Punch (73.1877)

December 22, 1877.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. 277

A ROUNDABOUT PAPER.

Ponce: is glad to give the publicity of his world-wide
circulation to a wonderful tale, not of a tub, let us hope,
though of a transport, taken from the Naval and Military-
column of last Saturday's Daily News. The D. JY.
prints the paragraph in small type. In this modest
typographical garb the story might escape notice. A
history so creditable to all concerned really ought not to
blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the minimum
of minion. Here it is :—

"Last week an order was issued from the Quartermaster-
General's Office, directing a detachment of the loth Brigade
ch'pot to be sent up to Chatham from the depot at Burnley, to
join the 30th Regiment. Instead, however, of the troops being
sent direct to Chatham, which they could have reached by rail
in the course of a few hours, they were taken all the way to
Portsmouth, where they were ordered to embark in her Majesty's
troopship Assistance, which conveyed them to Ireland. On
arriving at Dublin the Assistance was again ordered back to
Portsmouth, where, on the arrival of the vessel, the troops were
disembarked, and finally sent on to this garrison by railway."

There ! We call that something like a paternal Quarter-
master-General's Office that does not shrink from putting
the country to some hundreds of pounds expense, to give
a deserving detachment the pleasure of an agreeable
"outing," showing them one of our principal naval sta-
tions, and treating them to a run to the Jrish capital
and back. And by sea, too, and in the month of Decem-
ber ! So nice and bracing for them, dear fellows!

We have all heard of the Circumlocution Office. That
belonged to the Civil Service. The Military Service has
improved upon it, and given us a " Circumlocomotion
Office," over the door of which might be written, " The
longest way round is not the shortest way home."

SANDHURST AMD ITS MESSES,

General Bouncer (on a Hound of Inspection at Sandhurst). " Augh ! Can vott

tell me what ' MESS ' this is ?"

Cadet. "Well, thev call it 'Mutton,' but I wouldn't vouch for it!"

Saying and Doing.

The Sultan talks in his Speech on opening his Parlia-
ment—odd to be opening his Parliament at the time it looks
very like shutting np bis European shop altogether--d
the "equality his subjects enjoy in the^yes of the law."

What his subjects complain of igLytnat they enjoy no
equality at the hands of the law,whatever they may do
in its eyes. Legal equality in Turkey, they complain,
between Moslem and Rayah, is a matter of eyes alto-
gether ; being, in fact, all my eye !

ESTHETIC HOUSE-BREAKING.

The Town—with the exception of Messrs. Agnew—heard enough
last year of the theft of the Beautiful Duchess.

But _ we had supposed, notwithstanding the notoriety of that
aesthetic " conveyance," that pictures were still out of the burglar's
little game, and that the gems he was glad to collar did not
include gems of Art. We were mistaken it seems. The taste for
the Fine Arts seems to have spread to the Cracksman.

Woodfield Lodge, Clayton, Sussex, the house of Captain Bayn-
ham, was lately broken into, and a number of valuable pictures
untimely ripped from their frames and carried off, including
portraits of Queen Henrietta Mabia, Prince Rupert, the Earl of
Rochester, and members of the Batnham family. Can it be that
the Burglars were ambitious of planting a family tree, and resorted
to this means of furnishing a gallery of ancestors F We have known
of high-reaching parvenus rummaging the Wardour Street bric-a-
brac establishments with this object; and stealing comes cheaper
than buying, even ancestors.

But the look-out thus opened is not pleasant for owners of pic-
tures. While the taste of the aesthetic burglar is confined to histo-
rical and family portraits, he will have only the run of our historic
houses, and the owners of these are, as a rule, big-wigs who should be
able to guard their treasures. But if the taste spread to modern Genre,
think of the art-treasures of Manchester, Liverpool, and Birming-
ham, and all the manufacturing districts, where the seed of Art has
been sown broad-cast by the hands of the Agnews ! What pretty
pickings in these places ! Then if it rise to Old Masters, and from
pictures extend to drawings, think of the plunder of the Devonshire
treasure-house, or the portfolios of Malcolm of Poltalloch, or
William Russell, or Frederick Locker ! Hitherto it has been
thought that the difficulty of disposing of such treasures was their
best protection. But aesthetic fences will, no doubt, be developed
pari passu with aesthetic burglars, and the receiver will soon be
as good as the thief at judging an Old Master, or appraising: a young
one.

We hardly know on which view of the case to dwell—satis-
faction that the taste for the Arts should be spreading in this unex-
pected direction, or sympathy with the picture-possessors who may
become its victims.

Tbere is one comfort—an aesthetic burglar would be most unlikely
to use a life-preserver, at least if there be truth in the famous
couplet and copy-head,

"Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes
Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros."

Good News for France.

The Marshal has yielded! His word of command is no long r
"All Right—over the Left! " but " By your Left-March ! "

In short—if the last reports may be trusted—the Marshal is, at
last, out of the mud, and on solid Constitutional ground. While he
keeps to his present better mind, obeys the orders of France his mis-
tress, and follows the advice of his friends Britannia, and Mr.
Punch, as we wrote last week, " II y restera."

The stubborn and short-sighted old soldier seems to have through-
out allowed himself to be made the cat's-paw of the Due de Broglie.
He may congratulate himself on being, at last, out of a hopeless
im(de)Broglio.

A Superfluous Disclaimer of a Superfluous Licence.

Mr. Algernon Turner, in the name of Lord Beaconsfield,
writes to the Secretary of the Manchester District of the Loyal
Orange Institution to deny all knowledge of any foundation for the
report that the Pope had written an autograph letter, thanking the
Queen for leaving his hands free to carve out Scotland into Papal
dioceses, with the ecclesiastical machinery thereunto appertaining.
The dear old Pope needed no such permission. His hands are free
to do his worst in the land of John Knox. He will be likely
to get more knocks than Peter's pence by the experiment.

VOL. LXXin.

p p>