QUITE AN EASTER HOLIDAY.

(By Our Own Impressionist.) ONLY a few days for a jaunt. Must be home almost before I have started. Crowd at the Victoria Station. Pause at Herne Hill. Long tunnel. Beckenham Junction. Chatham. Slowed down to see castle and cathedral from half-a-dozen points of view. Faversham. Canterbury. Dover. Lord Warden. The other side. French territory. Good buffet. Amiens. Paris.

Boulevards. Breakfast. In the train again. Lyons. Marseilles. Nice. Monte Carlo. Twenty minutes for refreshment. Ten minutes at a Napoleon per five seconds. Last turn comes up right. No more time for roulette. The Corniche Road. Genoa. Venice. Lounging in gondolas. Impressed with San Marco. Also with the Café Florian. Off again. Rome. St. Peter's. Ancient ruins. Modern improvements. Impressive. Off to Pisa. Leaning Tower a fraud. Does not lean nearly enough. Florence. Pictures and a good English chemist. Lago Maggiore. Stresa. Isola Bella a mistake. Gardens not equal to Hampton Court. Over the Simplon. Domo d'Ossola, although frontier town, the most Italian-looking place yet seen. Brigue. From various points of view. Mount and descend. Vevey good place for tiny cigars. Steamboat on the Lake of Geneva. Prisoner in tower. Ouchy. Better than Lausanne. Table d'hôte at Beau Rivage excellent. Geneva. Mont Blanc in the distance. Train to Paris.

Grande Vitesse. Once more in Paris. Tour of the Bois. Dinner in the Champs Elysées. Ladies looking cold in open-air concert. Night mail. Amiens as before. Calais. Dover sea-front. Lighted by electricity. Arrival. Departure. Early morning; Canterbury, Faversham, Chatham, and Herne Hill. Victoria. Luggage. Home once more. And glad to be there.

À BERLIN!

(Song by the Right Hon. G. C-rz-n, M.P.) I WILL not be "the Boy in charge " At the "F. O." to stay, While all the others are at large, And S-L-SB-RY away! (So boldly I expressed my views.) I won't be kept at work In town, awaiting any news Of Cretan or of Turk. When the Punch "cut" I saw, Was shown as being left To do the work of S-L-SB-ry, Of holiday bereft, Says I, "I'll do a cut'! I'll go Abroad! I've time and tin! So, au revoir to the 'F. O.' Address me 'at Berlin '1"

where I

Domestic Economy. WHY can the simple letter "8" Make housewives, for the future, heedless Of holes in stockings, rents in dress ?Because it renders needles-needless.

OH! East is East, and West is West, as RUDYARD KIPLING says.

When the poor East enjoys the Art for which the rich West pays,

See East and West linked at their best! With the Art-wants of Whitechapel Good Canon BARNETT is just the man who best knows how to grapple.

So charge this Canon, load to the muzzle, all ye great Jubilee guns.

Pictures as good as sermons? Ay; much better than some poor ones. Where Whitechapel's darkness the weary eyes of the dreary workers dims,

It may be found that WATTS's pictures do better than WATTS's hymns.

Out of Evil, Good.

Johnson (meeting Thompson in the Park). My dear fellow, what on earth is that canary doing in your dog's muzzle?

Thompson. Well, you see, the bird and the terrier are great friends, and now, owing to the new Order, I'm able to take them out for an airing together.

LYCEUM.

A NAPPY THOUGHT AT THE Pretty Girls of Stilberg. That was a marcharacter of Napoleon in a piece called The vellous impersonation; but then BEN WEBSTER, though a trifle too tall, had just the very face for the Emperor. His wig with the notable lock of hair was perfect; Sir HENRY'S wig does not remind one of the best known portraits of NAPOLEON.

BUT was this idea of playing Nap an "'appy thought" on the part of our HENRY IRVING or not? Did it show our HENRY very wide awake, or was he for once and away "caught napping"? That is the question.

That Miss ELLEN TERRY should be the life and soul of SARDOU's and MOREAU'S French play, Madame Sans-Gêne, was what any one conversant with the English stage would have expected. She is a charming Madame Sans-Gêne. Her washer-woman is not quite so vulgar as was that of Madame REJANE, and therefore our English actress's portrayal of the character is not so life-like, not so convincing," adopt the modern critical cant-word, as was the French actress's impersonation of the character. But it is ELLEN TERRY as Madame Sans-Gêne, and that, for most play-goers, is enough.

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"to

That the play, not a particularly good one to start with, loses in this translation, is evidenced not only by the adapter having made the French washer-woman of 1792 talk London slang of 1897, but also by the absurdity of retaining the scene where Napoleon and his sisters "drop into Corsican," when they are having a family squabble. This lapsus lingua was natural enough in the French play, but it is all

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sound and fury signifying nothing" in this English version. It must be supposed either that the common sense of the translating adapter, Mr. CARR, was overruled, or that he could not find it in his heart to sacrifice to the exigencies of the English stage what had been so taking a scene, because so natural, with a French audience.

