The "IT is said that at the close of the Exhibition, Paris offers a prize of a pair of ear-rings, worth 600,000 francs (about £24,000), to be awarded to the fairest of the fair.""-Echoes from the Clubs. We have studied in classical fables Vide LEMPRIERE passim and SMITH- On VENUS's kin and her kith, Made a vew for revenge of Mount Ida, Where an elegant youth-as we're told Called PARIS, was asked to decide a Young PARIS, the shepherd, was frisky, Some goddess of discord or folly Fair women has set by the ears, And the city, once happy and jolly, Will be given to tongues and to tears. For if the competitors wrangle, Or sneer, snarl, or worry, or fuss, There are noses like pug-dogs and parrots, And hair with the gleam of young carrots, Or sheeny with gloss of a crow. There are some who like thin lips-poor creatures And some, lips so poutingly full, Wilt test all their mouths and their features ? Then PARIS, my boy, you've the pull ! If the claims of the fat and the bony Than PARIS the shepherd of Greece! MR. H. J. BYRON'S "William Tell" will no doubt fill the Strand for some time to come. It is full of fun, and the music is carefully and cleverly selected. MR. C. FENTON deserves to be singled out for separate praise; his performance of Sarnem is intensely humorous-a true bit of burlesque acting. theatre. WHEN is it desirable to be on the sick list ?-When one is "laid up " in lavender. THE author of "Ours" and "Caste" has fairly earned the reputation of being our most polished and least conventional comedy-writer. He gives us dialogue that is natural; his conversations are made effective by their fitness as much as by their brilliancy. He possesses the The Adelphi is re-decorated! It really looks very nice-very nice rare art of raising a laugh-of drawing a tear sometimes-by the indeed! And MR. WEBSTER is playing Triplet again, as admirably as simplest means. MR. ROBERTSON's forte is pure comedy; the atmo- ever, in "Masks and Faces." MRS. MELLON plays Peg Woffington, sphere of drama disagrees with him. We rather doubt whether but not as admirably as ever; she has grown too loud and overwhelmexciting situations can be represented properly apart from a little clap-ing-her gestures are exaggerated. We look forward with eagerness trap; it is a perilous experiment to throw stage tradition overboard to the production of a new piece under the altered management of this altogether. It was-probably is-a noble commonplace way that the brave soldiers on board the Birkenhead formed in line and sunk. sea and sky were the only witnesses, and there was no acting to them. But in putting such an incident on the stage, things are not to be done in the matter-of-fact manner. The audience wants a deal of talk about heroism, love of country, wives and families, et cetera. MR. ROBERTSON has not appreciated this dreadful necessity-or else he has defied it. The stage-management has done everything in its power to spoil the shipwreck scene; but not from the author's fault-an attempt to be natural. The vessel is a decent-sized yacht in the second act and in the first it was a ship of at least fifteen hundred tons. The supers, too-a melancholy half dozen-are of the Adelphi pattern, and spoil every scene into which they are introduced. The performance of "For Love" is hardly up to our expectation. MISS HENRADE is unimpassioned, and MR. PRICE-usually so effective-plays coldly, and renders more obvious the comparative weakness of the last act. MR. MONTAGUE, MRS. STEPHENS, and MISS JENNY WILLMORE, are good; A Burlesque by H. J. Byron, W. S. Gilbert, T. Hood, H. S. Leigh, Arthur Sketchley, but the best bit of acting in the piece is that of MR. CUMMING, who plays a small part admirably. Though the drama contains plenty of writing that no dramatist but MR. ROBERTSON Could have given us, we cannot say that it is one of that gentleman's artistic successes. NOTICE.-On November the 4th, price Twopence, NOTICE.-Now ready, price 1s., and may be obtained at the Fux Office, Lacy's OR, THE INJUN BRIDE AND THE INJURED WIFE. and "Nicholas." Performed at Theatre Royal Haymarket, on Saturday, July 8th. N.B.