RETURNING FROM THE DERBY IN BLINK BONNY'S YEAR.

"AT LENGTH HE PRESENTED HIMSELF, BUT IN SUCH A STATE THAT WE WERE OBLIGED TO TIE HIM ON THE BOX, AND I HAD TO RIDE HOME."-Extract from letter to particular friend.

THE DELIGHTS OF SPRING.

A SONG BY A VEGETARIAN.
SPRING'S delights are now returning,
See where sprouts the crisp seakale;
Early greens and cauliflowers

Now command a ready sale.
Vegetarians now rejoicing
Asparagus again may dress;
And fewer doubts of what's for dinner
Need their anxious minds distress.
They who fondly dote on pudding
With joy the new-born rhubarb see,
And greater rapture hails the budding
Of the prickly gooseberrie.
Now returns the green cucumber,

That with nightmare doth distress;
While for those in peace who'd slumber
Springs anew the simple cross.

Now in large yet penny bunches
Radishes again are seen:
And the lettuce tempts to lunches
At the shops of grocers green.
Let other bards in rhyme discover
Joys that other seasons bring;
I, a vegetable lover,

Tell the pleasures of the Spring.

a

they, will get the credit of it. We are all quite aware they do not keep a man-cook, and have not a range of stoves and a batterie de cuisine capable of turning out four entrées, to say nothing of the two soups, and two fishes, and the rest of the dinner. It is no secret to any of us that to-morrow our host and hostess will be dining contentedly off a leg of mutton not over-well roasted. For their real cook is of the plainest description. Of course, if one falls back on a GALANTINE, whenever one gives a dinner, it is of no consequence-to people of the Koroo order-what sort of an artist one has at home. Her incapacity only affects the three hundred dinners we eat by ourselves in the course of the year. For the ten days per annum on which we give dinners our cook is the great GALANTINE, who has seen the breakdown of two clubs, and survived the smash of six lordly establishments, to which his grand style of carrying on his part of the war in the kitchen not a little contributed. He despises his present calling, and looks on himself as a sort of culinary NAPOLEON. This suburb is his Elba. He amuses himself by planning these bourgeois dinners, as the Emperor did by drilling his one battalion in the rocky Mediterranean islet. But his heart is not in his work; and, to tell the truth, the dinners he sends out are unworthy of him-very grand to look at, and very costly to pay for, but very bad to eat. GALANTINE also has stooped to the vile worship of appearances, which poisons the neighbourhood. He knows he is part of a system of shows and shams, and has become false even to his own noble art-going for verdicts to the eye and the pocket, but allowing judgment to be entered against him by the palate and fauces, his true judges.

"Hark! GALANTINE'S cart has driven off at last. If you had not heard it, you might have guessed the moment by the lighting of MRS. KoToo's eye. She was anxiously listening for the sound of the wheels, for the weight of the flagging conversation is rapidly growing too great for anybody to bear up under. Even Koroo, dreary and ungenial and hollow as he is, feels flatter than usual, and pumps up his pompous nothings with visible effort. The Reviewer is using up all the stock of anecdotes he had laid in to last out the whole dinner, and the rival Mammas have emptied their quivers of sharp things. FLAUNTER has subsided into the moody contemplation of his own difficulties, and even bloated PENNY BOY has collapsed. Pairing the males and females of the party was a resource that diverted us all for a little from brooding on our melancholy position. But when every man had been duly led up to the lady consigued to him by MRS. KOTOO, 'to take down to dinner,' and had made his bow, and had felt he had nothing to say-as how should he, to a person he never met before, and knows no earthly thing about P-the dreariness was probably even more apparent than it had seemed while we were standing about indiscriminately.

"The males of the party had gathered into knots, as far off the females as possible, and had found topics more or less mutually intelligible if not interesting. There are always politics to talk about-and most men feel some interest in the money-market, and about the Derby Day you are tolerably safe with a little mild Turf intelligence. "But now that we were distributed two and two, like the creatures coupled for the Ark,-most of us, I may add, as dumb as they,-the situation was rapidly becoming untenable, when GALANTINE'S head man, who acts groom of the chambers with GALANTINE's dinners, throwing open the drawing-room door with a magnificence of manner which made the Koroos blush and feel humble at the very gorgeousness of their own imposture, announced that dinner was served.

