Fit task for patriot poet, this!  TYRTAEUS never stood
  More worthily for heroic hearts or his home-land’s highest good. 
  Give! give! and with free hands!  His spirit’s poor, his soul is hard,
  Who heeds not our noblest Hero’s appeal through the lips of our noblest Bard!

* * * * *

A REMINISCENCE AND A QUOTATION.—­It is reported that two Gaiety burlesque-writers are about to re-do Black-Eye’d Susan “up to date,” of course, as is now the fashion.  As the typical melodramatic tragedian observes, “’Tis now some twenty-five years ago” that FRED DEWAR strutted the first of his five hundred nights or so on the stage as Captain Crosstree, that PATTY OLIVER sang with trilling effect her “Pretty Seeusan,” and that DANVERS, as Dame Hatly, danced like a rag-doll in a fantoccini-show.  To quote the Poet CRABBE, and to go some way back in doing so,—­

  “I see no more within our borough’s bound
  The name of DANVERS!”

Which lines will be found in No.  XVII. of the Poet’s “Posthumous Tales.”

* * * * *

THE MODERN TRAVELLER.

  In a restaurant-Pullman he books
    His seat, a luxurious craze. 
  Most travellers now take their Cooks,
    And everyone’s going to Gaze.

* * * * *

IBERIAN-HIBERNIAN.—­Sir,—­In Ireland since the time when the Armada came to grief on its coasts, there have always existed Spanish names, either pure, as in the instance of Valencia, or slightly mixed.  In Spain the Celtic names are found in the same way, and an instance occurs on the border-land of Spain and Southern France, in the name of the place to which the Spanish Premier has gone for his holiday, viz., Bagneres-de-Bigorre.  If “Bigorre” isn’t “Begorra,” what is it?  DON PATRICK DE CORQUEZ.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  “HAVE WE FORGOTTEN GORDON?”]

* * * * *

A LOVER’S COMPLAINT.

(THOROUGHLY NEW STYLE.)

[Illustration]

  Belinda dear, once on a time
    I doted on your every feature,
  I wrote you billets doux in rhyme
    In which I called you “charming creature.” 
  No lover half so keen as I,
    Than mine no ardent passion stronger,
  So I should like to tell you why
    I cannot love you any longer.

  When I was yours and you were mine,
    Your hair, I thought, was most delightful,
  But now, through Fashion’s last design,
    It looks, to my taste, simply frightful! 
  Though why this should be I don’t know,
    For I can think of nothing madder
  Than hair decked out in coils that go
    To make what seems to be a ladder.

  Unhappy day, when first you dressed
    Your tresses thus—­how you must rue it! 
  For you yourself, you know, confessed
    It took you several hours to do it. 
  Oh, tell me, is it but a snare
    Designed to captivate another,
  Or do you merely bind your hair
    Because you’re bidden by your mother?