aggard?
"The World's Desire" (as HELEN's called by HAGGARD)
Might well have crowned on Ilium's windy cope,
This patient follower-up of "The Heart's Hope!"

* * * * *

SHOW OF THE OLD MASTERS AT BURLINGTON HOUSE.--This Exhibition opened
last Saturday. It was such a peasoupy day that the Artiest of our Fine
Arts' Critics couldn't get there. Old Masters, indeed! it was a good
Old Foggy that prevented him from being in his place (and he knows his
place too) on that occasion.

* * * * *

CHRISTMAS IN TWO PIECES.

[Illustration]

Pantomime! Pantomime!! The only DRURIOLANUS, and the only Pantomime in
the Tame West. Therefore, it is almost a duty, let alone a pleasure,
on the part of Parents and Guardians to take the young gentlemen
from school, schools public and private, and the young ladies freed
awhile from their Governesses, to see _Beauty and the Beast_ at Drury
Lane. "Is it a good Pantomime this year?" "_That_," as _Hamlet_ once
observed, though at that particular moment he was not thinking of
Pantomimes, nor even of his own capital little drawing-room drama
for distinguished amateurs, entitled _The Mousetrap_, "_that_ is
the question." And _Mr. Punch's_ First Commissioner of Theatres can
conscientiously answer, "Yes, a decidedly good Pantomime." If pressed
farther by those who "want to know" as to whether it's _the best_
Pantomime he ever saw, the First Commissioner answers, "No, it is not
_Beauty and the Best_," and he is of opinion that he must travel, in
a train of thought on the line of Memory, back to the PAYNES and the
VOKESES in the primest of their prime, if he would recall two or three
of the very best, mind you, _the very best_, Pantomimes ever seen in
the Tame West. For real good rollicking fun, the Pantomimes at the
Surrey and the Grecian used to be worth the trouble of a pilgrimage;
but it was a trouble, for the show used to commence early and end
late, and indigestion was the consequence of a disturbed dinner and
the unaccustomed heartiness of a most enjoyable supper.

[Illustration: "Sure such a pair," &c.]

Drury Lane Pantomime commences at 7.30, and is not over till 11.30,
and yet in these four hours there rarely comes over you any sense of
weariness, except perhaps when the ballets are too long. From first to
last the audience is expecting something, and is ready to accept every
transition from one scene to another as a chan