accept the responsibility. Let us reform the
public and it will be easy to do away with
objectionable shows. At the Baby Show there
was nothing to justify police interference;
but nevertheless some writers called upon the
police to break it up, with a childlike faith in
the efficiency of the constituted authorities
that would be admirable if it were not
ridiculous. The Woolwich manager might have
exhibited the babies in a state of nudity had
he been so minded, and the show would have
been successfully concluded before the
authorities had decided whether they ought to
interfere, whose business it was to interfere, and
under what law interference would be strictly
legal. Getting on by degrees, we may get a
Show before very long, that will suggest to
Somebody, M.P. for Somewhere, the vast idea
of hinting the propriety of a revision of the
licensing system in connexion with public
entertainments. At about the same time, perhaps,
the public will grow so refined; as to ask for this
revision, or to demand it. Anyhow, both the
poet and myself are hopeful enough to believe
that the prize babies at Woolwich will never
send their babies to a Baby Show.

A SUMMER SUNSET.

GREEN islands in a golden sea,
With amethyst cliffs that melt away
At every wash of the sleepy wave,
White towering Alps that greet the day;
And still through rents in the further space
Glimpses of distant ocean bed,
Burning with restless changeful light,
And veined with flushes of glory spread,
Far as the living are from the dead,
Far as the blessed are from hell's night.

Then the islands grow to radiant realms,
And shoot forth golden tongues of land,
And the Alps fade down to a level plain,
Where monsters troop in a threatening band;
Then murky towers, where ghosts can reign,
Rise like a wizard's dying dream;
While low in the west in a narrow vein
There spreads, through the dusk, one golden beam,
Like heaven's last and lingering gleam
Seen through hell's vista by those in pain.

Nature is changeful, and, like the sea,
Has its autumn ebb and its summer flow.
Cloudlets of morning pass with dawn;
Who can tell where the sunbeams go;
Dead flowers turn to mere earth at last,
Earth to blossoms breaks forth in May,
Life and death are ever at war
On this great chameleon world, I say;
Yet cloud or river, or leaf on the tree
Is not so changeful, it seems to me,
As a woman's mind—that a feather can sway.

AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM.

HE was a sturdy thick-set man in a
holiday suit of new fustian, and with
bewilderment written in every line of his
honest face. The oracle of his party, and
the guide-in-chief to three male and two
female friends, as well as to their
commingled families, he had evidently pledged
himself to carry them through the Museum
successfully, and was now in mortal dread
of losing his reputation. To see him dodging
the statues in the Egyptian Gallery
was a spectacle for gods and men. The
numerous effigies of the cat-headed divinity,
Pasht, and the two colossal heads of
Amenophis, caused him deep anxiety; for the
attention of the ladies was riveted on the
first, and the children put an infinite variety
of perplexing questions respecting the
second. " Here's another one of that there
Pasht," remarked one of the former, on
reading the name on the pedestal. " What
made her so fond of 'aving herself took, I
wonder, for she ain't no beauty to look
at?" "Is she Egyptian for Puss in
Boots?" asked another. " Was Mennyoppis
a good man, father?" chimed in a
sharp lad of twelve, who had begged to
carry the green guide-book in his own
hand, and was puzzling himself over the
names and descriptions it gives. The other
three men looked profoundly miserable,
and, as they paced the long chamber,
preserved a moody silence, now and again
looking askance at the first hapless mortal,
addressed as Joe, but forbearing to add to
his troubles by a single word. One of
these was a corpulent, florid being, with a
shiny face and a merry eye, whose frock-
coat evidently impressed him with a sense
of unusual responsibility; for he stuck out
his chest like a black pouter pigeon, and
until the one button fastened over it seemed
bursting with indignation, and moved his
arms round and round in windmill fashion
with a slow regularity curious to see.
There is a curve in the stuck-up elbow,
which could only have been acquired in
one way. Not by driving that gives a
more jerky and knowing upward twist;
not by carrying heavy weights that makes
the hands big and the knuckles wrinkled
and rugose, and our friend's fist is smooth
and podgy; not by digging, nor hammering,
nor by severe manual labour of any
kind, for there is a certain daintiness about
his movements which does not come from
violent exercise, but which yet suggests
shirt-sleeves and busy hands. An odd
remembrance of a certain metropolitan shop-
window flits before you, and you have your
friend's calling at last. That oleaginous
look about the hair and skin, that meaty
plumpness, those full lips and rosy cheeks,
mark the professional carver at a well-
known ham-and-beef shop; and those large
elbows have acquired their curve in supplying
ounces from the brisket and slices from
the round. A snow-white apron ordinarily
covers that capacious paunch, and a linen
jacket or a waistcoat and shirt do duty for