He leaves it to other pens to sing the beauties of pikes and passes, lakes and vales. Are these not written in the verse of WORDSWORTH and WILSON, and the prose of BLACK and MURRAY? Mr. Punch's business is with the Hotels which rise in the trail of the tourist, till this Lake Country is completing its likeness to Switzerland by a system of inns at once statelier, showier, and more commodious than any to be found elsewhere in England. Of these houses of entertainment and their charges, on the whole, Mr. Punch does not feel called upon to complain. On the contrary, he much doubts whether any part of England can show a better ordered set of hostelries, more honest and attentive hosts, civiler waiters, cleaner bed-chambers, airier and loftier sitting-rooms, better spread breakfast and dinner-tables, richer cream, fresher eggs, stronger tea, hotter and butterier toast, choicer trout, juicier mutton, and generally more satisfactory arrangements in the way of lodging and eating.

Only one thing he must protest against and wonder at. Why, when lodging and eating are so well and wisely cared for, is drinking treated in a fashion at once so stupid, so short-sighted, and so dishonest?

At not one, or at only one, of these hotels, where Mr. Punch was so perfectly well lodged, well fed, and well waited upon, could he with any comfort or satisfaction arrange what he should drink at dinner, when once he swerved from the safe but narrow track of soda-andbrandy, or pale ale. Everywhere he came upon wine-bills, with a preposterous array of ports and sherries, at prices from 6s. ("very superior") to 16s. ("of exquisite quality "), champagnes from Moet and Chardon, at 10s. 6d., to Vezernay at 8s., and clarets, from Lafitte at 10s. to St. Estephe at 78. 6d.; and so forth. Only at one place the Prince of Wales's Hotel, on the shores of Grassmere-loveliest of sites and bestappointed of houses-let the fact be recorded at once in consideration of its rarity, and "pour encourager les autres"-did he come upon a Médoc at 38., a fairly-priced, and drinkable dinner-wine. Everywhere else his

FAREWELL TO THE NEW FOREST.

(BY AN OLD BADGER.)

AD Majores, ad Majores!
To my fathers I am bound.
May I go ere yet the glories

All have gone from English ground.
Ere yet Mammon reign sole master,
Flowers and verdure all have fled,
And the meads, with brick and plaster,
In their lieu, are quite o'erspread.

For this isle which, blithe and blooming,
Merry England used to be,
Is another land becoming,

Land of Philistines to me.
Daily I see disappearing

From its changed face some old charm, Here a factory chimneys rearing,

There laid out a model farm.

Friend, that Nature's foes abhorrest,
Hark, they have begun to cry,
"Fell, enclose the wild New Porest,
Turn it to a Peckham Rye,
Go ahead all bounds o'erstepping
To achieve material good,
Make that Forest ev'n as Epping,
Make it like unto Combe Wood."

What if, to their fathers going,
They, not as I go to mine,
Back be turned, their spirits flowing
Into forms of sordid swine,
And be then, to make them fonder
Of that Hampshire forest fair,
Turned in Autumn forth to wander
Grubbing mast and acorns there?
Not as hogs our fathers wandered
Through the woods, in spirit fed.
SHAKSPEARE'S value have you pondered,
Business men of pudding head?
England, in her days of beauty,
Grew a race of nobler men;
England ne'er will, drear and sooty,
Look upon their like again.

Ad Majores, ad Majores !

From the ruin soon to come,
Woodlands piled with civic storeys,
'Mid them many a crowded slum,
Through increase of population,

Which will cover each square mile,
When a great progressive nation
Has outgrown a little isle.

“THE EARTH HATH BUBBLES AS THE WATER HAS.” THE Daily Telegraph, in commenting on the increase of fish in the Thames, regrets the appearance of an alligator in its clarified waters, and alarms its readers by hints of possible horrors of an amphibious and unwelcome nature. Perhaps we shall have the hippopotamus puffing up the Thames like a steam-tug, and crocodiles may be tempted to try their luck in the immediate neighbourhood of the Houses of Parliament. Sharks, whales, and swordfish we may confidently expect, and dolphins and sea serpents are not altogether improbable. Unfortunately, however, it turns out that the poor creature was simply a large lizard escaped from a menagerie, and the one great event in the boatman's life is denuded at once of its importance. The savage alligator softens down into the gentle lizard. No matter, it has served its purpose, it has swelled the hopes of a toiler of the river, it has enabled a sensational writer to produce a picturesque leading article, and it has given an opportunity to the thoughtful observer of life to make the following remark-never be too sure that the ugly monster of a mystery you may fancy you have unravelled is the amphibious horror termed an alligator; for how frequently it turns out on closer examination to be as harmless as MR. JAMRACH's lizard.

