THE "Casual Contributor" of the Pall Mall continues to be the sensation of the hour. There have been plenty of rumours about him. I all along set him down as the author of The Little Ragamuffin, which to my mind is infinitely better than the Pall Mall articles, and in much better taste. I must tell a very funny story àpropos of the business. A friend of mine speaking to a lady-and such a charming one! said, when asked what was the news, "Oh, one of the contributors to the Pall Mall has spent a night in the casual ward at Lambeth Workhouse ?" "Has he, indeed?" said the lady, commiseratingly, "Do they pay them so badly as that?"

MISS EMMA HARDINGE, a lady who will be remembered by old Adelphi visitors, has returned to England, with a defective Yankee twang, and "orates." It is not woman's work at all. When dear MRS. STIRLING speaks at the Dramatic dinner it is quite another affair; she talks of a subject she knows, and the sentiments come from her heart and brain. But a woman spouting political bunkum is not in her element, and I imagine MISS E. HARDINGE will find the stump won't draw. She will, I daresay, develop into a spiritualist medium, à la DAVENPORTS, who have been once more completely shown up in Ireland. A light was suddenly struck by a sceptic, and the two men supposed to be bound were discovered running about with the guitars, and throwing coats about.

THE other day a lad of seventeen was charged with stealing a boy's cap. The constable who took him in charge said he was a bad character, and that he found the following penny publications upon him :

"Dare Devil Dick, the Boy King of the Smugglers," "The Shadowless Rider or, The League of the Cross of Blood,' The Mystery of the King's Highway,' The True History of John Ketch,' 'Moonlight Jack; or, The King of the Road,' 'The Original Highwayman, afterwards Common Jack Ketch of London."" Cannot LORD CAMPBELL's Act be brought to bear against these vile publications, which are doing so much to diminish the benefits of a cheap press? Their demoralizing influence is clearly shown in this case, the thief steals a cap, not because he cannot really afford to buy one; but because he wishes to economize and save his halfpence for these elevating serials. The author of the original Jack Sheppard and Dick Turpin must feel a horror when he sees to what extent the style he founded has spread.

THE Pall Mall has lately been discussing the pantomimes, and its critic (evidently again not the regular nobleman, but some "casual") has fallen into the error of weighing the openings at Covent-garden and Drury-lane as if they were burlesques. This is a pardonable ignorance however compared with his carping at the versification, which is much above the ordinary. Now if the Pall Mall critic wants really to see how bad versification can be, and in a burlesque, I'll lend him my copy of Romeo and Juliet, as performed at the Strand, I believe, some years ago. After reading that he will learn to deal more gently with such trifles.

I ALWAYS fancied SPURGEON had the monopoly of "the conventicle comical," but it appears he has rivals. I have had forwarded to me the programme of a series of discourses to be delivered in the neighbourhood of Goswell-road, and I stood aghast to learn that one sermon was, "The bed too short, and the covering too narrow." What do the pious people, who call a comic journal a profane vanity, think of this sort of thing? Are the sermons to be delivered by the " con

verted clown," who lately appeared in character at a meeting somewhere at the West End ?

GUSTAVE DORE is to illustrate the Idylls of the King, with drawings of the same size as the Quixote and Dante. This is a task so peculiarly in his peculiar vein that I think it certain to be a very great success. The volume will, of course, be turned out by MESSRS. MOXON AND Co. gorgeously, as befits the artist the poet, and the firm.

I HAVE often heard it stated that if you advertise for one thing you are likely to get something quite different. It is in this spirit I presume that the following has been inserted in a Glasgow paper:

"Lodgers can be got by advertising in the Daily Mail for sixpence." Unless one were the lineal descendant of the gentleman who shot at a pigeon and killed a crow, one would hardly expect that to advertise for a sixpence would bring one a lodger. What do they charge for advertisements in the Mail? Even at a penny an insertion one would at the end of the week be reduced to something like the position of the Irishman who spent his last shilling to buy a purse to put it in.

DISENCHANTMENT.

WHEN I yielded a victim, enraptured,

To the glance of my ALICE's eyes-
Though, in truth, it was I who was captured,
How rare did I think was my prize!
Ah, language seemed weak and unreal
To express all my longing and love!
She was more than my heart's dear ideal,
My darling, my sweet turtle dove!

I courted. I won. We were married.
Love kicks against any delay.

