A NICOTINISED NATION.

THAT must have been a wonderful scene in the Channel the other day, when a professional swimmer was "performing the feat of swimming from Dover to Calais, accompanied by umpires and representatives of the Press, together with the Brass Band of the Royal Surrey Gardens."

The Advertisement was a little misleading in speaking of the Swimmer as "performing the feat," for he was able to get through but a small portion of the Straits; so, perhaps, there may have been some mistake about the Umpires, Reporters, and Musicians accompanying him in his exploit. Otherwise the unusual spectacle of all these functionaries gallantly breasting the waves of the Channel, the Umpires with their insignia of office, the Reporters with their note-books between their teeth, and the Brass Band of the Royal Surrey Gardens, with their drums and trumpets, trombones and bassoons, playing Rule Britannia or the National Anthem, must have been worth any expenditure of time and money to behold-a sight the oldest inhabitant had never seen before, and the youngest inhabitant will never see again. The Sea Serpent off Dover would, we imagine, have hardly caused a greater sensation.

ON consideration, it will appear that the "Intoxicating Liquors Act" is very happily named. The public-houses being open, on Sundays especially, for but a limited number of hours, people will be sure to rush to them during those hours, in order to get their "drop of something" while they can. Then they will also make the most of their time for drinking, lest they should want beer, or some other generous beverage, by-and-by, and not be able to get any. So the majority of them will be got to take more than is good for them, and they will become generally more or less drunk. For the measure of petty tyranny which Ministers have carried allows sots plenty of time wherein to get drunk on any day, it only hinders the sober excursionist or other decent person from taking his draught or meal at convenient hours. Thus the Intoxicating Liquors Act will indeed be what its authors have called it; because the Act will be intoxicating inasmuch as it will cause the liquors to intoxicate, which in point of fact they would not do but for its vexatious and mischievous limitations.

language. JOHN BULL has grown as patient as an Ass that has not the spirit to kick. It seems, indeed, as though JOHN BULL had become JOHN OX. The people undergo the operation of losing their liberties under tobacco instead of chloroform.

THE officious busy bodies of the Anti-Tobacco Association are most of them also numbered with those other officious busy bodies, the members of the United Kingdom Alliance. They are fools as It is too much trouble for the generality to resist the encroachwell as busybodies and officious; fools not to see that, if smoking ment pushed on by an energetic majority of meddlers. The "Perand drinking go together, it is by smoking, very mainly, that the missive Prohibitory Bill" will, unless the drowsy majority bestir restraint of drinking has been made possible. The practice of themselves, very soon be enacted, and supersede the Intoxicating smoking has greatly increased of late years among the higher Liquors Act. Then will come absolute prohibition of the liquor classes, and with it has increased political apathy. Less than half traffic, and last of all, when smoke shall have done its work, the a century ago it was considered low for a gentleman to smoke at all. Anti-Tobacco Society will be enabled to accomplish their base Smoking a cigar in the streets was disreputable, and nobody ever purpose, abolish the agency which has subserved their end, and take smoked a pipe but a working-man, or a clown. At the same time, our cigars and quids out of our mouths. In the mean time they are well-to-do people were much more sensitive than they are at doing themselves no good, and others no harm. For it is harm present in many ways; much more indignant with rascality and to deprive a moderate smoker of the comfort of his tobacco, just blackguardism, and, in particular, very much more intolerant of as it is, in the case of a sober man, to rob a poor man of his beer. tyrannical and unjust legislation. Our forefathers, for example, But, if out of so much smoke as overclouds this land some fire would not, and did not, stand an Income-tax longer than it was does not soon and fiercely flare up against the Paternal Legislative absolutely necessary. The present generation has stood that, and much else, and is now actually standing legislative limitation of the right to obtain refreshments at reasonable hours. The Pall Mall Gazette, in an article on "Liberals and Conservatives," observes

that:

"The Liberal legislation of the next few years is evidently going to be distinguished by some very formidable peculiarities. It will clearly be to the last degree coercive. The statutes passed in the last Session perfectly bristle with penalties. Sobriety, cleanliness, and secret voting are each secured by making a multitude of acts penal of which the vast majority are innocent, and some are even laudable."

rigs who have partially reduced us in point of liberty to the state of pupilage, we shall all wake up some foul morning, and see not only all the public-houses and wine-merchants', and wine-licensed grocers' places of business, but likewise all the tobacconists' shops, closed in our faces. Put that in your pipes, and smoke it. We may be bilious, but our moral's right, "all the same."

