“CLERGY FEES” (see “Times” Correspondence).—­Growl of the Archiepiscopal Ogre & Co.:—­

            “Fee, fi, fo, fum! 
      I smell the coin of a Clergyman! 
  Hath he fat glebe, be he ill-fee’d, ill-fed,
  I’ll grab his fees to butter my bread!”

* * * * *

A NIGHTLY CHEVALIER.

Music-Hall Artists are not by any means “Fixed Stars.”  During the evening they manage to accomplish the somewhat paradoxical-sounding feat of shining in the same parts, yet in different places and at different times, appearing everywhere with undiminished brilliancy.  The Student of the Music-Hall Planetary system, has only by observation to ascertain the exact time and place of the appearance of his favourite bright particular Star, and then to pay his money, take his choice between sitting and standing, and like a true astronomer, he will—­glass in hand, a strong glass too,—­await the great event of the evening, calmly and contentedly.

If the Wirtuous Westender wandering down the Strand, after having on some previous nights exhausted the Pavilion and the elaborately gorgeous Variety Shows given at the Empire and Alhambra, seeks for awhile a resting-place wherein to enjoy his postprandial cigar, and be amused, if such an one will drop into the classic Tivoli, he will find excellent entertainment, that is as long as their present programme holds the field.  The Holborn and the Oxford may delight him on other nights, for it seems that much the same Stars shine all around; but for the present, taking Tivoli as synonymous with Tibur, he may, with Horation humour, say to himself ("himself” being not a bad audience as a rule):—­

  “Holborn Tibur amem ventosus, Tivoli Holborn,”

and he can then enter the Tivoli, now under the benign rule of that old Music Hall Hand, CAROLUS MORTONIUS, M.A., Magister Agens, while the experienced Mr. VERNON DOWSETT—­“Experientia Dowsett”—­manages the stage.  Good as is the entire show, and especially good as is the performance of Mr. CHARLES GODFREY as an old Chelsea Pensioner recounting to several little Peterkins a touching and heart-stirring tale of the Crimean War, yet for me, the Costermonger Songs of Mr. ALBERT CHEVALIER are the great attraction.  His now well-known “Coster’s Serenade,” and his “Knocked ’em in the Old Kent Road,” are supplemented by a song and dialogue about a Coster’s son, a precocious little chap, about three years old, and “only that ’igh, you know,” in whom his father takes so great a pride that it works his own temporary reformation.  It is so natural as to be just on the borderland between farce and pathos, and recalls time past, when ROBSON played The Porter’s Knot, and such-like pieces.  Now what more do Music Halls want than what Mr. CHEVALIER gives them?  This is the very essence of a dramatic sketch of character, given in just the time it takes to sing the song,—­that