y _nothing_ in the whole history of this crack-brained
world--is so mad and so maddening as a Tory article on a bye-election
won by a Liberal, or a Liberal article on a bye-election gained by a
Tory? Know you not that in these dismally, delirious lucubrations, all
the rules of arithmetic, all the laws of logic, all the palpable
bearings of facts, all the obvious meanings of words, to say nothing of
the dictates of veracity, and the impulse of fairness, are deliberately
inverted, perverted, played moral havoc and intellectual pitch-and-toss
with? Know you not that the gibberings of Bedlam are clear and continent
sense compared with the argufyings of a party-scribe 'explaining away'
an opponent's success, or picturing an ally's crushing defeat as a
'moral victory?' Know you not that the (supposed) necessity of penning
such frantic fustian makes a Tory Thunderer drivel like a drunken
THERSITES, and a Radical RHADAMANTHUS equivocate like a pettifogging
attorney? Know you not----?"

But with a howl of horror the wretched victim of party silliness and
factious sophistry pitched head-first amidst the pile of papers--MAD!!!

* * * * *

Laissez-Faire.

"I believe, if you would let alone this unhappy peasantry, there
would be no difficulty whatever."--Mr. BALFOUR, _on the Irish
Question_.

THE Irish Landlord has lost his tenants,
And doesn't know where to find them;
Let them alone, and they'll come home,
And bring rents (in their pockets) behind them.

* * * * *

A REAL "INKY FLOOD."

"HERE lies one whose name was written in water," the sad but happily
inappropriate epitaph which KEATS suggested for himself. Had he lived in
our days he would have felt it to be equivocal. People are writing to
the papers with "ink," said to be made out of Thames water. Styx itself
was surely nothing to this. An inkstand has been called "_mare nigrum_,"
but hitherto no poetic trope-maker has been bold enough to speak of a
river as an inkstand. Facts _are_ stranger than fiction!

* * * * *

'ARRY AT THE SEA-SIDE.

DEAR CHARLIE,

'Ow are you, old oyster? _I_'m doin' the briny, dear boy;
Got my usual fortnit, yer know, as I makes it a pint to enjoy,
Things is quisby at 'ome, and they pressed me to chuck up my annual
spree,
And stand by to look arter the mater who's down with rheumatics. Not me!

Rela