It was said that we ought to have tarried,

By grumblers 'tis always their way!-
So I blessed the glad end of my wooing;
What would life be, as soon I should prove,
But perpetual billing and cooing

Henceforth with my sweet turtle dove?
'Tis distance, we're told by the poet,
That loveliness lends to the view;
Not only with landscape, but so it

I found was with other things too.
My thoughts grew unduly erratio-
Self-questionings often would move,
Had I bliss only, pure and ecstatic,

In life with my sweet turtle dove?

I saw that strange signs of decision
Could flash from her soft azure gaze;
Nay, anger, contempt, and derision-
Ah, where were the eyes of old days?
It seemed very like disillusion:
Against it I earnestly strove.
Still I asked of myself in confusion,
Was she merely a sweet turtle dove?
The lips, that once seemed so delightful,
Could as well give a snap as a kiss,
Could fret,-would grow terribly spiteful,
And be far from conducive to bliss.

I wondered, I doubted, poor martyr!-
'Twas a strangely demonstrative love-
Could it be I was wed to a Tartar,
And not to a sweet turtle dove ?

A PRETTY DUST!

THERE is a law to prevent the publication of improper publications of one description. There should be some statute to regulate the law of advertisements in all cases. Not long since we saw "a diploma and a case of surgical instruments" for sale. Now we meet with the following:

To Sell, Two Dusting Machines for Colouring Tea, very cheap; One Hundredweight COFFEE-ROASTING CYLINDER and SHAFT; One Portable IRON COPPER. To be seen at the premises of, Tea Colourer and Improver,

This means, in so many words, that MR. is prepared to assist dishonest grocers to sell an inferior article at a higher price by making it still worse. For, whereas it was only rubbish before the "improvement," it is, after being dusted, rubbish plus a number of deleterious and unwholesome compounds.

A NIGHT IN A WORKHOUSE. REPORTED BY OUR OWN CASUAL POOR.

WHICH I got your orders, and I done them; and if ever I trust myself agin among a gang of raving maniacs shamming destitution, sendimaylive! When I left the brougham-and the driver, a low-lived hound, said he'd never seen the colour of your money!-I went, as a casual mostly do, quietly up to the workus door, and I gave, according to instructions, the name of BELLEW.

"All right," says an interested pauper, by the name of DADDY, "all right-there's lot of yer inside; quite a festive harmony! And it's a hintellectual treat, it is, to listen through the chinks, it is! Going to strip?"

Your orders having embraced a state of nature, I did so. "Not going through the bath business, are you?" said he. HOMNIUM, he've been in!"

"MR.

Being unawares as to MR. HOMNIUM, whoever he may be when at home, in I went, and hope it will be considered in the wages. Owing to personal length, your Casual had to wait some time for a shirt and a rug, DADDY stating that MR. HOMNIUM had used four stitched lengthways together. At which I nearly let the official cat out of the editorial bag with a "Blow MR. H.!" says I. "I'm here on a special mission and a social dooty!"

"Yes," says DADDY, "so har they hall! That's the spree on it!" Your Casual was then conducted quite obsequious into a rather comfortable shed, with a hole cut in the top for the purpose of enabling him to see distinct the constellations of ORION and CASSIOPEIA'S CHAIR. Which he did.

Gladly would your Casual pass over the subsequential horrors of that 'ere maddening night. Never had he dreamt that so many raving, ranting, roaring maniacs-but to our tale.

Taking up a bed, with a view to getting over the job easy, your Casual placed himself next a very decent sort of seemingly elderly man, of the Scottish persuasion, looking like a philosophical historian or a master-printer, and was about to pass the time o' night when, sendimaylive, the old cove opened upon him in terms ghastly to relate!

"Thou fool!" says the old one. "Thou, with thy gibbering Philanthrophies, Progresses of Species, bred of OReus and the Nether Gloom, ratten, putrescent as Will o' Wisp of the Dead Sea, beautiful alone to Apes of that coast-loathsome to me, rather, intent upon my own poor small stroke of honest literary work in a Universe mainly mad! Vagrant? Thou art vagrant, thou? And seekest help? I would give thee, oh, my wretched defaced too-sadly-mistaught human brother, stripes, and again stripes; and failing to make thee work even so, a merciful volley of small-shot! Ach Himmel!"

Well, you may guess I didn't stay very long near him, but as I stumbled away I trod upon a portion of a huge mass of vital energy, which I have since been told was the HOMNIUM referred to a grey, an elderly, and a peaceful cove to gaze at, but when aroused-sendimaylive! He give me one look; raised himself as nearly to a sitting posture as the height of the roof would allow; and then-ah, never shall I forget the horrors of that awful night!

The next was a thin sort of gent, as your Casual could almost have sworn to have seen in a hair-dresser's window.

