FROM BRIGHT TO DULL.—­In an interesting article on artificial reproductions of Nature’s treasures, the Standard remarked that “Real diamonds have been turned out of the chemist’s retorts.”  What a brilliant chemist he must have been!  Probably of Hibernian origin, as among conversational sparklers there are few on record more brilliant than “Irish Diamonds.”  Stay, though!  If the real diamonds were “turned out of the chemist’s retorts,” then his retorts, without these flashes of brilliancy, must have been a trifle dull, and he is no longer the chemist we took him for.  “But,” to quote our KIPLING, “that is another story.”

* * * * *

THE NEW EVANGEL.

    [M.  ZOLA, in his new Novel, glorifies War, and the
    regenerative mission of human bloodshed.]

  “ZOLA on War,” intensifies the “Hola!”
  Of purists who are all for “war on ZOLA!”
  Well, he whose pen is touched with tints from Tophet,
  Is the right man to pose as Red War’s Prophet!

* * * * *

A TRIFLE FOR THE BUILDER.—­“When are houses like difficulties?” And the practical man replies, “When they have to be ‘faced.’”

* * * * *

[Illustration:  THE RULING PASSION STRONG AT DINNER.

Laconic Waiter (thoroughly familiar with Sporting Major’s taste in Champagne).  “SEVENTY-FOUR, SIR?”

Sporting Major (down on his luck, after a bad week at Newmarket).  “SEVEN-TO-FOUR, SIR!  DASH IT!  WOULDN’T TAKE TEN TO ONE ABOUT ANYTHING!”]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

[Illustration]

“Respected ANDREW LANG,” writes the Baron’s Assistant Reader, “I have read your criticism in Longman’s Magazine upon Mr. BARRY PAIN’s In a Canadian Canoe.  It’s an ugly piece of bludgeon work, I admit, but not convincing to anyone who has read the book of which you speak.  You tear away a line or two from the context, and ask your readers to say if that is wit or humour.  How your admirers would have protested had any sacrilegious critic ventured to treat one of your own immortal works in this manner. Essays in Little, a book which, by the way, appeared in the same series for which Mr. BARRY PAIN wrote, is a pleasant and inoffensive compilation, but even Essays in Little would have presented a sorry appearance if, let us say, ANDREW LANG had reviewed it in this perfunctory and extractory and arbitrary fashion.  I remember that in that case the critics were respectfully enthusiastic.  Even Mr. BLUDYER would have doffed his cap, I fancy, to one

  Who rhymes, researches and reviews,
  Who sometimes writes like Genesis,
  And sometimes in the Daily News.