FOLLOWING THE EXAMPLE OF MR. GLADSTONE AND MR. GOSCHEN, MR. PUNCH VISITS EDINBURGH.
Le Preux Chevalier Encore!—After a little dinner at Frascati's, which is still "going strong," we paid a visit to the Renovated and Enlarged Royal Music Hall, Holborn, and were soon convinced that the best things Mr. Albert Chevalier has yet done are the coster songs, not to be surpassed, including the "Little Nipper," in which is just the one touch of Nature that makes the whole audience sympathetically costermongerish. "My Old Dutch" was good, but lacking in dramatic power, and the latest one "The Lullaby," sung by a coster to his "biby" in the cradle, wouldn't be worth much if it weren't for Mr. Chevalier's reputation as a genuine comedian. It is good, but not equal to the "Little Nipper." "Full to-night," I observed to Lord Arthur Swanborough, who is Generalissimo of the forces "in front" of the house. "Yes," replies his Lordship, casually, "it's like this every night. Highly respectable everywhere. Only got to have in a preacher, we'd supply the choristers, and you'd think it was a service—or something like it."
By Our Own Philosopher.—Woe to him of whom all men speak well! And woe to that seaside or inland country place for which no one has anything but praise. It soon becomes the fashion; its natural beauties vanish; the artificial comes in. Nature abhors a vacuum; so does the builder. Yet Nature creates vacuums and refills them; so does the builder. Nature is all things to all men; but the builder has his price. Man, being a landed proprietor and a sportsman, preserves; but he also destroys, and the more he preserves so much the more does he destroy. Nature gives birth and destroys. Self-preservation is Nature's first law, and game preservation is the sporting landlord's first law.
Pain in Prospect.—Says Augustus Druriolanus (Advertiscus), "A Life of Pleasure will last until it is crowded out by the Christmas pantomime." Epigramatically, our Druriolanus might have said, "A Life of Pleasure will last till the first appearance of Payne."
"Take My Ben'son!"—"Don't! Don't!" a moral antidotal story as a sequel to "Dodo."