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"THE EYE OF THE LAW."

(Suggested by certain recent Cases in our Police Courts.)

"AU PIED DE LA LETTRE."

Customer (to famous Modiste). "I'm parting with my Maid, Madame Aldegonde, and I should like to get her into your Establishment."

Madame A. "What can she do?"

Customer. "She's already a very decent Dressmaker."

Madame A. "I'm afraid, Madam, that she would not do for most of my Customers!"

ROUNDABOUT READINGS.

In this depressing weather it is always well to have something to be thankful for. My own special subject for gratitude is the cessation and final end of the Marlborough-Vanderbilt wedding. All these columns of matrimonial gush which have been arriving by mail and cable from America have been sufficient to make even a good man curse his fellow-man, and retire to some other planet. Perhaps the young Duke himself ought not to be blamed. I know nothing against him except that he was arrested in New York for "coasting" on a bicycle, and that he has made one speech in the House of Lords. These are grave matters, no doubt, but they must not be allowed to blast a young man's career at its very outset.

Nor possibly are the Vanderbilts altogether in fault. They possess many millions, and it is perhaps natural that they should desire to celebrate the marriage of their daughter by spending some of their dollars on diamonds, rubies, gold, silver, and exotic flowers. But what is offensive about the business is the morbid excitement of the American public. The American public may declare that it was not excited; but, in that case, it is difficult to understand why its newspaper proprietors should have flooded their columns with descriptive gush in which not even the bride's underclothing is spared from publicity.

Moreover, this marriage was rehearsed. I don't think I am putting the matter too strongly when I say that this constitutes an outrage not only on good taste, but on all proper religious feeling. I imagine the happy pair bowing and kneeling with their bridesmaids and attendants, and the weeping maiden aunts who are never absent from such a ceremony, going solemnly through the intricate maze of responses, while a mock clergyman reads a mock service and all the spectators indulge in a mockery of emotion and congratulation. For myself I would as soon re-marry a hearse, as rehearse a marriage.

The whole business is, in fact, an illustration of that passion for tawdry display and vulgar ostentation in which the great American Republic seems to have gone not one but about a million better (or worse) than the parent stock. I sincerely hope that the supply of marriageable peers and American heiresses is now exhausted, and that we may hear no more of these international engagements.

I spoke last week of the undergraduate in relation to his dog. This week I should like to say a few words of the undergraduate in relation to his clothes. It seems to be generally imagined that the undergraduate is addicted to dressing himself out in the smartest possible clothes for his daily stroll along King's Parade or the High. Nothing can be further from the fact. The error is probably due to those splendidly inaccurate descriptions of university life with which novel readers have been of late perplexed. From these it might be supposed that the undergraduate was in the habit of changing his clothes some six times a day merely for purposes of display, and of reserving his very smartest suit for the daily visit that he pays to the gorgeous gambling-hells which are, as we all know, to be found by the score in the suburban districts of Oxford and Cambridge.

As a matter of fact, the average undergraduate is, in matters of dress, the simplest of mankind. His great ideal is comfort, and as old clothes are naturally more comfortable than new, it is quite a common sight to see great Blues, presidents of clubs, shining lights of the river, the field, or the schools arrayed in Norfolk jackets, in trousers on which at least two winters have laid their defacing hand, and in shirts which, though of an immaculate cleanness, show evident signs of wear and tear in the cuff department.

It must be remembered that the ordinary undergraduate only wears the clothes of civilisation for about half of every day. During the rest of the time he is to be found in the garb most appropriate to his athletic pursuits. In the case of a rowing man, these extend only to within six inches of his knees, and spectators have been heard to wonder how such large and heavy frames can be supported on so melancholy a deficiency of calves. I don't know how it is, but it is a fact that if a rowing man stands more than seventy-two inches in height, the girth of his calves will not exceed some ten inches.

If in writing thus of undergraduate dress I have destroyed a cherished illusion, I can only express my regret; but I have a strong feeling that the truth should be at last made to prevail, even against the inexactitudes of university novelists.

THE MARVELLOUS FEAT OF TREE-ILBY SVENGALIVANISED!

Mr. Tree Svengalivanting. "You must learn to love me!"

The state of those who have read the novel before seeing the play, is gracious; the state of those who have seen the play without having previously read the novel, is the more gracious. Svengali, the weird unwashed Hebrew, the fantastical, musical magician, so dominates the story, that the author of his being will be remembered as George Jew Maurier. And Svengali the Satanical, marvellously impersonated by Mr. Beerbohm Tree, stands out as the central figure of the strange unconventional drama at the Haymarket. It isn't Trilby, the hypnotised subject, but Svengali, the fearful "object," the dirty demoniac hypnotiser, on whom all eyes are fixed, and in whom the interest is centred. He is Shylock and Fagin, Mephistophelesized; he is as loathsome as Hyde without Jekyl; he is the Spirit of Evil in the story of the Devil's Violin; he is the haunting, cringing fiend in the Shadowless Man; he is, in fact, the very Deuce himself.

"O don't you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt," is the "old song" which, at first, Miss Trilby O'Ferrall "cannot sing," but which, when hypnotised