"Welcome!" he cries. "To-night let us make merry with our Phlegethontic Revels. The Beautiful and the Criminal are One! Speak, ALGERNON! Smite the Alliterative Lyre!"

"Who are you calling an alliterative liar ?" says a romantic-looking young man, and then he strikes up a sort of a patter song:

"For the reign of the ragged is rampant,

The Goddess of Ghouls is a-gape,
And the temples of ancient Olympus
Are hung with crepuscular crape;
And the cynical lisping of Laughter
Is strangled with titular tape,
While ALASTOR salutes ARIADNE

In modern man-milliner's shape!"

And at that instant there was a loud cry, "Here's K! Here he comes! Here's old K!"

Well, "K" looked respectable somehow, and as if he'd seen better days; and there was a funny twinkle in his eye that gave one an idea of his having worn a white-choker previous.

"Tell us a rummy story, K," cries out HOMNIUM, who was quite a ringleader.

"Well," says K, clearing his throat, "three fishers went sailing away to the West."

"Connu!" says a fresh arrival; and old HOMNIUM he shrieks aloud:

"Here's CHARLEY FECHTER and the rest of them fresh from the

theatres!"

OUR FUTURE CRITICISMS.

THE result of a recent dramatic trial has warned us that we cannot be too careful in the expressions we use in criticizing the performances of popular actors. We have, therefore, taken the trouble to ascertain from the principal metropolitan celebrities what they would like us to say about them in any future criticisms. We propose to have the results of our correspondence stereotyped, so that it will be impossible for us to make any serious mistake in noticing the performances of popular favourites. We give the letters of our correspondents in full:-

THE Saturday Review has always been great at impossibilities. It is "impossible" for it to return rejected MSS., and "to this rule it makes no exception," which is hinting that it could do an impossibility if it liked. The other day, in speaking of Prussian affairs, it said :—

"The vivacious and impertinent Count knows how to calculate his own strength and resources, which are not small: and how to calculate the limits of Prussian patience, which is infinite."

Really BISMARCK must be a sort of German Saturday Review if he can do this, for mathematicians have always held that to calculate the limits of infinity was beyond the limits of possibility.

AT THE PIANOFORTE.

BY A MUSICAL CAD.

ONCE more a weird motivo comes:
A wild and witching strain.
It stirs my fingers and my thumbs
Again, and yet again.

Fresh-flowing from this master-hand,
The melody recalls

Dim recollections of the "Strand,"
And other Music-halls.

Before mine eyes grim visiohs dance:
My cerebellum's void

Is filled with figures of a VANCE,
And of an ARTHUR LLOYD.

I see a SIDNEY, stout of limb,
And stouter still of lung

(Those comic songs we get from him
Delighted me when young).

"We always are so jolly, oh!". "I would I were a bird!"

'Tis none of these, and yet I know
'Tis something I have heard.

The "Mabel Valse!"-The "Perfect Cure!"
"God Bless the Prince of Wales!"
And yet-Precisely; to be sure.
I have it:-it's The Scales!

Odd Memories.

BY RAMBLER REDIVIVUS.

No. I. THE FIRST FENIAN INVASION.

I HAVE been asked, to the best of my recollection, which is not much to boast of, to-to-bless me ! what? Well, at any rate I was about to say-but I positively don't remember what that was, so I will at once launch out on my subject, having been requested by the editor to relate a few anecdotes that I may chance to remember, or, perhaps I should say, that I have not forgotten. But whichever it was, it is perfectly immaterial, for as I have observed above, or at all events as I should have observed and if I did not, it was an oversight. I am afraid I am not making myself altogether intelligible, but the fact is my memory is so treacherous that I keep on recollecting more than I ought to do which so confuses one story with another-but no, that is impossible, because if I could remember two stories at once mine would be a remarkable memory, whereas the real state of the case is-the real state of the case is-But no matter, the reader will have gathered the state of the case from my previous remarks, and as I have broken off in the middle of my narrative to give this explanation-if it was an explanation, but I'm really not clear on the point, and perhaps it was a question. However, these are matters of little import, and I need not break off the thread of my story in order to define or is it decide? -or perhaps deliberate, or, better still, demonstrate them. I know it is something beginning with D, but what it is I am not quite sure. There are so many words beginning with D-for instance, decay, diminution, division, multiplication, subtraction, addition, and I may add numeration. But as I have now reached the limit of my space I must postpone the conclusion of my story (or is it a notice) ? until our next, or our last, though which it is, time will not allow me to describe at length.

VOLUNTEER CHORUS :-Rifle lol de day!