"But before we sit down to our prandial punishment, let me say one word on the subject of this ante-prandial pairing. Of course, while dinner-parties continue to be composed as they so often are now. a-days, on the Koroo principle-that is on considerations quite independent of the pleasure likely to be given or received-it is very little matter how any man or woman, out of a dozen men and women who don't know anything or care anything about each other, may be coupled. Where boredom is the sure fate of all, what consequence a degree more or less of the infliction?

"ARRIVE as late as you will at the Koroos, you always have to wait good while before dinner is announced. With parties composed as theirs Invariably are, under a profoundly mistaken sense of social duty-either on the give-and-take, or mutual principle, as it is called in advertise- "But let me ask the small-though I hope increasing-phalanx ments of third-rate schools, or on the simple snobbish principle of wealth- of honest and genial souls who are content to invite people to dinner worship or title-worship, or on the lion-hunting principle, to which, as a because they love them, or at least like them so well that they literary gent, I owe most of my invitations to dinner, or on all these three are happier for seeing thein, whether this habit of ticking off their principles together-you may imagine the half-hour in the drawing-room guests two and two, is ever desirable? I am inclined to think is not particularly genial. How can such parties be good for mixing? it is not. It seems to be giving the two a peculiar claim upon each A very energetic and courageous guest-this time it was the popular other. Social monopolies are as bad as trading ones. Everybody author-may, by a galvanic effort, produce a short fit of general con- in a party should belong to everybody else in the party. Talk round a versation, as you may mix oil and vinegar by a violent sudden shaking dinner-table should be common, and not confidential. If you want of the cruet. But just as these soon resettle into their separate strata, confidences choose téte-à-tétes for them. If there is wit or wisdom so do we, returning each to his own unsocial muttons. This weary going, all should share it. If folly or imbecility or ill-nature want delay is due to the suburban GUNTER who supplies the dinner. If you vent, at least don't let them shelter themselves under a whisper. I arrived late, you saw his light covered cart at the door. Five minutes should say, therefore, for my own part-no coupling before dinner. earlier you would have seen the flat green boxes disappearing down the Let the lady of the house show the way, and let the guests follow her area-steps in a pleasant, unceremonious group, on the understanding, of course, that the sexes are to be dove-tailed at table. But above all, let the table be a round one. Without this there is no true sociability possible. The best that can come of an oblong table is a series of agreeable tête-à-têtes. But then if the pleasantest couples are put together, how unfair that is to the rest of the party. And if the

"I wonder it never occurs to the Koroos that nine out of ten of their guests have probably detected the cart and green boxes in question-that, be their entertainment never so gorgeous, MR. GALANTINE-who supplies breakfasts, dinners, and suppers, flowers and routseats included, at so much per head, for two miles round-and not

pleasantest people are not coupled together, how unfair that is to the pleasant people. Your round table is the only true social almsdish, into which every one present flings his contribution towards the pleasure of the feast-from the ten talents of the SIDNEY SMITH of your party, if you are lucky enough to have one, down to the widow's mite of the timidest and gentlest lady present-a little laugh, perhaps, or happy look, thrown in at the right moment, and of immeasurable value sometimes.

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As all the rays of light converge in the focus of a lens, so all the fun, geniality, kindliness, and wisdom of your guests will converge in the centre of the round-table, and pleasure and enjoyment and intelligence will radiate thence till they permeate the party, and people will be astonished to find how agreeable and cheery and chatty and goodhumoured they are, somehow. My two theories, then, of no pairing' and the round table' go together. But I must say I hold them both of vital importance to the true enjoyment of a social dinner.

"But what is this? I am off the Social Tread-mill. The fact is, that a sufferer naturally wanders into sunny social speculations in the ten minutes allowed for refreshment, just as the gaol convicts, I have no doubt, stray away in fancy to pleasant public-houses, or delightfully criminal beer-shops, in their hourly ten minutes respite from their cranks and mills. But I must mount the wheel again, with the KoTOO chain-gang. We are just sitting down-at such a gorgeous table! It is bedizened with flowers- à la Russe-and so long, that conversation between the ends can only be carried on, I should think, by help of a speaking-trumpet. Luckily Koroo and his wife have the marital telegraph of the eye. It will be hard worked during this dinner, I am certain. We have sat down-solemnly. Pray for us, oh reader!"

COMICALITIES OF THE POPE'S PROGRESS.

