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[Illustration:  FANCY PORTRAIT.

GENERAL BOOMBASTES.

Solo and Chorus.

AIR—­“Piff!  Paff!  Pouf!” from “La Grande Duchosse."

        “ET PUFF!  PUFF!  PUFF! 
        ET TARA PARA POUM! 
  JE SUIS, MOI, LE GENERAL BOOM!  BOOM!”

    [Repeats it ad lib.]

* * * * *

ON RELIGIOUS CYMBALISM.

The Salvationist Bands which perform in and out of London—­(would that they were restricted as the Moore and Burgess Minstrels restrict themselves to one hall, never or “hardly ever,” performing out of London!)—­everywhere and anywhere without respecting illness, or the hours of public worship in our Churches and Chapels, or the necessities of repose, show thereby a distinct want of that consideration for the feelings of their fellow-citizens which simple Christian folk call Charity.  These Booth performers—­which designation savours suggestively of Mountebanks—­would do well to play their peculiar music and sing their peculiar hymns within the four walls of their own places of worship, employing the intervals essential for gaining of wind and for rest of muscle in meditating, perhaps breathlessly, on the inspired Pauline teaching which will inform them that even the works of an Apostle, if he have not charity, will be as “sounding brass and tinkling cymbals,” making indeed a great noise in the world, but as one WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE has said, being mere “sound and fury signifying nothing.”  “Liberty of Worship” by all means, but not such Liberty for any one particular form of worship which, interfering with the freedom of others, speedily degenerates into fanatical licence, and so becomes a nuisance as intolerant as it is intolerable.

* * * * *

ANGLO-AMERICAN FRENCH.—­A new word must be added to our French dictionaries.  In Le Figaro for Feb. 15, in an article on HECTOR MALOT, occurs this expression, “en ce temps de puffisme litteraire.”  In English we have had the word and the thing too, since the time of SHERIDAN’s Critic, but is any student of French journalism familiar with it in the Parisian newspapers?

* * * * *

THE FANCY BALL.

[Illustration]

  You came as GRETCHEN, hair of gold
    And face so exquisitely sweet,
  That I, like FAUST, had certes sold
    Myself, to win you, MARGUERITE. 
  Each plait enmeshed my struggling heart,
    That wildly beat against my will;
  And though at last we had to part,
    In Dreamland I could see you still.

  Another night, with tresses dark,
    And kirtle strewn with fleurs-de-lys,
  You came a flashing JOAN OF ARC,
    Destructive of my bosom’s peace. 
  The sword was girt upon your hip,
    And thine the Maid’s heroic glance;
  I seemed to hear upon your lip,
    The watchword of her life, “For France!”