unpleasant to poor Mortimer; he saw of course that he had been mistaken for Wilkie Collins all along. Yet he did not move a muscle, or rather he continued to smile on. Not a tone in his cheery voice betrayed his disappointment. And when his guest made his adieux, he was quite ignorant that he had been addressing his attention to the wrong Dromio, and "putting his foot in it" to an extent which probably no Frenchman had ever done before.

IT

T is encouraging to hear of the formation of societies in Spain for the purpose of inculcating tenderness to dumb animals. Two such societies have been formed, one in Cadiz and a second in Santander. At the present moment the Spaniard is the most emphatically cruel of all beings self-styled civilised. The dissemination of views as to the duty of man to his dumb associates may do something to check the exhibition of cruelty by which the traveller in Spain is constantly shocked. Who knows, moreover, that the Spaniard, after he has learned to be humane to the brute creation, may not in time come to extend the same indulgence to his fellow-creatures?

I

AM the last person to say anything against a popular favourite, nor would I do so if I thought it would do such a person any harm; but I do think that the enthusiasm excited by Zazel in the Gun Trick at the Westminster Aquarium is somewhat ridiculous. It is almost certain that she is ejected from the cannon by the spiral spring that is so well-known an agent in sending acrobats sixty feet into the air quite independent of their own exertions; only in Zazel's case it is applied horizontally instead of perpendicularly. She falls very cleverly indeed, but still with comparative ease, into her net, whereas they had to step on to a platform from the top of the spring board before it shot down again—a much more difficult operation. However, there are other reasons, I confess, why I hesitate to add my voice to the acclaim that welcomes Zazel. Lulu, her predecessor in public favour, has been enough, and more than enough for me; to think of the tender sympathy I wasted upon that engaging young woman (as I thought her), and then to find that she was all along (or at all events is now, so could have been) the father of two promising children! It is perfectly monstrous that human interest should be excited under such false pretences. And how do I know that Zazel, instead of being a graceful feminine creature (the sister, it is said, of Lulu), enlisting the affections as well as the apprehensions of the sterner sex, may not be an undersized family man ?

SYLVANUS URBAN.

THE

GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE.

DECEMBER 1877.

MISS MISANTHROPE.

BY JUSTIN MCCARTHY.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

66 HE WRUNG BASSANIO'S HAND, AND SO THEY PARTED."

M

R. MONEY and Heron crossed the lighted and noisy enclosure in front of Westminster Hall, amid the rattling hansoms, the flashing lamps of carriages, the rushing and shouting of policemen, the cantering up of grooms with horses for the senators who were to ride home, the eager crowd going in, coming out, and hanging round generally, in the hope of seeing anything. They passed out of the enclosure, and across Parliament Square, and so into the road through the Park. A contrast was ready for them there. The place was all silent, dark, and lonely. Over the broad arid spaces that opened out before them, along by the Horse Guards and up to where the column on Waterloo Place could be seen faintly marking the dark grey sky with its darker grey, there were hardly any living figures but their own. Up to this time they had not spoken a word. Then Money began :

"That's turned out all right, Heron? You are satisfied, of course, with the way things went?"

"Oh, yes; everything turned out better even than I expected. I owe you a great deal for your part in it."

"That's nothing. They acted shabbily at first-the Government, I mean; but they always do; and it's all the better for you that they had to give in so completely. Your speech was capital; a complete success; everybody says so. You are all right, whether you choose to stay in Parliament or whether you don't."

"I don't know what I shall do," Victor said despondingly. He VOL. CCXLI. NO. 1764.

TT