BARON DE BOOK-WORMS.

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PARS ABOUT PICTURES.—­A good collection of pictures and sculpture—­including works by Messrs. BURNE-JONES, ONSLOW FORD, ALFRED GILBERT, W.L.  WYLLIE, and others—­is on view at the Royal Arcade Gallery, Old Bond Street.  These are to be sold for the benefit of the family of R.A.  LEDWARD, the clever young sculptor, who died only a few weeks ago.  Lots more to say, but you won’t stand it, and will probably say, “Par! si bete!” So no more at present from yours par-entally, OLD PAR.

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LEGAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL DEFINITION.—­A Sheriff’s Officer:  a Writ-ualist.

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A FORECAST FOR 1891.

(BEING SOME EXTRACTS FROM THE GLOOMY OUTLOOKER’S DIARY.)

[Illustration:  Old Sol.  “Happy New Year, Mr. Punch!”

Mr. P. “Hope we shall see something more of you in future!”]

January.—­Continuation of “good old-fashioned winter.”  London “snowed up.”  Locomotion by Hansom drawn by four drayhorses, the fare from Charing Cross to Bayswater being L2 15s.  Milk, 10s. the half-pint, meat unprocurable.  Riot of Dukes at the Carlton to secure the last mutton chop on the premises, suppressed by calling out the Guards.  People in Belgravia burn their banisters for want of coals.  The Three per Cents go down to 35.

February.—­Railway incursion into the centre of the Metropolis makes progress.  Sir EDWARD WATKIN gets his line through Lords, crosses Regent’s Park, comes down Bond Street, and secures a large centre terminus in the Green Park, with a frontage of a quarter of a mile in Piccadilly.

March.—­Football atrocities on the increase.  A match is played at the Oval between the Jaw Splitting Rovers and the Spine Cracking Wanderers, in which nine are left dead on the field, and fifteen are carried on stretchers to the nearest hospital.

April.—­Increase of danger from electricity.  A couple of large metropolitan hotels catching fire from over-heated wires, nineteen waiters, twenty-three policemen, and fifty-five members of the fire brigade getting entangled in them in their efforts to extinguish the flames, are killed on the spot, much to the satisfaction of the holders of gas shares.

May.—­The “Capital and Labour” Question reaches an acute stage.  The “Unemployed Other People’s Property Rights League” being patted on the back by philanthropists, formulate their programme, and seize the Stock Exchange and the Mansion House.

June.—­The “Capital and Labour” Question reaching a still acuter stage, 20,000 unemployed East End Lodgers break into the Bank of England, and give a banquet to the LORD MAYOR and Corporation to celebrate the event, at which Mr. Sheriff AUGUSTUS HARRIS, in returning thanks for the “Arts and Sciences,” says he thinks “the takings” of their hosts must have been “enormous.”