-The proceeds of the sale will be added to the fund for the benefit of the widowed mother of the late Paul Gray. LONDON: Printed by JUDD & GLASS, Phoenix Werks, St. Andrew's HIN, Doctors' Commons, and Published (for the Proprietor) by W. ALDER, at 80, Fleet-street, E.C.Oetober 19, 1867. Now when they reached the whaling ground, Ed, at what you soon shall see!" In minutes twenty-one they be Came all of them dead as nails! And when ashore they came to go, Moeopathic medicine chest! OUR LIBRARY TABLE. We have received from MESSES. ROUTLEDGE a batch of books, which we may take as the avant courier of the great flood of Christmas literature about to be launched on the devoted heads of the reviewers. Every Boy's Annual, a handsome and attractive volume, may claim to be the first. It abounds in interesting papers on sports as well as science, and there are some admirable short sketches and stories. Of the longer tales we like "The Boy Cavaliers" best. "The Orville College Boys" is by MRS. HENRY WOOD, who does not seem to know much about either boys or colleges. We can fancy how many hearty laughs there will be over the passage in which she talks of a master's trencher cap having "two tassels, one over the other," and makes one of her schoolboys catch up a master's cap in mistake for his own! The majority of the illustrations are excellent, especially the coloured natural history cuts, and the pictures belonging to the burlesques. MR. BURNAND, the author of those burlesques, should have furbished up his Latin a bit before he aired it in the presence of boys fresh from their Latin grammars. It is hardly correct to say Lictores, amove!" Moreover, Dominus is not a vocative, nor is ferre the imperative of fero. Another capital boy's book is Barford Bridge, by the REV. H. C. ADAMS, in which boat-races, football, fighting, and cricket take their proper place and interest, and the moral is not too obtrusively displayed. For the smaller folks we find The Multiplication Table in Verse, an attempt to make that nauseous draught palatable, The Old Courtier, the ballad on whose lines "The Fine Old English Gentleman" was built, and Old King Cole, "with which is incorporated" that very old and well-beloved story of the Queen of Hearts and the Tarts. This last is, perhaps, the best as well as most brilliantly illustrated. Original Poems, illustrated, is prettily turned out. Some of the pictures are very charming, but we do not (with all deference to the author of the Family Pen) care about the "poems." They are "only for children" we shall be told, but that is all the more reason in our opinion that they should be good. It is most important that the child's ear should be trained to an appreciation of verse by faultless rhythm and careful rhyme, and in neither of these respects do Original Poems shine. Last, but not least, in the batch comes a book for us old fogiesa cheap edition of the immortal Tristram Shandy. The edition is unmutilated by that judicious editing which in cutting out the naughty passages generally contrives to snip away a great deal of the good with them. We commend the Shandean volume to those who are not acquainted with it, if only that they may perceive, when they have read it, how very much our modern humourists are indebted to STERNE. + Comma-ntory. AS HORACE, had he lived in this day, would have undoubtedly been one of our honoured contributors, we venture, on behalf of that deceased poet and his latest translator, DR. SMITH, to point out a slip which the Athenæum has made. The Athenæum does make slips at times. Recently, when noticing a mention of tubular bridges in a novel, it spoke as if STEPHENSON's were the only tubular bridges, quite forgetting BRUNEL's. In this instance, the critic says that DR. SMITH has mistaken the meaning of He'll mourn her troth and gods invoked forsaken.” Surely our Athenaic friend must see an implied comma after "invoked!" He-forsaken-will mourn her troth and the gods he invoked. If he were not forsaken, he would have no reason to lament either the invoked gods or her troth. Oh, classical criticism, what nonsense is perpetrated in thy name! A scholar would have seen that "mutatos" applied both to "deos" and to "fidem,” and that DR. SMITH, by giving the effect of those changes on the mourner, met the difficulty in the best possible manner admitted by our English construction. | CORRECT SOLUTIONS OF ACROSTIC No. 31, RECEIVED 16TH OCTOBER:-C. R. H.; Amicus; Returns 54; Froggy; Betsy H.; Merry Andrew; Ruby; Valentine; D. P. H.; E. D. J. M.; Long Jack; Holdfast; F. R.; 4 Boobies; M. D. S.; Julia; Bunnie P.; A la mode; Etihw; H. C.; Parkhurst; Varney