ening-dress. Nature will unveil her charms. Earth
with the groans of an infinite pain, a boundless travail, yields up
the gingham umbrella.

We will not intrude upon their immediate rapture as they carry their
treasure away with loving hands; but it is necessary to note the means
taken to prove, for the satisfaction only of a foolish and unbelieving
world, the supernatural nature of the phenomenon. The umbrella is
examined under severe test conditions: it is weighed in a vacuum, and
placed under the spectroscope. It is found to be porous and a
conductor of heat; but it is not soluble in water, though it boils at
500 deg. Fahr. To demonstrate the absence of trickery or collusion
everyone turns up his sleeves and empties his waistcoat pockets. There
is no room for sleight of hand in presence of this searching
scientific investigation. The umbrella _is_ certainly _not_ a
supposititious animal; yet it is the umbrella of Mr. Cyper Redalf's
boyhood. No one can doubt this who sees him clasp it in a fond
embrace, who sees him shed burning tears on its voluminous folds.--THE
ORPHAN.

ELUCIDATIONS

No. 1

WITH THE VICEROY

The late Edward Robert Bulwer, First Earl of Lytton (1831-1891),
Viceroy and Governor-General of India from April 12, 1876, to June 8,
1880, is here depicted from the superficial point of view of his
character as a man, a poet, and a statesman generally current at the
time.

Lord Lytton was thoroughly unconventional in all his manners and
moods, and in his methods of conducting the affairs of his great
office.

As a boy of seven he was already scribbling verses; and he wrote a
poem, "The Prisoner of Provence," which turns upon the famous story of
the Man in the Iron Mask, only two or three months before his death.
In fact, all through Lord Lytton's distinguished career, as his father
had done before him, he found recreation in change of employment. As
forcibly and eloquently stated by his daughter, Lady Betty Balfour, in
her introduction to the 1894 edition of his Selected Poems, "The minds
of both were ceaselessly active, and they turned without a pause from
one kind of thought and business to another as readily as they turned
from either to easy, disengaged conversation. Had the rival calls of
his many-sided intellect been at variance, the poet in my father would
always have had the preference."

Ali Baba, it may be taken for granted, did not intend to characterise
as "a flood of tw