HE POPE'S tour through-
out the Roman states has,
of course, been attended
with some absurd incidents.
For example:-

"At Terni he visited the large
foundry of that place, where
several medals with the effigies
of the Saviour, the Virgin, and
the Apostles PETER and PAUL,
were cast in his presence."

the POPE must have been
naturally desirous of seeing
and hearing as little as pos-
sible of the shop, and no-
body possessed of the least
delicacy would have both-
ered his Holiness with

STANZAS TO SOAPEY SAM.

TELL me, Bishop, tell me why,
If you had your little will,
You'd keep bound, in cruel tie,

Injured spouse and false wife still?
Why oppose LORD CRANWORTH'S Bill?

From a loathed and guilty mate,
Why refuse a man divorce,
Ruthless of his horrid state,

Which your priestly laws enforce;
Union with a moral corse?

Do you fear that common sense
'Gainst your dogmas will rebel,
And if you, of high pretence,

Give an inch, will take an ell?
Ah! I don't expect you'll tell.
In a bad old canon law,

Do you see a little prop
To your fabric-which withdraw,
And the edifice will drop?

Are you fighting for the Shop.

Were 't now first proposed to free
Until now enslaved Dissent,
Would you not, my Bishop, be
With the measure "non content ?"
Say, my Peer of Parliament.

Had you lived in other days,
Question being, That no more
Faggots should in Smithfield blaze,
You'd have urged, of holy lore,
For the bonfires, what a store!

THE UMBRELLOMETER.

WE think the umbrella can be taken as a very good test of a person's What extremely bad character. The man who always takes an umbrella out with him, is taste! Out for a holiday, a cautious fellow, who abstains from all speculation, and is pretty sure to die rich. The man who is always leaving his umbrella behind him, is one, generally, who makes no provision for the morrow. He is reckless, thoughtless, always late for the train, leaves the street-door open when he goes home late at night, and absent to such a degree as to speak ill of a baby in the presence of its Mamma. The man who is always losing his umbrella is an unlucky dog, whose bills are always protested, whose boots split, whose gloves crack, whose buttons are images. Good manners always coming off, whose "change" is sure to have some bad money would forbid the slightest in it. Be cautious how you lend a thousand pounds to such a man! allusion to that subject in the presence of the Roman Pontiff, precisely The man, who is perpetually expressing a nervous anxiety about as they would prohibit any gentleman from talking to a shoemaker, his umbrella, and wondering if it is safe, is full of meanness and low away from business, about bristles and cobbler's-wax. To proceed:- suspicions, with whom it is best not to play at cards, nor drink a bottle "When about to leave that place, some young men of the best families offered to take the horses off his carriage, and to draw it, but this he would not allow."

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Here was a case of good taste on the part of the POPE, which it is pleasing to notice. He preferred horses to donkeys. At Spoleto a mistake, similar to that committed at Terni, was made by the authorities, who stuck up, right in his way, before the_cathedral, a large wooden column surmounted by the statue of the Immaculate Virgin." No doubt the POPE wonders when he shall hear the last of his new dogma. The muffs who paid him the left-handed compliment last mentioned received a just reward for their polite attention:

"On alighting, he proceeded on foot to the Cathedral, and thence to the Episcopal Palace, where he admitted all the authorities to the honour of kissing his slipper."

The Giornale di Roma, whence we derive the foregoing particulars, does not state whether or no, when the POPE gave the authorities of Spoleto his slipper to kiss, his foot was in the slipper. We suppose, however, that to make the favour the more gracious, and the more suitable, as a repayment somewhat in kind of the civility which he had received from them-his Holiness did put his foot in it.

Fire Insurance.

MADAME CORNICHON (née SIMPLE), after reading the accounts of the fire-proof dresses as lately tried with so much success by the Pompiers at Paris, ordered a gown, bonnet, veil, and an entire set of under-linen to be expressly made for her, and, upon being pressed for her reason for so strange an order, said, with the greatest naïveté, "Why the world, you know, is to be consumed by the Comet on the 13th of June, and I've no idea of being burnt to death."

of wine. He is sure to suspect you are cheating him, or that you are drinking more than your share. Let him be ever so rich, give not your daughter to him; he will undoubtedly take more care of his umbrella than of his wife. The man with a cotton umbrella is either a philosopher or an economist; he defies the world and all its fashionable prejudices, or else he does it because it is cheaper to lose than a silk one. The man who goes to the Horticultural Fête without an umbrella, is simply a fool, who richly deserves the ducking he gets.