“Do you like Hedda Gabler?” he continued, nudging Prince ARTHUR, who on this, the hundred-and-third night in Committee on the Irish Land Bill, showed signs of drowsiness.

“Haven’t time to go to the theatre,” said Prince ARTHUR.  “Never perform out of Westminster, where we keep our own HEADACHE GABBLER on the premises”; and he looked wearily across at SEXTON monotonously piping, not without dread suspicion of the WINDBAG having been newly leathered.

But the end comes to the man who lives to wait, and to-night, at twenty minutes past ten, LEWIS PELLY sitting bolt upright, awakened out of peaceful slumber by a sudden cheer; knew that the Land Bill was at last through Committee.

Business done.—­Land Bill through Committee.

[Illustration:  Pelly-Melly.]

* * * * *

NOTES ON THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF 2091.

“Richard, Duke of Gloucester, refusing the Crown.”  This picture will be interesting to the historical student, as it affords a solution to a knotty point that has puzzled commentators for the last five centuries.  The wily humpback is represented in his dressing-gown and slippers, having evidently been called from his bath to listen to the suggestion of the courtiers, who desire him to accept the regal dignity.  The umbrella of the Lord Mayor, we fancy, is of a later date than the supposed period of the painting, but no doubt the artist has authority for the introduction of the quaint old lamp-post illumined with the electric light, which began to be used some little time after the Battle of the Roses.

“Charles the Second in the Oak.”  This is also interesting to those who delight in folklore.  According to the legend (for no doubt the story was merely a legend), the deposed monarch was escaping from the Parliamentary troops, when he had to seek shelter in the spreading branches of the tree that still is emblematic of England.  The artist has placed the leafy refuge near a stream, where CHARLES seems to have been bathing.  A tragic side (not entirely free from quaintness) is given to the tale by the discovery of the temporarily discarded wearing apparel of the STUART by the soldiers, who are hunting him to the death.  CHARLES, with his traditional good humour, is smiling at an accident which causes him seemingly more amusement than apprehension.

“The Battle of Trafalgar.”  The very clever arrangement of smoke in this painting prevents the flesh-tints of the sailors from assuming a prominence that might be objectionable to persons of fastidious tastes.  No doubt the artist felt that, if he had studied the traditions of the British Navy at the commencement of the nineteenth or twentieth century (the battle was fought in that period), he would have shown the gallant tars serving the guns in a costume not more elaborate than that assumed by the nude inhabitants of the North Pole.  It is amusing to note in this connection that, until the discovery of the summit of the earth, it was supposed that the centre of the Arctic Regions was bitterly cold.  Our ancestors in the remote ages had no idea that that fiery region was, in reality, hotter than the tropics!