(outside). I have done all I can! If I could only hope the worst was over! But it doesn't matter much now. I know I shall never see Douglas again!

[She goes sorrowfully up to her room.

(End of Scene VII.)

"THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA" AT OXFORD.

Teaching him his A. D. C.

The Oxford University Dramatic Society, unlike the Cambridge A. D. C., is compelled by the Authorities to walk only amidst the high peaks and sometimes monotonous solitudes of the legitimate drama. The Two Gentlemen of Verona, which was chosen for this term's performance, is, if the truth must be told, an uninteresting stage-play. The story is of the slightest; there is scarcely a genuinely dramatic incident from beginning to end. The audience wearies of a succession of pretty pictures and sentimental soliloquies or dialogues, mouths begin to gape, and the attention wanders. Is this sacrilege? If it be, I must be content to be sacrilegious. But there is scope for careful and graceful acting, and of this the O. U. D. S. took full advantage.

Mr. Whitaker's Valentine was a very pleasing performance. He spoke his lines admirably, grouped himself (if the Hibernianism be permissible) excellently, and showed himself in every sense a well-graced actor. Mr. Ponsonby's Launce, too, was capital, carefully thought out and consistently rendered. One or two of the actors in tights seemed unduly conscious of their hands and knees, but, on the whole, the acting was of good average excellence. The Ladies here are real Ladies, not stuffed imitations, as at Cambridge. Mrs. Sim, Mrs. Morris, and Miss Farmer, were all good. But the one really brilliant performance was that of Crab, the dog, by a wonderful Variety performer from the Theatre Royal, Dogs' Home, Battersea. If this gorgeously ugly, splendidly intelligent, and affectionately versatile animal is sent back at the conclusion of the run of the piece to be asphyxiated at Battersea, I shall never believe in the gratitude or humanity of the O. U. D. S.

Another Gentleman.

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

Timothy's Quest.

In the arid life of the book-reviewer there is sometimes found the oasis of opportunity to recommend to a (comparatively) less suffering community a book worth reading. My Baronite has by chance come upon such an one in Timothy's Quest, by Kate Douglas Wiggin. The little volume is apparently an importation, having been printed for the Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass. It is published in London by Gay and Bird, a firm whose name, though it sounds lively, is as unfamiliar as the Author's. Probably from this combination of circumstances, Timothy's Quest has, as far as my Baronite's quest goes, escaped the notice of the English Reviewer. That is his personal loss. The book is an almost perfect idyl, full of humanity, fragrant with the smell of flowers, and the manifold scent of meadows. It tells how Timothy, waif and stray in the heart of a great city, escaped from a baby-farm to whose tender cares he had been committed; how, in a clothes-basket, mounted on four wooden wheels, cushioned with a dingy shawl, he wheeled off another waif and stray, a prattling infant; and how, accompanied by a mongrel dog named Rags, the party made its way to a distant village, nestling in the lap of green hills with a real river running through it. Here boy and baby—and Rags too—find New England friends, whom it is a privilege for nous autres to know. Samanthy Ann is a real live person, and so is Jabe Slocum—a long, loose, knock-kneed, slack-twisted person, of whom Aunt Hitty Tarbox (whom George Eliot might have sketched) remarked he would have been "longer yit if he hedn't hed so much turned up fur feet." Timothy's Quest is the best thing of the kind that has reached us from America since Little Lord Fauntleroy crossed the Atlantic.

(Signed) "Nihil obstat," Baron de B.-W.

Synonym for a Chemise de Nuit.—"A Nap-sack."

Q. E. D.

"Sorry I've no better Quarters to invite you all to, Mrs. Quiverfull!

"Ah, you should Marry, Captain Sparks! If you'd got a Better Half, you'd have better Quarters too!"

WITH "THE OLD MASTERS."

At Burlington House.—Real treat. No. 6. Portrait of Charles Dibdin, the Nautical Poet and Songster. Painted by Sir William Beechey, R.A. Appropriate, a "Beechey Head."

No. 11. "Girl Sketching." By Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A. Everybody knows that the sun stood still for Joshua; here you may see how, for Sir Joshua, the daughter stood still.

No. 36. Our old friend, "A Chat round the Brasero." By Phillip of Spain, i.e., John Phillip, R.A. It ought to have been called "A Good Story." No chatting is going on, but the worthy padre has just told them a story which, like the picture itself, is full of local colour. The padre has given a "Phillip" to the conversation.

No. 43. "Portrait of an Actor." By Zoffany, R.A. Who is the Actor? The Painter we know; but the Actor—? "Ars longa, vita brevis"—and "then is heard no more."

No. 48. Another Portrait of another Actor. By Zoffany. Name! Name! Did they both appear for "one night only"—come "like shadows, so depart"?

No. 75. "Portrait of a Lady"—an old lady, but such an old lady! By Rembrandt. What a cap! What a frill! What a pocket-handkerchief! Delighted to see such a specimen of "Old Dutch!" Homely old Dutchess!

No. 78. "The Fishmonger." By Van Ostade. The fish as fresh to-day as when it was originally bought.

No. 109. Wonderful! Van Dyck's "Burgomaster Triest." As the eminent critic and punster, Joseph Von Müller, observed to Van Dyck, "Dyck, my boy, thou wilt never paint a better than this Burgomaster of Triest if thou Tri-est ever so!"

Then quoth my companion, "Come to the Blake Collection." Ahem! Into the Black-and-White Room. Ugh!... "That way madness lies." No more to-day, thank you.

Beastly Superiority.—(Konundrum by the "Boxing Kangaroo," on hearing of the "Wrestling Lion.")—What is tamer than a tame lion? Why, of course, a Lion Tamer.

VALENTINE VERSES.

(An Apology accompanying a Purse.)