Doors open, welcome hospitable
    For all, unchallenged, is my style;
  But trust not to the fatuous fable
    That Caliban’s free of my isle
  With prosperous Prospero’s free consent. 
  Such lies mad autocrats invent.

  Such for some centuries they’ve been telling,
    Crime, like an asp, I’d gladly crush
  Upon the threshold of my dwelling,
    But shall not join a purblind rush
  Of panic-stricken fools to play
  The oppressor’s game, for the spy’s pay!

  But you, foul, furtive desperadoes,
    Who, frightened now by those you’d fright,
  Would fain slink off among the shadows,
    To plot out further deeds of night,
  Our isle’s immunity you boast!—­
  You’re reckoning without your host.

  I’ll keep my eye on you; my Juries
    I think you’ll find it hard to scare;
  We worship no Anarchic furies,
    For menace are not wont to care,
  Here red-caught Crime in vain advances
  “Extenuating Circumstances!”

* * * * *

COUPLET BY A CYNIC.

(After reading certain Press Comments on the Picture Show.)

  Philistine Art may stand all critic shocks
  Whilst it gives Private Views—­of Pretty Frocks!

* * * * *

THE WORLD ON WHEELS.

MR. STEVENS, the American gentleman who rode round the world on a bicycle, says, “The bicycle is now recognised as a new social force.”  Possibly.  But certain writers to the Times on “The Tyranny of the Road,” seem to prove that it is also a new anti-social force, when it frightens horses and upsets pedestrians.  Adapting an old proverb, we may say, “Set a cad on a cycle and he’ll ride”—­well, all over the road, and likely enough over old ladies into the bargain.  Whilst welcoming the latest locomotive development, we must not allow the “new social force” to develop into a new social despotism.  To put it pointedly:—­

  We welcome these new steeds of steel,
    (In spite of whistles and of “squealers,”)
  But cannot have the common weal
    Too much disturbed by common “Wheelers”!

* * * * *

THE ROYAL ACADEMY BANQUET.—­After the Presidential orations, the success of the evening was Professor BUTCHER’s speech.  His audience were delighted at being thus “butchered to make” an artistic “holiday.”  Prince ARTHUR BALFOUR expressed his regret that “the House of Commons did not possess a Hanging Committee.”  Hasn’t it?  Don’t we now and again hear of a Member being “suspended” for some considerable time?  On such occasions, the whole House is a Hanging Committee.  There was one notable omission, and yet for days the air had been charged with the all-absorbing topic.  “Odd!” murmured a noble Duke to himself, as, meditating many things, he stood by the much-sounding soda-water, “Odd! a lot of speeches; and yet,—­not a word about Orme!”