To comprehend the thing denied
To make you perfect. Now I know—
A bicycle you did not ride
A year ago!
Our Booking-Office.—"Boconnoc." What a name! It is a "Romance of Wild Oatcake." It might almost be of Mild Oatcake. It is the story of an unprincipled boy, a flighty young married woman, and a sottish husband. The first third of the book is somewhat interesting, and pleasantly written. The second third is dull; and the last revives the reader's interest just a bit. But, on the whole, to quote Sir Charles Coldstream, in Used Up, "There's nothing in it." It is disappointing to those who expect much more than this from the author.—B. de B.-W.
The school-boy of to-day—what, after all, is Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?—is no longer to waste his time in poring over the musty classics! "He is to take an intelligent interest in other subjects than the dead languages," says Truth, which proceeds to give "as well worthy of being held up as a model for imitation elsewhere," the contents of an up-to-date examination paper, upon current events, recently set at Rugby school. This modern move is, doubtless, an excellent thing, but one which may be carried too far; and it would, we venture to think, be a pity if schools were to be, in the words of Mercutio, "too much afflicted with these new tuners of accents, who stand so much on the new form that they cannot sit at ease on the old bench." What if Pinero and Zangwill were substituted for Plato and Xenophon?
Trifles light as "Eyre."—The trustees of a St. John's Wood property may certainly be said to be "after the brass." If, however, their learned counsel is successful in obtaining the colossal amount claimed, he might then say, with Horace, "Exegi monumentum Eyrĕ perennius."