Friday.—­PROVAND brought on Motion raising vexed question of Taxation of Land.  OLD MORALITY always on look-out to do kind thing; thought this would be good opportunity of trotting out CHAPLIN; had no chance of distinguishing himself since he became Minister.  So CHAPLIN put up; made mellifluous speech.  Unfortunately, Mr. G. present; listened to CHAPLIN with suspicious suavity; followed him, and, as JEMMY LOWTHER puts it, “turned him inside out, and hung him up to dry.”  Played with him like a cat with a mouse; drew him out into damaging statements; then danced on his prostrate body.  About the worst quarter of an hour CHAPLIN ever had in House, with JOKEM on one side of him, and OLD MORALITY on other, tossing about on their seats, exchanging groans and glances, while CHAPLIN mopped the massive brow on which stood forth iridescent gleams of moisture.

“Meant it all for the best,” said OLD MORALITY; “but who’d have thought of Mr. G. being here?  CHAPLIN’s a great Minister of Agriculture; but, when it comes to questions of finance, not quite on a par with Mr. G.” Business done.—­House Counted Out.

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CHAMBERS IN ST. JAMES’S STREET.

THE IDLER, by HADDON CHAMBERS, is a real good play, thoroughly interesting from the rising to the setting of the Curtain.  The parts are artistically adjusted, the dialogue unforced, the acting un-stagey, and the situations powerfully dramatic.  The climax is reached at the “psychological moment,” and the Curtain descends upon all that a sympathetic audience can possibly desire to know of what must be once and for all the story of a life-time.  “The rest is silence.”  Throughout the play there is no parade of false sentimentality, no tawdry virtue, no copy-book morality, no vicious silliness; and, so well constructed is the plot, that there is no need of a wearisome extra Act, by way of postscript, to tell us how all the characters met again at the North Pole or Land’s End; how everybody explained everything to everybody else; how the Idler, becoming a busy-body, married the widow of Sir John Harding, M.P., who had had the misfortune to be drowned out shrimping; and how many other matters happened for which the wearied audience would not care one snap of the finger and thumb.  On another occasion I shall have something to say about the acting, which, as far as the men are concerned, has certainly not been equalled since the days of Peril.  The St. James’s is in for a good thing with The Idler; and at this moment I may say, I would be ALEXANDER were I not, briefly,

DIOGENES “THE TUBMAN,” B.C.L.

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