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[Illustration:  JONES, WHO MAKES A POINT OF PADLOCKING HIS NEW CAR BY THE FRONT WHEEL TO A LAMP-POST, REALISES THE JUSTICE OF THE MAKERS’ CLAIM THAT THE SPARE WHEEL WITH WHICH IT IS FITTED “CAN BE FIXED BY ANYONE IN TWO MINUTES.”]

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“I Zingari will play a Household Cavalry team at Windsor on Saturday, June 21st.  This was in years gone by an annual fixture, finishing up Ascot week.  King Edward VI., when Prince of Wales, used to attend the match and go on to Virginia Water afterwards.”—­Local Paper.

Apart from the interest this paragraph will excite in the historians of the Army, the Turf, and the Cricket-field, it shows that HENRY VIII. must have been a more indulgent father than is generally suspected.

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AT THE PLAY.

“L’AIGLON.”

In a note given away with the programme Mr. LOUIS N. PARKER, describes L’Aiglon as “the Hamlet of the nineteenth century.”  Certainly they had in common the habits of introspection, and indecision; but the egoism of Hamlet was at least tempered by a knowledge of the world; he was a student; he had travelled and seen men and things outside the bounds of Elsinore; and he was capable of throwing off some quotable generalities out of his stock of philosophy.  On the other hand the Eaglet, mewed in his Austrian cage, knew nothing of life at large, and had small chance of learning anything beyond the bowdlerised history which his tutors and warders thought good to have him stuffed with.

Somehow he had contrived surreptitiously to pick up the dates and leading facts of his father’s campaigns (making a speciality of the Battle of Wagram), but the vague ambitions which they inspired only helped his little mind to prey upon itself.  It was not “the times” (as with Hamlet) but his own nose that he found to be “out of joint.”

The appeal of Hamlet is to the intelligence; that of L’Aiglon, so obviously pathetic in his own eyes, is rather to the heart.  Indeed the intelligence of the audience is here often in trouble; for a certain acquaintance with history is required and both actors and stage-management offer little aid to the average ignorance.  While the more obvious and melodramatic situations—­such as the death of L’Aiglon or the business of the sentry—­are treated at great leisure, it is assumed that all historical allusions, however necessary to an understanding of the situation, will be as tedious to the audience as to the players, and they are rushed through—­as in the mirror scene—–­at a pace that baffles our halting pursuit.

If any male character lends itself to interpretation by a woman, it is such a character as L’Aiglon, who, for all his spasms of martial ardour, was half feminine.  And to this side of him, and not this side alone, Miss MARIE LOEHR did justice in a performance of which her high spirit had not underrated the difficulties.  But it is a long and exigent part, and there were times in the play when her physical strength was overtaxed.  It would have taken the voice of a strongish basso to drown the roar of a whole battlefield of ghostly warriors, with a military band thrown in.