARQUIS OF HASTINGS was shrewd enough to "turn up" a considerable portion of his stud some weeks since. The Age of Progress. HAIR brushing by machinery has long since lost its novelty-but who ever dreamt of having a daily "shave" by Atlantic Cable? THE SOFT IMPEACHMENT.-A Commission De Lunatico Inquirendo. NOTICE.-On Wednesday, the 8th instant, THE PANTOMIME NUMBER OF FUN. Sixteen pages, profusely illustrated. Price One Penny. Printed by JUDD & GLASS, Phoenix Works, St. Andrew's Hill, Doctors' Commons, and Published (for the Proprietor) by THOMAS BAKER, at 80, Fleet-street, B.C.London: January 4, 1868. poor and needy. I'm sorry to hear it! The power of a word in the papers to evoke a flow of money for a worthy object is known to be great; and any man who sees anything of the poor struggling life of London -who has eyes in his head and a heart in his breast-and who, moreover, has the power of saying that word-must and will say it, in spite of sneers, as long as our system of relief remains as defective as it is. There's no trick in any Christmas pantomime that is half as good, to my mind, as that trick of the pen that turns a good dinner into an empty stomach. And in proof of the fact that I act up to my principle, let me say a word on behalf of one or two admirable charities to those who have superfluous coin. I think, my dear reader, you said ten pounds for the Children's Hospital? Address MR. S. WHITEFORD, 49, Ormond-street. Another five for the National Lifeboat Institution? Send it to MR. R. LEWIS, 14, John-street, Adelphi. And you have still a little to spare? Send it to a humble but deserving charity-the Pimlico and Westminster Institute for the Diseases of Women and Children. Address the Secretary, 9, Lupus-street. Hav. ing done that, sir, shake hands with yourself, and consider that you have begun the New Year well. THE laudator temporis acti has been gibbetted often enough-and most especially when the tempus actum refers to the drama. Nevertheless, I'll VOL. VI. risk it, and record my profound conviction that pantomimes are not what they were when I was a boy. Then, clowns didn't talk much. Now, they are always making bad jokes, and explaining advertising "tricks." They don't sing "Tippety Witchet," or "Hot Codlins nowadays-they're too refined, and they use the red-hot poker as if it were a stick of barley sugar. The flapping, slapping, thievish, grimacing clown of early pantomime has disappeared, and with him the good old physical force "comic business" which old and young alike enjoyed. The clown "writes" the comic business still, but instead of designing assaults on pantaloon, police, and society at large, he produces prettinesses, and patents," silver rains" and ghost effects; ballets of children, drawing-room skaters, and puffs for enterprising tradesmen. It is all very well to talk about originality and the necessity for novelty-but let originality and novelty be in keeping with the essence of pantomime. It would be a novelty to introduce a real squib in the second volume of a novel, and original to make the LORD MAYOR black his face and sing a nigger melody to the accompaniment of a banjo on the 9th of November. But the innovation would be respectively alarming to MR. MUDIE and unpleasant to the Corporation. Let clowns strike out new ideas by all means, but let them be of the right sort, and until they can hit upon anything fresh, let us have still the heated poker, the bullied constable, and the shower of vegetables. They are more appropriate than performing dogs, scientific surprises, and wheel-skates. I HAVE received a slip from a Yorkshire paper, in which there is the report of a curious case: On Thursday last William Radcliffe, a butcher, of Cowcliffe, was summoned before the Huddersfield bench for cruelty to a gander. 'It appeared that he had made a bet of a sovereign with a farmer named Simeon as to the weight of their respective ganders. Radcliffe's gander proving the heaviest, Simeon not only paid the sovereign, but purchased the bird, which died the next day. On opening it, it was discovered that Radcliffe had won his wager by administering to the wretched gander two pounds of small shot. The Huddersfield magistrates assessed this act of brutality at 10s., which Radcliffe at once paid, so that the ruffian netted 10s. by the cruel fraud. I wonder whether the butcherly knave has read MARK TWAIN'S Jumping Frog? If not the case is another proof that fiction is not stranger than fact. Not Generally Known IT has been well said that the same idea may occur at once to two great men. PROFESSOR TYNDALL is very fairly credited with his share of fame for the publication of his erudite treatise on "Heat Considered as a Means of Motion." It must not be forgotten, however, that his theory was anticipated by the practical experiment of the first Clown who applied the red-hot poker to his aged friend, Pantaloon. Wants Sending There A CORRESPONDENT who inquires what relation PEEPING TOм of Coventry was to the humorously-renowned DYK-WYNKYN. 'VE had for fays in every phase, For fairies black, and white, and grey- In every sort of fashion. When dandled in my nurse's lap, I lost my heart, oh, many a time, And loved a little fairy; She was, though-if to fact it comes- But older yet, and older grown, I had a theatre- my own! A company compacted With cardboard, tinsel, scissors, paste, Should I to paint the love I felt Now strive, you'd call me dullard! But, oh, my heart I lost again Then came at last the golden prime, With ballet-nymphs enchanted. I never doubted cheeks or lips, Believed that mirth induced their skips- I loved those fairies-all and each- The age described as "certain"; Now up to rouge, and every ruse I safely plant 'mid snares foot. Their cheeks are touched with hare's foot |