ey, and who demand
our trustfulness as a right not to be denied them.

Now, what a poor piece of mockery, of false tinsel and fringe and folly
and pretence, is your stage-player beside one of these fellows! Who is
going to sit three weary hours at the Haymarket, bored by the assumed
plausibility of the actor, when the real, the actual, the positive
thing that he so poorly simulates is to be met on the railroad, at the
station, in the club, on the chain-pier, or the penny steamer? Is there
any one, I ask, who will pay to see the plaster-cast when he can
behold the marble original for nothing? You say, "Are you going to the
masquerade?" and I answer, "I am at it." _Circumspice!_ Look at the
mock royalties hunting (Louis XIV. fashion) in the deep woods of
Fontainebleau. Look at haughty lords and ladies--the haughtiest the
earth has ever seen--vying in public testimonies of homage--as we saw
a few days ago--to the very qualities that, if they mean anything,
mean the subversion of their order. Look at the wasteful abundance of
a prison dietary, and the laudable economy which half-starves the
workhouse. Look at the famished curate, with little beyond Greek roots
to support him, and see the millionaire, who can but write his name,
with a princely fortune; and do you want Webster or Buckstone to give
these "characters" more point?

Will you take a box for the 'Comedy of Errors,' when you can walk
into the Chancery Court for nothing? Will you pay for 'Much Ado about
Nothing,' when a friendly order can admit you to the House? And as for
a 'New Way to Pay Old Debts,' commend me to Commissioner Goulburn in
Bankruptcy; while 'Love's Last Shift' is daily performed at the Court of
Probate, under the distinguished patronage of Judge Wills. Is there any
need to puzzle one's head over the decline of the drama, then? You
might as well ask if a moderate smoker will pay exorbitantly for dried
cabbage-leaves, when he can have prime Cubans for the trouble of taking
them!

PENSIONS FOR GOVERNORS.

I do not remember ever to have read more pompons nonsense than was
talked a few days ago in Parliament on the subject of pensions for
retired colonial governors.

On all ordinary occasions the strongest case a man can have with the
British public is to be an ill-used man--that is to say, if you be a man
of mark, or note, or station. To be ill-used, as one poor, friendless,
and ignoble, is no more than the complement of your condition. It