n this there is no impropriety)
We've the social and private affections
Which belong to our grade in society.
If I lay a man 'neath obligation,
Of course he'll oblige me again;
But we never take remuneration--
For we're all of us "hon'rable men."

If the daughter of one of our Board
(And such things have occurred in the body),
By winning the hand of a Lord
From MISS BLOGG become LADY TOM NODDY.
If young NODDIES have writerships handed 'em,
And young BLOGGS Treasury clerkships, what then?
Is BLOGG less, though JOHN BRIGHT may have branded him,
One of twenty-four "hon'rable men?"

As we're quite the commercial _elite_,
In the very first circles while moving,
If the dignified clergy we meet,
The occasion we're right in improving.
What delight for the son of a bishop
To provide, by a stroke of the pen!
In return--if a living he fish up
Why we're both of us "hon'rable men."

Even Cabinet Ministers often
Are proud to admit us as friends,
In those social enjoyments which soften
Official hauteur, till it bends:
What pleasure to give one's cadetships
To a hard-worked First Lord--and if then,
One's sons, now on half-pay, should get ships,
Does that prove us less "hon'rable men?"

As with other men's daughters and wives,
So with ours it is often a passion
(As the Bank or the Brewery thrives),
To shine in the regions of fashion;
For a chaperon countess's matronage,
Or a duchess's favouring ken,
A slice of one's Indian patronage,
Is no price among "hon'rable men."

Then let's hope that the scandal will never
Again with belief be received,
That for Indian appointments we ever
Dream of such thing as "Value received."
"Nought for nothing," of old was the motto,
And appointments were trafficked in then,
"All for nothing," is what we have got to--
We twenty-four "hon'rable men."

* * * * *

OUR TOURIST IN PARIS.

No. 1.

[Illustration: T]

The philosophic traveller leaves his native country in order to study
the manners of "our volatile neighbours." At the London Bridge Station
he finds a crowd of excited persons, evidently bent on the same object.
Every man has a passport in his breast-pocket, and is encumbered with
much unnecessary luggage, including the plate-chest, so indispensable to
the English gentleman's toilet. A foretaste of foreign