Punch (66.1874)

152 PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. [April ll, 1874.

REALISING THE IDEAL.”

Awful Disillusion of Mr. Golightly, that earnest young Enthusiast, on first encountering at one of Mrs. Lyon
Hunter’s Evenings the gifted Authoress of “Heart-Throbs: A Life’s Earthquake, and other Poems;” “The Siren :
a Tale of Passion;” “ Dalilah : a Story of the Day;” and a large Family of Sensations in Three Volumes, undeK'

EQUALLY SUGGESTIVE TITLES.

CROSS-CURRENTS AT THE HOME OEFICE.

Home Secretary Cross must be somewhat at a loss—

He being-, as we hear he is, an upright, downright, man,

Whose taste is all for fighting fair, and not upon the cross—

Ho Mr. Facing-both-way-s, who still turns cat-in-pan.*

With his rival interviewers, the Grocers and the Brewers,

Then the Church of England Temperates and Reverend Canon
Ellison,

Then the Publicans and Sinners, and Teetotal doctrine-dinners,
With Sir Wllfrld, that Sir Wilful, their zeal to blow the
bellows on.

One deputation gone its antagonist comes on ;

Black-and-all-black out at one door, white-and-all-white in at
’tother;

’Tis hard work for the Messengers to teach these criss-cross pas-
sengers

Within Home Office precincts their fires of wrath to smother ;

Hard to hold Abstainers tight from Alcohol alight,

Keep red-hot counter-irritants from buffets on the stair-case,

Stay Freedom’s fierce abettors from clapping foes in fetters—

And for mutual repression they do make out a rare case !

Yet Home Secretary Cross, if ’twixt extremes he toss,

Is spared the fame of proving that all whites involve their blacks;
These rival Shibboleth-shouters, these whole-hog out-and-outers,
To save him the toil of flooring, lay each other on their backs.

Serenely Cross may sit, of argument well quit,

In the clash of counter-interest and counter-irritation,

Sit and smile, and bow them out to the doom, beyond a doubt,

Of Kilkenny’s feline fighters—death by cross-extermination!

* “ I turned a cat-in-pan once more,

And so I got preferment! ”

Vicar of Bray.

A HEW COMPOSER.

In a recent notice in a leading journal of the Monday Popular
Concerts, the critic goes into well-deserved praises of the four-part
songs of the charming quartette of Swedish singers, who, after
winning the heart of musical Paris, have come to take by storm
that of musical London. He tells us quite truly that—

“ Their voices—two sopranos, mezzo soprano, and contralto—blend delight-
fully ; that their intonation is faultless; and the ensemble leaves absolutely
nothing to desire.”

And then he goes on to inform us that—

“ The Swedish ladies gave two part-songs by Lindblad, one by Svensk
Folkvisa, and one by Eisenhofer. ‘ Neeken’ the melody by Folkvisa, is
identical with that which M. Ambroise Thomas has so happily introduced in
the last scene of his Hamlet—the scene of Ophelia’s madness.”

This is exactly as if the critic had informed us that the author of
an English song was “ Popular Melody,” such being the Swedish
(Svensk) meaning of Folk-visa.

We have been used in Italian Catalogues to see that industrioiis
artist “Ignoto” (our Mr. Anon.) frequently mentioned, but it is
the first time we have heard of the famous Swedish composer,
“Popular Melody.”

Mistake and No Mistake.

Monsignor Capel has been delivering discourses in English at
Rome. In one of them, according to an epitome of it in the Times

“Impeccability, he said, is not infallibility. The very worst man may be
infallible so long as God chooses to speak through him.”

Of course he may; but what if the worst of men choose to tell
Res ? To be entirely infallible, must he not he incapable of deceiv-
ing as well as exempt from error, and therefore be impeccable so far
as veracity is concerned ? This not being the place for controversy,
perhaps these questions will be answered in some other.