or! Me and my friends are with yer so fur
as doing away with these 'ere hidle GUELPHS; but blow yer MARY of
Orstria, yer know. Blow _'er_!

_Mr. W._ (_horrified_). Hush--this is rank treason! Remember--she is
the lineal descendant of the House of Stuart!

_The S.S._ What of it? There won't be no lineal descendants when we
git _hour_ way, 'cause there won't be nothing to descend to nobody.
The honly suv'rin _we_ mean to 'ave is the People--the Democrisy. But
there, you're young, me and my friends'll soon tork you over to hour
way o' thinking. I dessay we ain't fur apart, as it is. I got yer
address, and we'll drop in on yer some night--never fear. No hevenin'
dress, o' course?

_Mr. W._ Of course. I--I'll look out for you. But I'm seldom
in--hardly _ever_, in fact.

_The S.S._ Don't you fret about _that_. Me and my friends ain't
nothing partickler to do just now. We'll _wait_ for yer. I should like
yer to know ole BILL GABB. You should 'ear _that_ feller goin' on agin
the GUELPHS when he's 'ad a little booze--it 'ud do your 'art good!
Well, I on'y come in 'ere as a deligate like, to report, and I seen
enough. So 'ere's good-day to yer.

_Mr. W._ (_alone_). I shall have to change my rooms--and I _was_ so
comfortable! Well, well,--another sacrifice to the Cause!

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

[Illustration]

There was a bronze group by POLLET among the specimens of sculpture in
the French _Salon_, some twenty years ago,--"It may be more or less
an hour or so," as the poet sings,--representing a female form being
carried upwards in the embrace of a rather evil-looking Angel. It
illustrated a poem by the Vicomte ALFRED DE VIGNY, which I remember
reading, in consequence of this very statue having come into my
possession (it was afterwards sold at Messrs. CHRISTIE, MANSON &
WOODS, under the style and title of "Lot 121, _Elsa_"), and it
occurs to me that it was on precisely the same theme as the other
ALFRED's--not the _Vicomte_ but _Mister_ ALFRED AUSTIN's--"_The Tower
of Babel_," which I have just read with much pleasure, and, with some
profit; the moral, as I take it, being favourable to the Temperance
cause, as a warning against all spirits, good, bad, or indifferent.
_Afrael_, the inhabitant of a distant star, falls in love with
_Noema_, the wife of the atheistical Babelite _Aran_, to whom she has
borne a son, aged in the poem, as far as I can make out, about eight
years, and a