the donkeys could defend themselves. The Armada was not a success, and after this frank avowal, it seems to me that Mr. FROUDE need render no further explanation. Surely the story of the Spanish Invasion is copyright. And if it is, Mr. FROUDE has no right to tamper with my work, the more especially as it is immediately appropriated by that model of modern journalism the Review of Reviews.

PHILOSOPHICAL REFLECTION.—We have five senses. That's quite enough. If we had a sixth sense, what a new sense it would be!

"IN CELLAR DEEP."

(Latest Up-to-Date Version of a celebrated Bacchanalian ditty, as it might be revised by Dr. Mortimer Granville and Mr. James Payn.)

["No one drinks alcoholic liquor (unless it be beer) to quench thirst."—JAMES PAYN.]

[Left playing it.

MR. PUNCH'S NAVAL NOVEL.

[Mr. Punch has observed with much gratification the success of various brochures professing to give, under the disguise of retrospect, a prophetic but accurate account of the naval battle of the immediate future. Mr. Punch has read them carefully over and over again. For some time he has been living, so to speak, in the midst of magnificent iron-clad fleets. In vain have torpedoes been launched on their occasionally death-dealing mission against him, in vain have immense shells exploded in his immediate neighbourhood. Nothing, not even the ramming of one whole squadron by another, has succeeded in daunting him. He has remained immovable in the midst of an appalling explosion which reduced a ship's company to a heap of toe-nails. And now, his mind fired by the crash of conflict and the intoxication of almost universal slaughter, he proposes to show the world how a naval novel that means to be accurate as well as vivid, to be bought by the public in thousands as well as to teach useful lessons to politicians and sailors, ought really to be written. Mr. Punch may as well state that he has not submitted this story to any naval experts. His facts speak for themselves, and require no merely professional approval to enhance their value.]

WHO'D BE A SAILOR?

(A Story of Blood and Battle.)

CHAPTER I.

Listen, my Grandchildren! for you are mine, not indeed by the ridiculous accident of birth (since to speak the truth I am an unmarried old sea-dog), but by the far higher and more honourable title of having been selected by me to hear this yarn. You know well enough that such a tale must be told to grandchildren, and since you undoubtedly possessed grandparents, and have been hired at a shilling an hour to listen to me, I have every right to address you as I did. Therefore I say, my grandchildren, attend to what I am about to relate. You who live under the beneficent sway of the mighty Australo-Canado-Africo-Celto-Americo-Anglian Federation of Commonwealths, can have no notion of the degraded conditions under which I, your grandfather, and the rest of my miserable fellow-countrymen lived fifty years ago in the year 1892. Naturally you have read no books of history referring to any date anterior to 1902. The wretched records of ignorance, slavery and decrepitude have been justly expunged from your curriculum. Let me tell you then that a little country calling itself the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland at that time arrogated to itself the leadership of the mighty countries which you now call your home. You smile and refer me to a large-sized map on which, as you justly observe, this country occupies a space of not more than two square inches. Your surprise is intelligible, but the melancholy fact remains. All this has now been happily changed, and changed too in consequence of a war in which England (for so the country was often inaccurately called, except upon Scotch political platforms, where people naturally objected to the name) in which, as I say, England bore the chief part and obtained the decisive victory. The story of this war I am now about to relate to you.

CHAPTER II.

War had been declared. We had known for a long time that it was coming. For months past the bellicose bench of Bishops had been preaching war in all the Cathedrals of the land. Field Marshal the Duke of WOLSELEY, who was then a simple lord, had written articles in all the prominent American reviews, and had proved to demonstration that with 50,000 boys and the new patent revolving ammunition belt, Britain (for that too was the name of my late country) was ready to defy and conquer the world. Rear-Admiral and Lieutenant-General Sir WILLIAM T. STEAD, G.C.B., C.S.I., K.G., V.C.—the great journalist in the shade of whose colossal mounted statue we are now sitting—had suddenly become a convert to the doctrine that war is the great purifier, and had offered in a spirit of extraordinary self-abnegation to command both the Army and the Fleet in action. Volunteer corps armed with scythes, paper-knives, walking-sticks and umbrellas had sprung up all over the country, and had provided their own uniforms and equipment. Lord RANDOLPH CHURCHILL, father of the present Earl of South Africa, had been recalled to office by an alarmed country, and had united in his own person the offices of Secretary of State for War, First Lord of the Admiralty, Premier, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Lord Privy Seal. As a first step towards restoring confidence, he had, with his own hands, beheaded the former Prime Minister, the Marquis of SALISBURY, and had published a cheap and popular edition of his epoch-making Letters from Mashonaland. His Lordship's official residence had been established at the Amphitryon Club where they still preserve on constant relays of ice the Bécassine bardée aux truffes which Lord RANDOLPH was about to eat when he snubbed the united ambassadors of Germany, France, Austria, Russia, Italy and the Republic of Andorra. The immediate consequence was a declaration of war against us.

CHAPTER III.

The Explosion.

I was at that time in command of H.M.S. Bandersnatch, a vessel of nine hundred thousand horse-power, and a mean average displacement of four hundred thousand tons. Ah, the dear old Bandersnatch! Never can I forget the thrill of exquisite emotion which pervaded my inmost being as I stepped on board in mid-ocean.