I always take that paper in, and I find it very much appreciated in the pantry.  The butler reads it, when we have done with it, and passes it on to the footman.  It keeps them out of mischief.  Now take my advice, and contribute to that.”  I humbly murmured my thanks to this intolerable person, and left him.  As I turned away I half thought I heard the sound of your Excellency’s bellows in the neighbourhood of POSER.  Was I wrong?

  I remain (merely in an epistolary sense),
    Your Excellency’s humble servant,

DIOGENES ROBINSON.

* * * * *

APPROPRIATE TITLE FOR MR. ANDREW LANG.—­The Folk-Loreate.

* * * * *

“AUDI ALTERAM PARTEM!”

(A PENDANT TO MR. WILLIAM WATSON’S “THE KEY-BOARD.")

  Five-and-thirty black slaves,
    Half-a-hundred white. 
  All their duty but to make
    Shindy day and night,
  Now with throats of thunder,
    Now with clattering lips,
  While she thumps them cruelly
    With stretched finger-tips.

  When she quits the chamber
    All the slaves are dumb,
  Dumb with rapture, till the Minx
    Back shall come to strum,
  Dumb the throats of thunder,
    Hushed chromatic skips,
  Lacking all the torturing
    Of strained finger-tips.

  Dusky slaves and pallid,
    Ebon slaves and white,
  When Minx mounts her music-stool
    Neighbours fly with fright. 
  Ah, the bass’s thunder! 
    Oh, the treble’s trips! 
  Eugh, the horrid tyrannies
    Of corned finger-tips!

  Silent, silent, silent,
    All your janglings now;
  Notes false-chorded, slithering slaps,
    Pedal-aided row! 
  Where is Minx, we wonder? 
    Ah! those scrambling skips! 
  Back she’s come to torture us
    With her finger-tips!

* * * * *

CHARLEMAGNE AND I.

Aix-la-Chapelle, Monday.—­CHARLEMAGNE was doubtless well advised in selecting this town for his residence.  However that be, it is not a matter for us to dogmatise about.  I have heard a lamented friend, suddenly and all too soon lost, say there are few things more regrettable than the tendency of the present age to review the actions of great men, not lost but gone before, and to pass judgment upon them without having enjoyed the opportunity of hearing what they might have to say in justification or palliation of the proceedings challenged.

That is true and tersely put.  Still I may observe that if C. lived at this period and had his choice, say between Aix-la-Chapelle and Homburg or Aix-les-Bains, it is doubtful whether he would have built his cathedral here.  Unlike the two latter watering-places, Aix-la-Chapelle has other fish to boil besides the invalids who come hither attracted by the fame of its hot springs.  It is a manufacturing town, and has all the characteristics of one.  At Homburg or Aix-les-Bains you walk up a street, turn a corner and find yourself among pine-trees, or in a smiling valley with a blue lake blinking at the sun.  Here the baths are in the centre of the town, and, like a certain starling, you feel you “can’t get out.”