ALL CLEARED UP.

MRS. CHITTERBY says she knows all about the Spots on the Son, for her little CHARLEY has just been vaccinated, and is doing beautifully.

MR. PUNCH,

VARIETY IS CHARMING.

WHY are women unfit to have the suffrage? Because they are. A woman's reason ought to satisfy women.

Not my view of female emancipation is that above expressed, Sir. It is the view, mostly, of my political adversaries. On many points MRS. FAWCETT, I am afraid is one of them; but I side with her as to the constitutional rights of women. These, however, appear to me to rest on rather different grounds than those whereon she claims them. The objection that women are unfit to exercise the elective franchise because they are intellectually inferior to men, MRS. FAWCETT, in her Dublin lecture the other day, maintained was, whether true or false, irrelevant to the question. She demanded :

"If it were proved as a fact that women were intellectually inferior to men, should that exclude them from the franchise? Suppose black-haired men were proved intellectually superior to red-haired men, would that be a sufficient reason to deprive red-haired men of the franchise, or would redhaired men be satisfied to relinquish their rights in that respect?"

Now, Sir, I go farther than MRS. FAWCETT, and hold that, the intellectual inferiority of women to men being assumed, it constitutes a special reason why they ought not only to be allowed, but also to be encouraged, to vote for Members of Parliament. Every man of us almost, above a beggar in station, and in intelligence exceeding an idiot, is a voter. The number of fools, therefore, who vote according to their folly must be very great. But as fools differ in their politics according to their prejudices, one fool's vote neutralises another's. Now there are great moral differences between men and women, and if the latter are intellectually inferior to the former, insomuch that generally considered, with a few exceptions, such as MRS. FAWCETT, and your wife and daughters, Sir, they are absolute fools, the addition of their folly to the constituency of the country would be necessarily attended with a large addition of feeling opposite to that which the male fools are impelled by. The female fools, therefore, had they votes, would balance the male, and their blind but beautiful instincts would probably give a preponderance to the right side. Accordingly a few fools more added to the free and independent electors of the United Kingdom, a few more soft persons of the softer sex, would give no alarm, but on the contrary afford some reassurance to your ancient Castlereagh Cottage, Eldon Grove.

TRUE BLUE.

FRENCH MODISTES AND FRENCH MODESTY. FRENCH ladies are reputed to have good taste in dress, but here is a French fashion which we hope no English lady will have the bad taste to follow:

"The low square cut corsage now in vogue, which has come to be disrespectfully styled the étalage, consists of little else than a mere band of cerise velvet, bordered above and below with blonde lace, which with a rose posed at each shoulder suffices to form the sleeves."

What is called full dress is often barely decent, and ladies when most dressed have commonly least clothing. They who practise such exposure as is hinted at above deserve to be exposed to the severest form of censure. It is not enough to say that they are barefaced, for it is not their face which is the front of their offending. A cut at them in Punch is castigation they well merit; but were Punch to represent such women as they are, and as they ought not to be, Punch might cease to be regarded as a decent publication. Want of decency, the poet says, is want of sense; and no one but a fool would deem herself dressed properly, with a shred of lace, two roses, and a little scrap of velvet.

THE NOMINATION NUISANCE.

WILL anybody tell us what earthly good there can be, excepting to the beer-shops, in having nomination days as preludes to elections ? Voters who can read the addresses of the candidates may well cry, "What imports the nomination of these people?" And voters who can't read can hardly be much edified by the speeches which on these days are mostly made in dumb-show. The show of hands leads usually to the show of fists, and the mob-leaders who beat each other black and blue do little good by this display of their electioneering colours. Old nuisances die hard, and electioneering nuisances are, perhaps, especially tenacious of existence. Still we hope to live to see all nomination days abolished, and candidates elected without calling one another names, which is commonly the case on days of nomination.

A NAME OF ILL OMEN.

PERSONS who are subject to fits of toothache, and do not wish to be reminded of their distressing malady, should avoid going down Long Acre.

"MUCH CRY AND LITTLE WOOL;" OR, SHAVING THE PARLIAMENTARY PIG.