od till you have first
tried the schoolmaster.

* * * * *

VERY UNSEASONABLE INTELLIGENCE.

One of "Our own Correspondents," speaking of the recent disaster at
Sinope, rather startles us with the announcement that

"Turkey for the present is unquestionably worsted."

If this be literally the fact, we only hope our country friends will
postpone their usual hampers until Turkey is itself again.

* * * * *

SEASONABLE INCONSISTENCE.

A jovial young printer of our acquaintance having declared the other
evening that he had left off work, was found under the misletoe a little
later most busily employed in printing kisses.

* * * * *

UNEVENHANDED JUSTICE.

Our old friend, SIR PETER LAURIE, in his recent modest letter to the
_Times_ upon the legal (as well indeed as social, moral, and in
universal) worth and excellence of our Aldermen, marks with a special
note of admiration the gratifying fact, that the number of acquittals
from our City Police Courts falls considerably below the usual
percentage. Recollecting SIR PETER'S old propensity for "putting down,"
we are in some degree prepared to find that such a fact as this should
be a matter of rejoicing with him. SIR PETER clearly holds that the
proof of the trial is in the finding guilty, and he has, doubtless, but
a low opinion of those judicial courts where mercy is allowed to "season
justice." "The rigour of the law" is clearly no unmeaning phrase in SIR
PETER LAURIE'S eyes: indeed, we almost doubt if _Judex damnatur cum
innocens absolvitur_ be not in reality his first legal maxim.

Whatever SIR PETER'S present faults may be, there is no denying that he
has rid himself of an old one. We cannot certainly accuse him of
tenacity of opinion, when he shows himself so evidently prone to
conviction.

* * * * *

CLERICAL TABLE-TURNERS AND SPIRIT-RAPPERS.

[Illustration: C]

Clerical gentlemen are going about the country, giving entertainments,
and making exhibitions of themselves, in connection with table-turning,
spirit-rapping, and other freaks of furniture. The usual places of
amusement, such as the concert-rooms and lecture-theatres are being
occupied by clergymen, who admit the public at fixed prices to hear, but
unfortunately not to see, the wonders on which they expatiate. By way of
EXTRA ATTRACTION FOR THE HOLIDAYS we recommend