That Sir HENRY IRVING could ever have imagined that the English public, perfectly familiar with the face and figure f NAFOLEON, would accept him as the counterpart of "le petit caporal," is a proof that he knows his public and has rightly gauged his own popularity. HENRY IRVING is as like NAPOLEON as he can be; and if NAPOLEON wasn't like HENRY IRVING, so much the worse for NAPOLEON. It is as simply impossible for him to give us in nimself an exact "living picture" of NAPOLEON, as it would be for him to appear as the dwarf Sir GEOFFREY HUDSON. All else is beside the question. Napoleonic attitudes do not make NAPOLEON; but the piece, which is remarkable neither for striking novelty of plot nor for brilliancy of dialogue, must depend for its success mainly on public curiosity to see how Sir HENRY IRVING contrives to reduce himself to physical Napoleonic proportions, and how delightful is the Madame Sans-Gêne of Miss ELLEN TERRY.

Mr. FRANK COOPER is good as the brusque soldier Lefebvre, afterwards Duc de Dantzig; and Mr. MACKINTOSH gives his own idea of what Fouché, the celebrated Minister of Police, might have been had he been created by Mr. MACKINTOSH. For the stale device of creaking the snuff-box lid as a warning, Messrs. SARDOU and MOREAU are indebted to the same business" in Robert Macaire, whenever that accomplished Scoundrel wishes to hint to his accomplice, Jacques Strop, that he had better be careful. Surely this very unoriginal idea of Messrs. SARDOU and MOREAU might have been improved upon by the English adapter.

Years ago the present writer can call to mind BENJAMIN WEBSTER assuming the

ONLY HALF A NAP,-HIS BETTER half. Sir Henry as Napoleon reflects that if only he could have worn

The familiar grey overcoat and the well-known cocked hat, and played the part sitting down, how much more like he could have looked! Perhaps the cleverest stage impersonation of NAPOLEON (but it was only for a few minutes) was when CHARLOTTE SAUNDERS suddenly appeared as the great Emperor confronting JOHNNIE CLARKE, who, as Louis Napoleon, exclaimed, "Oh, my prophetic soul! my uncle!" in the last scene of BYRON's burlesque of The Lady of Lyons at the Strand Theatre. Sir HENRY's im

personation may be courteously termed an ideal NAPOLEON."

If Sir HENRY IRVING is as pleased with Mr. COMYNS CARR's version of Madame Sans-Gene as, in his first-night speech before the curtain, he professed himself to be, and as, of course, he must have been to have produced it at all, then such a gratuitcus assurance from his own lips must be good enougn for the public, seeing that "praise from Sir HUBERT STANLEY is approbation indeed!" it would be well for dramatic authors generally, whenever there may be any doubt as to the author's share in the success of a new play, were the manager, following Sir HENRY'S example, to step before the curtain, and courteously but decidedly deprecate all criticism antagonistic to the dramatist, by candidly avowing his own entire satisfaction witn the new work, whatever might have been its reception. For the production of any piece the manager alone is responsible to the public. Mr. CARR, representing Messrs. SARDOU and MOREAU, is to be heartily congratulated on having his work played by so excellent a company, and having his praises sung by so generous and loyal a manager; and, as the play is splendidly put on the stage, and as from first to last ELLEN TERRY is seen at her brightest, Madame SansGêne, with some judicious pruning, will probably prove a considerable attraction in this Year of Jubilee!"

TO HELLAS.

(By a Perplexed "Power." A long way after E. A. Pue's "To Helen.")

"In the name of our great mother Hellas, who has called us together in this sacred struggle from all lands where Greeks live."-Proclamation of Dr. Politis to the Ethnike Hetairia.]

HELLAS, thy shindy is to me

Like GARIBALDI's bark of yore.
Our ships are on the Cretan sea,
Thy bands are on the Cretan shore;
Which is a beastly bore!

On desperate games long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy quilted skirts, make bardlings foam
Of the glory that was Greece,

Of the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo, trying to queer the Concert's pitch, Bellona-like I see thee stand,

The torch of war within thine hand! Ah, Mischief, from the regions which Were great and grand!

DURING THE RECESS.

LORD S-L-SB-RY will appear in a tourist suit by the sad sea waves down south.

Mr. ARTH-R B-LF-R will show the natives how to play golf.

Mr. C-RZ-N will not stay in town, but enjoy himself away from the cares of office.

Mr. CH-MB-RL-N will accompany Sir FR-NK L-CKW-D in a tour round the "monuments" of Paris.

The L-RD M-Y-R will appear by deputy in the Mansion House.

Mr. BR-WN will announce his departure from town in one daily paper.

Mr. J-N-8 will inform the world of his

arrival on the continent in a second journal. Mr. R-B-NS-N will publish a list of his movements in a third periodical.

The ordinary events of the universe will go on as per usual.