bury its tainted dead,
Lest aliens at our 'heroes' wag the head."
"Shocking! wails out the sentimentalist.
Believe no tale unpleasant, scorn to list
To slanderous charges on the British name!
That brutish baseness, or that sordid shame
Can touch 'our gallant fellows,' is a thing
Incredible. Do not our poets sing,
Our pressmen praise in dithyrambic prose,
The 'lads' who win our worlds and face our foes?
Who never, save to human pity, yield
One step in wilderness or battlefield!"

Meanwhile, with troubled eyes and straining hands,
Silent, attentive, thoughtful, Justice stands.
To her alone let the appeal be made.
Heroes, or merely tools of huckstering Trade,
Men brave, though fallible, or sordid brutes,
Let all be heard. Since each to each imputes
Unmeasured baseness, _somewhere_ the black stain
Must surely rest. The dead speak not, the slain
Have not a voice, save such as that which spoke
From ABEL's blood. Green laurels, or the stroke
Of shame's swift scourge? There's the alternative
Before the lifted eyes of those who live.
One fain would see the grass unstained that waves
In the dark Afric waste o'er those two graves.
To Justice the protagonist makes appeal.
Justice would wish him smirchless as her steel,
But stands with steadfast eyes and unbowed head
Silent--betwixt the Living and the Dead!

* * * * *

OPERA NOTES.

What's a Drama without a Moral, and what's _Rigoletto_ without a
MAUREL, who was cast for the part, but who was too indisposed to
appear? So Signor GALASSI came and "played the fool" instead, much to
the satisfaction of all concerned, and all were very much concerned
about the illness or indisposition of M. MAUREL. DIMITRESCO not
particularly strong as the _Dook_; but Mlle. STROMFELD came out well
as _Gilda_, and, being called, came out in excellent form in front of
the Curtain. Signor BEVIGNANI, beating time in Orchestra, and time all
the better for his beating.

* * * * *

"FOR THIS RELIEF MUCH THANKS."--The difficulties in The City, which
_Mr. Punch_ represented in his Cartoon of November 8, were by the
_Times_ of last Saturday publicly acknowledged to be at an end. The
adventurous mariners were luckily able to rest on the Bank, and are
now once more fairly started. They will bear in mind the warning of
the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, as given to the boys in the