ca before. _Mr. Punch_ hopes, despite this
disquieting sentence, that Lord SALISBURY, after his excellent speech
at the Mansion House, is unlikely to fall into the same fatal error.

* * * * *

ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.

EXTRACTED FROM THE DIARY OF TOBY, M.P.

_House of Commons, Monday, August_ 4.--GEORGE CAMPBELL been with us
many Sessions; heard and seen a good deal of him, but really seems
only now to be coming out. Has taken up the Police Bill, "and I
wish," says HENRY MATTHEWS, _sotto voce_, "the Police would in return
take _him_ up." GEORGE literally overwhelms the place, breaks out
everywhere; began at earliest moment with question of precedence.
Cardinal MANNING been granted precedence on certain Royal Commissions.
"Why should the Cardinal be thus honoured?" GEORGE wants to know.
"There is the Moderator of the Scotch Free Church. Why shouldn't he,
too, have princely rank?"

[Illustration:
The Campbell is speaking, oh dear, oh dear!
The Campbell is speaking, oh dear, oh dear!
And nobody ever cries, "Hear, hear, hear!"
When the Campbell is speaking! Oh dear, oh dear!]

LORD ADVOCATE snubs CAMPBELL, and he momentarily resumes his seat.
Ten minutes later shrill cry of pibroch heard again. Everyone knows
that CAMPBELL is coming, and here he is, tall, gaunt, keen-faced,
shrill-voiced, wanting to know at the top of it which of HER MAJESTY'S
Ministers advises HER MAJESTY on questions of precedence?

"There is," said GORST, reflectively gazing on his manly form, "one
precedence we would all concede to CAMPBELL. We would gladly write on
the bench where he usually sits--

'Not lost, but gone before.'"

[Illustration: FANCY PORTRAIT OF ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE.

On reading the Parliamentary report in Wednesday's _Times_.

"_Mr. W.H. Smith_. I asked my colleagues near me whether they had seen
or read the publication--(Mr. A.C. Swinburne's poem about Russia) and
none of them had."

"And this," exclaimed Algernon Charles Swinburne, the poet, "_this_ is
fame!"]

But which _is_ his seat? Usually the lank form and the shrill voice
simultaneously uprise from the middle of the second Bench behind Mr.
G.; but GEORGE has a little way of pleasantly surprising the House.
Members looking across see this Bench empty. "Ah! ah!" they say to
themselves, "the CAMPBELLS are gone. Now we'll have a few minutes'
peace and get on with business." Suddenly, _a propos_ of anything that
may b