December 28, 1889.]

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

Vi

Scene—The top of the Tour Eiffel. Time—The Eve of the Ntiv Year.
Present, Mr. Punch and Toby.

Mr. Punch (quoting from his friend the Poet Laureate).

“ I stood on a tower in the wet.

When the New and the Old Year met.”

Humph! Alfred, you were unfortunate in your weather.
(You are not in your new poem, however—nor is the world.)
Wonder what tower it was ? Not the Tour Eiffel, anyhow.
(Improvises.)

Punch stands on a Tower in the night,

As the Old Year takes its flight;

And the star-rays shower like rain
O’er the City by the Seine;

O’er the site of the mighty Show
That in shadow stretches below,

Silent, where lately beat
The tramp of a million feet;

Still, where a while ago
Such a tide of life did flow;

Dark, where Lutetia’s air
Was gay with her summer glare ;

Ghostly, where-

Tobias, what are you looking at ? Do you see a ghost ?

Tobias. Whack-wow-wow ! [Crouches and quivers.

Mr. Punch. Toby, Toby, he not alarmed !

Come, bear thee like a Sage’s dog,

And do not droop thy tail!

By Shakspeake and the Psychical Society, he does see a ghost, though. Who is this, slowly “ materialising,” like a Mahatma,
before my very eyes ? Spirit of Beaumarchais, Shades of Mozart and Rossini, I should know that short Spanish jacket,
that jaunty cap, that jimp figure, that espiegle physiognomy. It is, it must be, mon ami Figaro himself. Largo al factotum !
Ah ! bravo, Figaro ! bravo, bravissimo ! ! !

Figaro. None other indeed ! Well met, in good season and suitable place ! The Sage of Fleet Street and the Barber
of Seville encountering on the top of Paris’s Babel Tower, just before the dawn of the Jour de VAn, is a sight for gods and
men,—could they see it.

Mr. Punch. “ Two on a Tower,” as my friend Thomas Hardy might say. Would the witty watchmaker were here
to make a third. Pierre Augustin Caron, surnamed of Beaumarchais, has never yet perhaps been quite fully appreciated.

Figaro. Sir, I salute you ! The compliment to my spiritual progenitor sounds pleasantly in my ears.

Mr. Punch. Les beaux esprits se rencontrent ? But wits well met surely never foregathered so singularly. Lucian
and Charles Lamb talking a-top of Cheops’ Pyramid, what time Memnon awaited the music-stirring sun, might perhaps be
“ in it ” with this encounter.

Figaro. You were here before, when the Great Show was at its height, n'est-ce pas ?

Mr. Punch. Is it not written in the book of the chronicles of the Visit of the Punch Staff to Paris ? Which of course
you have read ?

Figaro. Upon the advice of M. Emile Berr-—yes. But here we are, higher than even the “ Pavilion du Figaro,”
“ a 115 metres 73 centimetres de hauteur.” And what a panorama is spread before us—to the mind’s eye ! Wider even than
the Panorama of the Year in your Christmas Number, Mr. Punch.

Mr. Punch. I perceive that you keep au courant with the best literature and art of the time, friend Figaro.

Figaro. Else would the Shades be somniferous indeed. Notre Dame still towers Icl-bas, notwithstanding Paul Bert
and Company. And there stands the simulacrum of that Bastille, the destruction of which Beaumarchais lived long enough
to witness. “ Tout Paris ” is therein expressed. They say I “ did no little towards preparing the way for the Revolution,”
that the Manage de Figaro effected even more than the Memoires towards bringing contempt upon the “ institutions of the
old regime.” Fitly then was the Pavilion du Figaro perched high on the Tower whose erection was part of the celebration
of the Centenary of the Year of Revolution. And yet-

Mr. Punch. “ Beaumarchais, in spite of all his wit and energy, was not naturally a revolutionist.” Neither am I.