Now this latter may be true enough, for it is probable that friend Jack freshened his nip a trifle after my departure, seeing that he was always something of a drunken knave.  As for his calumnious and scandalous declaration, that I was in the least degree tipsy, it is too ridiculous to be noticed.  I scorn it with my heels—­I was sober—­sober, cool, and steady as the north star; and he that is inclined to question this solemn asseveration, let him send me his card; and if I don’t drill a hole in his doublet before he’s forty-eight hours older, then, as honest Slender has it, “I would I might never come in mine own great chamber again else.”

* * * * *

“ARE YE SURE THE NEWS IS TRUE?”

We learn from good authority that Lord TAMBOFF STANLEY, in answer to a deputation from Scotland, assured the gentlemen who waited upon him that “the subject of emigration was under the serious consideration of Her Majesty’s Ministers.”  We hope that those respectable gentlemen may soon resolve upon their departure—­we care not “what clime they wander to, so not again to this;” or, as Shakspeare says, let them “stand not upon the order of their going, but GO.”  The country, we take it upon ourselves to say, will remember them when they are gone; they have left the nation too many weighty proofs of their regard to be forgotten in a hurry—­Corruption, Starvation, and Taxation, and the National Debt by way of

[Illustration:  A HANDSOME LEG—­I SEE (LEGACY).]

* * * * *

A DOSE OF CASTOR.

Peter Borthwick, late of the Royal Surrey Nautical, having had the honour of “deep damnation” conferred upon his “taking off” the character of Prince Henry, upon that occasion, to appear in unison with the text of the Immortal Bard, “dressed” the part in a most elaborate “neck-or-nothing tile.”  Upon being expostulated with by the manager, he triumphantly referred to the description of the chivalrous Prince in which the narrator particularly states—­

[Illustration:  I SAW YOUNG HARRY WITH HIS BEAVER ON.]

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CUTTING AT THE ROOT OF THE EVIL.

“Good heavens, Sir Peter,” said Hobler, confidentially, to our dearly beloved Alderman, “How could you have passed such a ridiculous sentence upon Jones, as to direct his hair to be cut off?” “All right, my dear Hobby,” replied the sapient justice; “the fellow was found fighting in the streets, and I wanted to hinder him, at least for some time, from again

[Illustration:  COMING TO THE SCRATCH.”]

* * * * *

TO PUNCH.

We have received the following choice bit of poetic pathology from our old friend and jolly dog Toby, who, it seems, has taken to medicine.  The dog, however, always had a great propensity to bark, owing doubtlessly to the strong tincture of canine there was in his constitution:—­