T.I.F.  Fin.

We are surprised at our friend Monteagle troubling us with a matter evidently as plain as the nose on our own face.  It requires neither a Solon nor a Punch to solve the enigma.  It is merely a letter from Tiffin, the bug destroyer to her Majesty, and refers to his peculiar plan of persecuting the punae.

We have no doubt that Lords and Commons will be blown up on the re-assembling of Parliament; and as an assurance that we do not speak upon conjecture only, we beg to subjoin a portrait of the delinquent.

[Illustration:  THE MODERN GUY VAUX.]

* * * * *

THE RIVAL CANDIDATES.

Be not afraid, gentle reader, that, from the title of our present article, we are about to prescribe for you any political draught.  No! be assured that we know as little about politics as pyrotechny—­that we are as blissfully ignorant of all that relates to the science of government as that of gastronomy—­and have ever since our boyhood preferred the solid consistency of gingerbread to the crisp insipidity of parliament.  The candidates of whom we write were no would-be senators—­no sprouting Ciceros or embryo Demosthenes’—­they were no aspirants for the grand honour of representing the honest and independent stocks and stones of some ancient rotten borough, or, what is about the same thing, the enlightened ten-pound voters of some modern reformed one—­they were not ambitious of the proud privilege of appending for seven years two letters to their names, and of franking some half-dozen others per diem.  No! the rivals who form the theme of our present paper were emulous of obtaining no place in Parliament, but, what is far more desirable, a place in the affections of a lovely maid.  They sought not for the suffrages of the unwashed, but for the smiles of a fair one,—­they neither desired to be returned as the representative of so many sordid voters for the term of seven years (a term of transportation common alike to M.P.s and pickpockets), but for the more permanent honour of being elected as the partner of a certain lady for life.

Georgiana Gray was the lovely object of the rivalry of the above candidates; and a damsel more eminently qualified to be the innocent cause of contention could not be found within the whole catalogue of those dear destructive little creatures who, from Eve downwards, have always possessed a peculiar patent for mischief-making.  Georgiana was as handsome as she was rich.  She was, in the superlative sense of the word, a beauty, and—­what ought to be written in letters of gold—­an heiress.  She had the figure of a sylph, and the purse of a nabob.  Her face was lovely and animated enough to enrapture a Raffaelle, and her fortune ample enough to captivate a Rothschild.  She had a clear rent-roll of 20,000l. per annum,—­and a pair of eyes that, independent of her other attractions, were sufficiently fascinating to seduce Diogenes himself into matrimony.