NOTES. PRESENCE OF STRANGERS IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. In the late debate on Mr. Grantley Berkeley's motion for a fixed duty on corn, Sir Benjamin Hall is reported to have imagined the presence of a stranger to witness the debate, and to have said that he was imagining what every one knew the rules of the House rendered an impossibility. It is strange that so intelligent a member of the House of... more...

MABEL'S COW. HE cow nearest to you in the picture is Mabel's cow; and Mabel Brittan is the taller of the two girls on the bridge. I will tell you why the cow is called Mabel's cow.Her family live in a wild but beautiful part of New Hampshire, where it is very cold in winter, and pretty warm in summer. There are only two small houses within a mile of her father's. He keeps cows, and... more...

NOTES NOTES AND QUERIES The history of books and periodicals of a similar character ought to be the object of interest to the readers of this work. The number of works in which answers have been given to proposed questions is not small. Not to mention the Spectator and its imitators, nor the class of almanacs which give riddles and problems, nor mathematical periodicals of a more extensive... more...

THE PLAYS AND SHOWS. BATHOS and pathos are closely allied in sound as well as in sense. Mr. FECHTER evidently regards them as completely identical; and in his acting, as in his pronunciation, uniformly prefers the former to the latter. He has recently exemplified this by his personation of CLAUDE MELNOTTE, in that most tawdry specimen of the cotton-velvet drama, the LADY OF LYONS. This melancholy event... more...

ROBERT'S AMERICAN ACQUAINTANCE. My akwaintance among eminent selebraties seems to be rapidly encreasing. Within what Amlet calls a week, a little week, after my larst intervue with the emenent young Swell as amost lost his art to the pretty Bridesmade, I have been onored with the most cordial notice of a werry emenent Amerrycane, who cums to Lundon wunce ewery year, and makes a good long stay, and... more...

BALKS IN A BRUSH. FLORA, having no relations in the world that she knew of, had, ever since her seventh new bonnet, known no other home than Macassar Female College, in the Alms-House, and regarded Miss CAROWTHERS as her mother-in-lore. Her memory of her own mother was of a lady-like person who had swiftly waisted away in the effort to be always taken for her own daughter, and was, one day, brought... more...

THE FUTURE OF CHINA. The late reconquest by China of some of her former possessions in Central Asia, and the firm tone in which she is urging her demands upon Russia, in respect of the Kuldja territory, are giving her a prominence as a factor in Asiatic politics which she can scarcely be said to have claimed before. These signs of tenacity of purpose, if not of actual vitality, acquire an additional... more...

FIRST AID TO TOMMY ATKINS. Sir,—I visited the Military Exhibition the other day according to your instructions, my bosom glowing with patriotic ardour. If anything besides your instructions and the general appropriateness of the occasion had been necessary to make my bosom glow thus, it would have been found in the fact that I formerly served my country in a Yeomanry Regiment. I shall never forget... more...

A MANUAL OF DENOUEMENTS. “In the king’s name, Let fall your swords and daggers.”—CRITIC. A melo-drama is a theatrical dose in two or three acts, according to the strength of the constitution of the audience. Its component parts are a villain, a lover, a heroine, a comic character, and an executioner. These having simmered and macerated through all manner of events, are strained off together... more...

THE UMBRELLA. A VIEW OF THE SHADY SIDE OF LIFE. A ripe pippin falling upon the head of Sir ISAAC NEWTON (a clear case of hard cider on the brain) suggested the laws of gravitation. An elderly countryman passing my window this clear bright day, attended by his faithful umbrella, suggested the following reflections. The term Umbrella comes from the Latin umbra, a shade—the whole signifying "keep... more...