“Grey hair is fashionable for the youthful,”
  Says a Mode oracle acknowledged truthful. 
  Strange that Society should have a rage
  For that anomaly—­artificial Age! 
  Dust on their heads our pretty women toss,
  Just to deprive it of its pristine gloss. 
  Make ashen-white your eyebrows, there, and lashes,
  Precocious hags!  The world’s but dust and ashes. 
  Wrinkles and crowsfeet next must have their turn
  (To limn them in let toilette artists learn),
  Then make each belle bald, scraggy-necked and toothless,
  Grey hair alone won’t make Society youthless. 
  Let belles turn beldams if they find it jolly. 
  But they might be consistent in their folly!

* * * * *

MUSICAL, THEATRICAL, AND JUDICIAL.—­The Daily Telegraph, quoting from the Middlesex County Times, last Saturday, stated that, “The LORD CHANCELLOR had added the name of Mr. W.S.  GILBERT, Poet and Dramatist, to the Commission of the Peace for the County of Middlesex.” So is it said that another “W.S.,” one WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE—­who, by the way, also had a GILBERT in the family—­was, in his latter years, made a J.P.”  Mr. WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE GILBERT—­if he will kindly allow us so to style him, as uniting the qualities of poet and dramatist—­should receive a special and peculiar title.  Let him, then, be henceforth known as “The Poetic Justice of the Piece.”

* * * * *

THE “HIRED PRIEST.”

    [Mr. GLADSTONE says, “If the priest is to live, he must beg,
    earn, or steal.”]

  Now, here’s a needy Vicar; who will hire him?  He can preach,
    Can confute a boat of infidels and crush them with a text. 
  If a Sunday school is started, he’s the very man to teach,
    If you snub him he may hate it, but he’ll never show he’s vexed. 
  He can spend his days in visiting the alleys and the slums,
  And support his own existence, and his family’s, on crumbs.

  Come, come, Sir, you are generous.  What! eighty pounds a year? 
    It’s a fortune for a Vicar; I am sure he won’t refuse. 
  Why it’s sixteen hundred shillings, he will take it, never fear;
    For though priests are scarcely beggars, yet they can’t afford to choose. 
  He hasn’t got a single vice; I’ll guarantee him sound,
  And he’ll make a crown go farther than an ordinary pound.

  And here we have a Bishop; we don’t do things by halves;
    He requires a roomy palace, he is sturdy, stout and tall. 
  You can have him as he stands, Sir, with his gaiters and his calves;
    Five thousand hires the Bishop, apron, appetite and all. 
  What?  You much prefer the Vicar with his collar and his tie? 
  And you’d rather pay him extra?  Here’s your health.  Sir; so would I.

* * * * *

—­>NOTICE.—­Rejected Communications or Contributions, whether MS., Printed Matter, Drawings, or Pictures of any description, will in no case be returned, not even when accompanied by a Stamped and Addressed Envelope, Cover, or Wrapper.  To this rule there will be no exception.