Saturday.—­My connection with war ended.  Calculate I start to-morrow with the Show across the herring-pond, to wake up the Crowned Heads of Europe!

* * * * *

TO THE BIG BACILLICIDE.

  O DOCTOR KOCH, if you can slay
    Those horrid germs that kill us,
  You’ll be the hero of the day,
    Great foe of the Bacillus! 
  What champion may we match with you
    In all the world of fable? 
  St. George, who the Great Dragon slew,
    The Knights of ARTHUR’s Table,
  E’en gallant giant-slaying JACK,
    The British nursery’s darling;
  Or JENNER, against whom the pack
    Of faddists now are snarling,
  Must second fiddle play to him
    Who stayed the plague of phthisis,
  And plumbed a mystery more dim
    And deep than that of Isis. 
  For what are Dragons, Laidly Worms,
    And such-like mythic scourges,
  Compared with microscopic germs
    ’Gainst which the war he urges? 
  Hygeia, goddess, saint, or nymph,
    We trust there’s no big blunder,
  And hope your votary’s magic lymph
    May prove no nine days’ wonder. 
  We dare not trust each pseudo-seer
    Who’d powder, purge, or pill us;
  But pyramids to him we’ll rear
    Who baffles the Bacillus.

* * * * *

STRANGE TRANSFORMATION.—­From the Times Correspondent, U.S., we learned, last week, that somebody who had been “a Bull,” was now “a Bear.”  What next will he be?—­A donkey?  Or did he begin with this, and will he end by being a goose?

* * * * *

PROSPECT FOR CHRISTMAS.—­“TUCK,” i.e., RAPHAEL of that ilk.  The “Correct (Christmas) Card.”

* * * * *

“A PAIR OF SPECTACLES.”

[Illustration]

The first spectacle classic and Shakspearian:  t’other burlesquian, and PETTIT-cum-SIMS. The one at the Princess’s, the other at the Gaiety. Place au “Divine WILLIAMS”! Antony and Cleopatra is magnificently put on the stage.  The costumes are probably O.K.—­“all correct”—­seeing that Mr. LEWIS WINGFIELD pledges his honourable name for the fact.  We might have done with a few less, perhaps, but, as in the celebrated case of the war-song of the Jingoes, if we’ve got the men, and the money too, then there was every reason why the redoubtable LEWIS (whose name, as brotherly Masons will call to mind, means “Strength”) should have put a whole army of Romans on the stage, if it so pleased him.

[Illustration:  The Last Scene of Antony and Cleopatra.]