the V.; Garry; The Roman; 3 Carshalton Fools; Neptune 22; Ned; Long Firm; 2 Barnacles; Katie; Nanny's Pet; The Chichester Cockles; Kate C. H.; Pedro; Gyp; A Gowk; Anna L.; C. C. B.; Keg Meg; Rose and Kittie; Head of the Family; Skelmorhe; E. M. H.; Borva; Drum; Pal o' Mine; Constance; Muckle Pickle; Exon, Oxon; "I'm Sure I'll Try"; Vampyre; Snuff-box; Two Clapham Contortionists; Engineers Out of Work; Brick-court; A. B.; Breakside and Hamish; T. S. C.; J. A. W.; The Monaline Lynx; Bundle; 89th; Polar; Bampton Beck; Bravo, Ned; J. R.; D. E. H.; P. and C. S.; W. S.; Salterns; 3 Bluebottles; Greensleeve. Another Suffering Manager! MR. WEBSTER is not the only ill-used manager. We have it on the best authority that MR. WEBSTER'S neighbour, the Manager of the Lyceum, is being shamefully used. We are assured that poor MR. FECHTER, having engaged a "scratch" company, is Clawed nightly in his own theatre. WRETCH WITH THE PUG NOSE AND EYEGLASS! First awful little quiz (totally unaware of the proximity of little Binks) :-"DON'T YOU KNOW THE ONE I MEAN? THAT ODIOUS LITTLE Second ditto, ditto, ditto :-"OH, I KNOW NOW! YOU MEAN THAT HORRID, SMOKE-DRIED, LITTLE SHRIMP, THAT POSES HIMSELF AT THE END OF THE PIER WITH HIS GLASS IN HIS EYE, AS IF HE WERE LOOKING FOR HIS NURSE. WE CALL HIM THE TADPOLE!" FROM OUR STALL. AN actor of great American celebrity, MR. JOHN S. CLARKE, is now playing at the St. James's Theatre in a new edition of MR. STIRLING COYNE'S Everybody's Friend. The piece is not a great piece-in fact, it is rather the reverse; but MR. SOTHERN and MR. JEFFERSON have already proved that the success of an individual performer (if the performer happens to be a fine one) depends very little on the merits of the play in which he makes his appearance. We certainly cannot speak well of A Widow Hunt; it is tediously conversational. Of MR. CLARKE, however, we can speak in high terms. He has a splendidly expressive countenance, which he works to perfection: his voice is like JOHN PARRY's, and has JOHN PARRY's funny and pleasant lisp. The American accent is hardly discernible. We are anxious to see MR. CLARKE in a better piece than A Widow Hunt. MESSRS. IRVING and BLAKE support the leading comedian creditably; the female parts are played by MISSES ADA CAVENDISH, BUFTON, and SOPHIE LARKINof whom the last is the cleverest, though the first is clever, and the second cleverer. The comedy is nicely put upon the stage, with MR. FREDERICK FENTON's scenery, and on the night of the first performance the house was pretty full and enthusiastic. A newly-adapted farce by MR. MADDISON MORTON has been produced at the Olympic, under the title of The Two Puddifoots. MR. WIGAN does all that he can with it, and so does MR. ADDISON. A MR. ROBSON also takes part in the trifle; he is not like the other MR. ROBSON in anything but the name. MISS FARREN and MISS MARIA HARRIS have little to do, but they do it very well. By the way, it is nearly time for the Olympic to change its bills a little. People who admire CHARLES MATHEWS (and their name is Legion, for they are many) will have no objection to see him play some of his old Lyceum parts again. The Polytechnic has altered its programme, and is well worth going WE are rather alarmed over here in England at the state of things revealed by the late Fenian outrage at Manchester. What should we do if we lived in Ireland? We have just read in Saunders's News Letter an announcement which fills us with apprehension. It would seem that the most terrible excesses pass unnoticed in Dublin on account of their frequency. Murder must reckon for little where flaying-even of women-is a common practice, and that it is so we gather from the advertisement of a large furrier, who winds up his notice about the mounting and trimming of furs with this blood-chilling sentence:"Ladies may depend on getting their own skins back." Epigram. "A LADY robbed recently in Westminster Abbey, complained of her loss to the verger, who merely said, 'Oh, that is very likely; ladies should not carry purses in places like this.""-Vide Papers. A Pan-Anglican Synod again should assemble The Establishment's honour to clear from this smirch; Pious ladies-small wonder!-will learn with a tremble "They'll be robbed if they carry a purse into church." ALL THE DIFFERENCE.-Port wine leaves its mark on the nose; water-on a Bank note. |