[Illustration:  Ellen Terry as Kate.]

Miss ELLEN TERRY’s Queen Katharine is a “very woman.”  You can see how she has caught the King, and how she still holds him.  She loves him, actually loves him, to the last to respect him is impossible, but she respects herself; and it is just this love for him, for what he was, not what he is, and her respect for herself, which Miss ELLEN TERRY marks so forcibly. Katharine is a foreigner, therefore is her bearing, though stately, less stolid than that of the typical English Tragedy Queen.  The note of her dying scene, so striking by its simplicity, is its perfect tranquillity.  Who’s Griffith?  Why the veteran HOWE (ah, Howe, When and Where did I first see you, Sir?  Wasn’t it in the days when good old Mortonian farces were the attraction at the Haymarket?) is “the safe man,” and excellently well did he deliver his epitaph on Wolsey.  But all are good, not forgetting our old friend the sterling, that is the ARTHUR STIRLING actor as Cranmer, and the youthful GILLIE FARQUHAR, unrecognisable as Lord Sands, looking as ancient as if he were The Sands of Time.

This revival is bound to have a long—­it may be an unprecedentedly long—­run.  All of us dearly love a show.  Moreover, ’tis educational; and the School Board should issue an Examination-paper on the history of HENRY THE EIGHTH and his times as exemplified by Mr. IRVING & CO. at the Lyceum.

JACK-IN-THE-BOX.

P.S.—­The cost of production of Henry the Eighth at the Lyceum was L250,000 3s. 63/4d.  Mr. IRVING’s nightly expenses are L10,999 2s. 51/2d.  I thought it had been more, but the above information comes to me from a person whose veracity I should not like to question, except with the boundless sea between us.

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CON.  FOR THE C.O.S.—­When SHAKSPEARE said, “The quality of mercy is not strained,” did he mean that it was not strained through a Charity Organisation Society?

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“READING between the Lines” is a dangerous occupation—­when there’s a Train coming.

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[Illustration:  SKETCHES IN THE SADDLE BY OUR SPECIAL SPORTING ARTIST ON THE SPOT.]

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CONFESSIONS OF A DUFFER.

I.—­GOLF.

The Fairies who came to my Christening provided me with a large collection of toys, implements, and other articles.  There was a heart, a tender one, a pen of gold, a set of Golf-clubs, a bat, wickets, and a ball, oars and a boat, boxing gloves, foils, guns, rifles, books, everything, except ready money, that heart could desire.  Unluckily one Fairy, who was old, deaf, plain, and who had not been invited, observed, “It is all very well, my child, but not one of these articles shall you be able to use satisfactorily.”  This awful curse has hung