* * * * *

“This indenture WITNESSETH.”—­According to the Times of Friday last, February 5, Cardinal Manning died practically a pauper.  He had given everything away in charity.  He was a “Prince of the Church,” and his gifts to others were, indeed, princely.  In the wills and deeds of how many of our Very Reverend and Right Reverend Lordships shall we find nothing gathered up and bequeathed of the loaves and fishes which have fallen to their share?  Such a testament as the Cardinal’s would be in quite a New Testamentary spirit.

* * * * *

Foreign and home news.—­“The Prussian Education Bill,” remarked an elderly bachelor to.  Mr. Peter FAMILIAS, “is a very important matter; because you see—­”

“Hang the Prussian Education Bill!” interrupted Peter F., testily.  “You should see the English Education Bill I’ve had for my boy’s schooling last half!”

* * * * *

Mr. Punch to the lifeboat-men.

[Illustration]

[The President of the Board of Trade has, by command of the Queen, conveyed, through the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, to the crews of the lifeboats of Atherfield, Brightstone, and Brooke, Her Majesty’s warm appreciation of their gallant conduct in saving the crew and passengers of the steamship Eider.]

  Your hand, lad!  ’Tis wet with the brine, and the salt spray has
          sodden your hair,
  And the face of you glisteneth pale with the stress of the
          struggle out there;
  But the savour of salt is as sweet to the sense of a Briton,
          sometimes,
  As the fragrance of wet mignonette, or the scent of the
          bee-haunted limes.

  Ay, sweeter is manhood, though rough, than the smoothest
          effeminate charms
  To the old sea-king strain in our blood in the season of shocks
          and alarms,
  When the winds and the waves and the rocks make a chaos of danger
          and strife;
  And the need of the moment is pluck, and the guerdon of valour is
          life.

  That guerdon you’ve snatched from the teeth of the thundering
          tiger-maw’d waves,
  And the valour that smites is as naught, after all, to the valour
          that saves. 
  They are safe on the shore, who had sunk in the whirl of the
          floods but for you! 
  And some said you had lost your old grit and devotion!  We knew
          ’twas not true.

  The soft-hearted shore-going critics of conduct themselves would
          not dare,
  The trivial cocksure belittlers of dangers they have not to share,
  Claim much—­oh so much, from rough manhood,—­unflinching cool
          daring in fray,
  And selflessness utter, from toilers with little of praise, and
          less pay.