d.

We proceeded thither upon the giddy summit of a Royal Oak omnibus, and
on arriving in the vestibulum, were peremptorily commanded to undergo
total abstinence from our umbrellas.

Being accompanied by the span-new silken affair with the golden head,
which, as I have narrated _supra_, I was so lucky to obtain
promiscuously after witnessing the Adelphi of the Westminster college
boys, I naturally protested vehemently against such arbitrary and
tyrannical regulations, urging the risk of my unprotected umbrella being
feloniously abducted during unavoidable absence by some unprincipled and
illegitimate claimant.

But, alack! I was confronted with the official ultimatum and _sine qua
non_, and have subsequently learnt that the cause of this self-denying
ordinance is due to the uncontrollable enthusiasm of British Public for
works of art, which leads them to signify approbation by puncturing
innumerable orifices by dint of sticks or umbrellas in the process of
pointing out tit-bits of painting, and on account of the detrimental
influence on the marketable value of pictures thus distinguished by the
plerophory of the _Vox Populi_.

Nevertheless, my heart was oppressed with many misgivings at having to
hand over three hostage umbrellas--one being masculine and two feminine
gender--and receiving nothing in exchange but a wooden medallion of no
intrinsic worth, bearing the utterly disproportionate number of over one
thousand! Next, after, at Miss JESSIMINA'S bidding, having purchased a
sixpenny index, we ascended the staircase, and on shelling out three
shillings cash payment, were consecutively squeezed through a restricted
wicket as if needles going through the eye of a camel.

I will vouchsafe to aver that my interior sensations on penetrating the
first gallery were those of acute and indignant disappointment, for will
it be credited that a working majority of the exhibits were second, or
even third and fourth-hand mechanisms of an unparagoned dingitude, and
fit only for the lumbering room?

Perhaps I shall be told that this wintry exhibition is a mere stopgap
and makeshift, until a fresh supply of bright new paintings can be
procured, and that it is _ultra vires_ to obtain such for love or money
before the merry month of May.

Still I must persist in denouncing the penny wisdom and pound foolery of
the Academicals in foisting off upon the public such ancient and
fish-like articles that have long ceased to be _bon to