Interesting to Exhibitors.

IT is announced that the "Claimant" is shortly to be shown in the Agricultural Hall. But we believe that the usual arrangements will, in other respects, be retained. The prizes for fat beasts will not be given until December.

It will be owing, in a great measure, to the smoking habits of the community, that Liberals, so calling themselves, and so called by the unwise, will be enabled to proceed in the path of coercive legislation. That is, unless the smokers rouse themselves and exert their nicotinised and narcotised energies. The fashion is now to take everything easy, and lie down under the load of every new imposition, only grumbling a little or using a word or two of strong inebriates.

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

BITTER Ale is not an Intoxicating Liquor. It neither cheers nor

NEW TO ME.

AM forty-six years of age,
and this is the first time i
have been abroad. The
last Census returns, which
give some interesting de-

a public gaming-table, and a pair of wooden shoes. I have compared mine with those of three other householders residing in the South-Eastern, Northern, and Western postal districts, and they all vary, in some cases as much as the tenth of an inch.

Great uncertainty seems to prevail abroad as to the proper spelling of the word Beefsteak. The Philological Society would do well to placard the Continent with large bills supplying the necessary information." Sherry Gobler," "Punsch," and "Waux-hall," are also worthy of the Council's attention.

tails of the number of per-
sons possessing a cellar of
old port, a tortoiseshell
I am breakfasting in an open gallery on the top of a cheap and
Tom-cat, and a yellow comfortable little inn in the Taunus, surrounded by chestnut groves
chariot, record but few and orchards, and overlooking a spacious plain, a great city, and an
instances of men who have horizon of mountains. What is my friend PENNYMAN doing at this
received a liberal educa- moment in his town-house? He is drudging at an article on the
tion reaching middle life meeting of the British Association, or the Autumn Manoeuvres, in a
without making the Chan- small upper chamber, surrounded by public-houses and pawn-
nel voyage, and those brokeries, and commanding a prospect of a Workhouse, a City
mostly in remote rural Church, and an horizon of chimney-pots. PENNYMAN has not the
districts where belief in wasps, I allow, but then he has neither the omelette nor the "Mira-
witchcraft still lingers, and belle" plums. (N.B. The exact geographical position of the Inn,
the use of flint and steel is as laid down on the Ordnance Maps, its distance from the nearest
not altogether extinct.
letter-box, &c., will be imparted to anyone forwarding two sealed
To set up as a traveller envelopes, the one containing a distinguishing motto, the other the
at forty-six, and then only writer's name, address, and position in society. References will be
to visit such familiar coun- given and exchanged, and an appointment made for an early date,
tries as Belgium and Ger- if they are found satisfactory.)

IGNORAMUS.

SHIRT-SLEEVES AND APRONS.

many, seems to promise
but little distinction.
Should I not be surer of a
niche in the Temple of
Fame, and a chance of
obtaining one of the medals Or public speakers accustomed to talk of and to working-men,
of the Royal Geographical MR. ROEBUCK is almost the only one who does not cant about them,
Society, if I were to select and does not adulate them, nor call them the People, with a great P.
Greenland, or Persia, or In his late speech at the opening dinner of the St. Peter's Working-
Men's Club, at Sheffield, he had a word to say for another class,
equally well qualified and entitled with working-men to be con-
sidered the People, and to govern us all. He spoke up also for the
small shopkeepers, and, dwelling on the advantages which world
result from facilities for associating together afforded to the men of
aprons and the men of shirt-sleeves, he remarked that-

one of the Poles, ascend the Grand Climacterique, or trace the Zumalcarragui to its lonely source-perhaps, best of all, join LIVINGSTONE and share his honours when he returns home ? Ignorance of his language before an African waiter is far more excusable than an utter inability to make known the commonest wants of daily life to garçons and kellners; and signs and smiles and beads go a long way in uncivilised circles. (I might stand some chance of being listened to, when the vacation is over, if I could say that I had been to the Canaries, and were to make presents to my friends of the feathered songsters indigenous to those islands.)

Some slight acquaintance with modern geography is indispensable to the traveller abroad. It leads to confusion to expect a view of the Alps when they are two or three countries off, and to look for sea-bathing in Germany can only end in disappointment. I have been careful to distinguish between the Rhine and the Rhone, and can now never forget that there are two places of the name of Frankfort-Frankfort on the Main, and the Oder Frankfort. A few portable facts about CHARLEMAGNE, the Romans, the Electors, the Thirty Years' War, the Old Masters, the Old Red Sandstone, Gothic Architecture, &c., will also be found useful.

