Monaco has adhered to the Triple Alliance. The negotiations thus brought to a successful issue, have been for a long time in progress. Obligations of honour, which no longer exist, have hitherto compelled me, as your Correspondent, to keep secret the fact that amongst the croupiers of the trente-et-quarante tables at the Casino for the past three months have been the Chancellors of the German and Austrian Empires, and the MARCHESE DI RUDINI, who, thus disguised, carried out their delicate mission to the Court of Monaco. By this post I send you the draft treaty by which Monaco engages, in the event of war, to furnish a completely equipped contingent of ten men.
* * * * *
The BARON DE BOOK-WORMS arrived in town yesterday afternoon and transacted business at his office in Bouverie Street, afterwards returning to his country seat at Stow-in-the-Wold.
* * * * *
BROWNING SOCIETY VERSES.
[Dr. FURNIVALL announces that
the Browning Society is about to
be dissolved.]
Hark! ’tis the knell of the Browning
Society,
Wind-bags are bursting all
round us to-day;
FURNIVALL fails, and for want of his diet
he
Pines like a love-stricken
maiden away.
Long has he fed upon cackle and platitude,
FURNIVALL sauce to a dish
full of dearth,
Still, in the favourite FURNIVALL attitude,
Grubbing about like a mole
in the earth.
Now must he vanish, the mole-hills are
flat again,
(Follies grow fewer it seems
by degrees);
Lovers of BROWNING may laugh and grow
fat again,
Rid of the jargon of Furnivallese.
* * * * *
NEW AND OLD TERMS.—“Slate, Slite, Slote, Slitten,” is the title of an amusing article in the Saturday Review, on the derivation of the verb “to slate.” How “slote” comes in is not quite evident, but that when the pages of a dull book are “slitten” by the paper-knife, it will be read and slated by a critic, and then “slited” (or “slighted”) by the public, is quite sufficient without “putting a penny in the ‘slote’” on the chance of getting something better.
* * * * *
SO LIKE HIM!—Tuesday last week was the seventieth birthday of Professor VIRCHOW. He has refused all titles and emoluments, observing that “VIRCHOW is its own reward.”
* * * * *
VERY POP-ULAR!—Through the Times came the information that, since the famine, the Russian Officers have given up drinking champagne. Their conduct is really quite Magnuminous!
* * * * *
[Illustration: “GRANDOLPH AD LEONES.”]
* * * * *
“ADSCRIPTUS GLEBAE.”
["He (Mr. GOSCHEN) was in
favour of giving the agricultural
labourer every opportunity
of becoming more attached to the
soil.”—Mr.
Goschen at Cambridge.]