The Judicious Baron de Book-Worms."
Rus in Urbe.—Fancy there being a "Rural Dean of St. George's, Hanover Square"! His name was mentioned one day last week in the Times' "Ecclesiastical Intelligence." It is the Rev. J. Storrs. Not "Army and Navy Storrs," nor "General Storrs," but "Ecclesiastical Storrs."
Happy Application.—Our Squire has a shooting party every Saturday to stay till Monday, and longer if they can. He calls it "The Saturday and Monday Pops."
GISMONDA.
(To Mr. Punch.)
Dear Mister,—To you, who are a so great lover of the theatre, english and french, I send my impressions of the first of the new drama of Mister Sardou. It is to you of to spread them in the country of the immortal Shikspir. Allow that I render my homages to this name so illustrious, me who have essayed since so long time to speak and to write the language of that great author. And see there, in fine I can to do it!
It wants me some words for to praise the put in scene of this new drama at the theatre of Mistress Sarah Bernhardt. Gismonda! It is magnificent! It is superb! It is a dream! Ah! if your Shikspir could see this luxury of decorations, this all together so glorious! Him who had but a curtain and an etiquette! And Molière? And Racine? Could they make to fabricate of such edifices, of such trees, of such furniture? They had not these—how say you in english—"proprieties," which belong to the proprietor? Yes, I think that I have heard the phrase, "offend against the proprieties." We never offend against them in the theatres of Paris; they are always as it should be. But here, at the Renaissance, Mistress Bernhardt has done still more. Each scenery is a picture of the most admirables, a veritable blow of the eye.