ssent of the Crown.]

Five hundred? Good gracious! there's no need of that.
"Black Peerage," indeed! Though as black as my hat,
They could hardly be blacker than SALISBURY's lot;
But to talk of such sooty recruits is sheer rot.
That bad Upper House to reform--or degrade--
We don't want the charge of this queer Dark Brigade.
Five hundred? FRED HARRISON, you _are_ a green one!
_I_'d settle the business with _one_ sweep--_a clean one_!

* * * * *

THE COURT JESTERS.

[Illustration: An Inhabitant of Noah's Ark.]

Thanks to Messrs. SIMS and RALEIGH and the Court Company for a good
hearty laugh, and many of them at their new three-act farcical comedy,
_The Guardsman_. It Raleigh is good, and Sims likely to be in for a
long run. Therefore, congratulations to Mr. CHUDLEIGH, who is in the
proud position of "Sole Lessee and Manager," of the Court. Odd, as a
correspondent remarked in a letter to _Mr. Punch_ last week, is the
coincidental resemblance of the master-motive of the plot to that of
_Incognita_ at the Lyric; viz., the young man refusing to marry the
girl with whom he is really in love, because he is in love with the
very same young lady without knowing her name or anything about her.
But hath not the old Spanish Comedy-writer, GONZALES, used it three
times? hath not his fellow-countryman, VEGA MORVEGA, used it in his
now obsolete play of _The Distressed Mother_? and hath not VODENDOL,
the Norwegian dramatist, absolutely nauseated us with it, not to
mention its constant use by that imitation of GOLDONI, Count ERFITO
D'ALUMINIO? And to come nearer home, did not the German--but why
pursue the "motive" until you run it to earth, and even then it won't
be killed, but will be flourishing thousands of years hence, when the
New Zealand playwright among the ruins of London shall take up his
note-book and commence a scenario on the old, but to him, quite
original idea.

[Illustration: Arthur Cecil's Collard Head a la G.O.M.]

Then, in the last Act of _The Guardsman_, if we have a French room
with half-a-dozen doors, leading to half-a-dozen different places,
with which arrangement not a few of us are familiar in pieces brought
over fresh from the Palais Royal, and occurring in farces of which
_Bebe_, _Anglice Betsey_, at the Gymnase and Criterion is a type,
shall we complain? Shall we not rather laugh heartily over the good
old game of Hide-and-Seek, which on the stage is inv