* * * * *

COVENT GARDENING PROSPECTS.--The prospectus of the Italian Opera
Season lies on _Mr. Punch's_ table; but though this is its attitude,
there is no reason to doubt the truthfulness of its statements.
More anon. _En attendant_, we may say that the stage-management,
in the hands of AUGUSTUS DRURIOLANUS, is a guarantee for the excellence
of the _mises-en-scene_, of the misses-_en-scene_, and of the
"hits"-_en-scene_.

* * * * *

MODERN TYPES.

(_By Mr. Punch's Own Type-Writer._)

No. V.--THE DILETTANTE.

The Modern Dilettante will have been in boyhood a shorn lamb, for whom
it was necessary to temper the wind of an English education by a liberal
admixture of foreign travel. A prolonged course of interrupted studies
will have filled him with culture, whilst a distaste for serious effort,
whether mental or physical, and an innate capacity for mastering no
subject thoroughly will have produced in him that special refinement
which is to the Dilettante as a trade-stamp to Britannia metal. In
after-life, he will speak with regretful fondness, and with an accuracy
which he fails to apply to other matters of his "days" (four in number)
at a German University, and will submit with cheerfulness to the
reputation of having drunk deep from the muddy fountains of metaphysical
speculation, which are as abundant and as ineffective in Germany, as her
springs of mineral water.

[Illustration]

Having passed his period of storm and stress without committing any of
those follies or indulging in any of those excesses by which the parents
of ordinary young men are afflicted, he will arrive without reproach at
the borders of an apparently blameless middle age, and, finding himself
after the death of his father, in the enjoyment of a settled income of
considerable size, he will set up in life as an acknowledged amateur of
all that is truly precious. In order that nothing may be wanting to him
for the proper pursuit of this calling, he will gather round him a
little band of boneless enthusiasts, who after paying due devotion to
themselves, and to one another, will join him in worshipping the dead or
living nonentities whose laurelled photographs adorn his rooms. He will
cover his couches with soft silks, his walls will be hung with
impressionist etchings and engravings of undraped ladies of French
origin, _terra-cotta_ statuettes principally of the young Apollo, will