I had no mal de mer. My specific was a simple and inexpensive one, capable of universal application, and requiring no stamp or other formalities; and having derived the greatest benefit from its use, I make it known without hope of fee or reward, for the general good. I avoided all disagreeable thoughts. I did not allow my mind to dwell for a single instant on the price of coals, or the divisions in the Church, or MR. AYRTON, or domestic servants, or tradesmen's bills, or, above all, on the return to official duties in the month of September. There was a critical moment when I feared the worst, for, very imprudently, I got thinking of the luggage.

Patent leather shoes are not conducive to personal comfort on the deck of a Channel steamer, on a rough wet night. The great German ontologist, SCHUMACHER, laid this down as a dictum long ago, and modern experience, bearing date July 30, 1872, confirms the accuracy of his deduction.

I felt there was still a link left between me and the old country when I received a penny in change on the coast of Belgium. It is at the disposal of the first street-sweeper who shall meet me on my return to London, I having missed his services in foreign countries.

"He wished to see the working-man make himself a part of this great country, and not an antagonist portion of it. (Cheers.) He was sure he might say that the gentlemen he saw before him at the table so elegantly laid, might be, for aught he could see, Members of the House of Commons sitting down to dinner. (Laughter.) What was there in the career of the workingman or small shopkeeper that should render it impossible that they should sit down to a genteel dinner? What he hoped (though he could not hope to see it now, but what he hoped would come to pass at no very distant day) was that the working-man should be in his dealings, in his demeanour, and in every order of life, a gentleman. (Applause."

Exactly so. There is no reason why the working-men or the small shopkeepers should either drop or superadd their aitches, except defective education, which deficiency, let us hope, is in course of being supplied. "Manners," as WILLIAM OF WYKERAM's motto says, "makyth man," and by manners the gentleman is differentiated from the other kind of man whom we call Cad or Snob. Perhaps the time is not far distant when the manners of an average small grocer or carpenter will at least equal those of an ordinary curate, and will very much exceed those of the least uncivil clerk in the Civil Service. We may live to hear a Judge address Petty Jurymen at an Assize as "Gentlemen of the Jury" without any idea that his Lordship is ironical. When the mechanic and the small shopkeeper shall each of them have attained to the perfection of being, as MR. ROEBUCK says, "in his dealings, in his demeanour, and in every order of life, a gentleman," both the former and the latter of those free and independent British electors will be as fit to exercise political power as the former of them alone is so constantly and vehemently declared to be by blatant demagogues.

Hint to Churchwardens.

WITHOUT going into theology, one may say it stands to reason I detect a point of resemblance between myself and SHAKSPEARE, that, whether real Roman Catholicism is true or untrue, sham which all the commentators have overlooked. He, we know from Roman Catholicism is false. Whatever may be the correctness of competent authority, had "small Latin and less Greek.", I have DR. CUMMING's opinion of the genuine Mass, the Mock Mass must at small French and no German. Other striking resemblances to any rate be flat idolatry, or rather fetichism. In a church, thereMILTON, ADDISON, MUNGO PARK, SIR JOHN MAUNDEVILLE, RICHARD fore, where a Ritualist Parson persists in annoying his Protestant HAKLUYT, ROBINSON CRUSOE, and many additional tourists of emi-parishioners by having incense burnt, there could not possibly be nence, may be had on application to the publishers, and will be any impropriety in putting up the notice :-"No Smoking Allowed detailed, on my return to London, in a paper to be read at the first Abaft the Altar." general meeting of the Travellers' Club which shall be held after my election into that body.

I advise everybody to register their emotions on seeing for the first time a mountain, a monk, a vine, a douanier, a garçon,

COMPANION Picture to My Lodging is on the Cold GroundMy Luncheon is off the Cold Grouse.

"WELL, GOOD-BYE, DEAR MRS. JONES. I HOPE YOU WILL EXCUSE MY NOT HAVING CALLED-THE DISTANCE, YOU KNOW! PERHAP YOU WILL KINDLY TAKE THIS AS A VISIT?"

"O, CERTAINLY! AND PERHAPS YOU WILL KINDLY TAKE THIS AS A VISIT RETURNED?" ! !