Punch (61.1871)

November 11, 1871.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

RATHER INCONSIDERATE!

.Policeman {suddenly, to Str-cet Performer). " Now, then ! just you Move on,

will yer ? "

CURIOUS COINCIDENCE.

"In the Tichborne case, Captain Angel, before starting
for Australia, has been examined by Master Airey. His exa -
mination fills 228 folios."—Law Iteport.

In a cause as scabreux as celebre

About the unlikeliest feature
To cheer up the jury's long labour,

Seemed to be a celestial creature.

But lo, here's an angel, per mare,
While some supernatural fitness,

Finds a Master-in-Chancery Airey
To examine the heayenly witness !

MORE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII.

Mr. Punch reads that a drama, founded on Lord
Lytton's Last Days of Pompeii, is about to be placed on
the stage. The work is in skilful hands, and it is said
that the author of the fine romance will supervise the
production. Ha ! Who remembers the first theatrical
version of the book ? This was at the Adelphi. Mr.
Yates was the Arbaces, Mr. Heiiming the Glaucus,
Mr. 0. Smith the Witch of the Alps. Mr. John Reeve
the Stratonice, Mr. Buckstone the Sallust, Mrs. Honey
the lone, and Mrs. Keeley the Nydia f Some of us,
my .brethren, have grey hair, and can hardly be dragged
to the play, who were then only too eager to crush
into the Adelphi, yea, into the very pit. May the Post
Nati enjoy the revival as we enjoyed the production!
We fear that the tremendous last scene will not be so
effective now as it was then. For delicate critics will
say that it was too realistic and shocking to burn the
poor Mountain in the presence of the public.

A Long-Winded Business.

The Hampstead Hospital Inquiry has dragged its
slow length to an end at last. There has been a great
deal of talk about " clods and stickings " in the course
of it;- but if the diet was ten times as bad as Mr.
Collins wants to make out, there never could have
been half the " stickings " in the pantry that there have
been in the witness-box.

LE DERNIER CRI DE M. VICTOR HUGO.

{Expressly Translated for Mr. Punch.)

They are gone, these Germans! Or they are going, for their
hoofs yet cling to the sacred soil of Holy France, and their un-
clean hands are still held out to clutch at her gold. Give them
the gold, and let them relieve our eyes of the sight of their coarse
features — we will reclaim the money with steel when the hour
shall strike. Let them go. But let them take also the scoff and
derision of France, the Holy Artist, the Missionary of the World.
For if I could hate them more than I do, it is because they have not
dared to rob us of our art-treasures. Fools, we might have mourned
the loss of pictures and statues, but we should have had the consola-
tion of feeling that they were gone to civilise a barbarous race, to
teach Germany lessons in morality and humanity. Their dull eyes
saw nothing, their base hands clutched nothing. They have taken
from us neither statue nor picture, though the glories of France were
in their power, the low, the miserable Teutons! Not so with Holy
France, when she swept Europe of treasures that were fit only to be
shrined over the altar of her Divinity, treasures, alas, wrenched
from her by the cold fiat of the English Lords, who prated of their
pedantic justice and restitution, and gave back the Pearls to the
Swine. No, Germany might half have atoned for her wrongs to the

freat nurse of piety, charity, morality, and light, by letting us see
er take our art-treasures, and resolve to worship them as we have
done. We should have cherished the philanthropic hope that one
day she might become, a far paler star than France, no doubt, for
there is but one Sun and one France, but a planet whose rays, caught
from us, might have spread around mild effulgence. They dared
not grasp at what lay before them, and they return, for the moment,
brutally victorious, but morally abased, and when we have used the
sword upon them, and brought them to the attitude of learners, we
shall have to begin their education anew. I spit at, I spurn the
Teutons that they dared not seize the Torches of Love and Light,
the art-glories of Holy France.

HOME RULE IN A NUTSHELL.

What advantage will Ireland derive from Home Rule ?
None at all, every Irishman knows, but a fool;
No advantage whatever, but Och, what delight
Will be ours, while it lasts, in the triumph of spite!

Dismembered the big British Empire to see

(Ourselves first dismembered would once have been we).

That's all the advantage to Ireland we mean

By Home Rule, for the joke of it, under the Queen.

With foreigners we '11 beneath Home Rule conspire
To thrample proud England right under the mire ;
When that mighty end's gained we '11 no longer combine,
But the rest to the What-do-ye-call-him resign.

PEDILUVE DE ST. PE'RAY.

The Members of the United Kingdom Alliance might, if they
would read, learn wisdom from a series of articles in the Pall Mall
Gazette, written by a philosopher who has been pursuing pleasant
researches in France, " among the Vines and Wines of the South."
To peruse is almost to realise his experiences; and his account of
" Saint Peray" is so alluring, on the whole, that only a momentary
repugnance is suggested by the passage following :—

"Through open doorways, and in all manner of dim recesses, we caught
sight of sturdy men energetically trampling the gushing grapes under their
bare feet, and of huge creaking wine-presses reeking with the purple juice."

Certainly, if Saint Peray came under one's chin, one would be
glad to hear that wine-presses had exclusively been used in making
it. Could not the producers of Saint Peray at least oblige their
men to wear sabots r There is a sense in which you would prefer
wine from the wood.