IN Giessen, Hesse Darmstadt, two black redstarts have built their nests and hatched their little ones on the collision spring of a thirdclass carriage. We have not, as yet, heard of a similar case on any English rail; but should any birds take a fancy to a like experiment, we take it that the redstart would not be appropriate to our lines. The bird for the English rail is-not the redstart, but the butcher-bird.

PUNCH ON THE PLAYHOUSE.

HERE is a mournful feeling
creeps over Punch in the
early days of October.
Whence is it-what its
cause? Is it the yellowing,
the falling October leaves?
In every leaf,

"Sylph or faery hither tending,

Each invisible and mute
In his wavering parachute."

the threshold of Drury Lane, the plaster effigy of SHAKSPEARE over Drury's portico was collapsed as with sudden belly-ache; and the marble of EDMUND KEAN in Drury's portico perspired a marble perspiration. But we give this merely as rumour.

And GEORGE BOLTON opened with Richelieu. To prove, too, that some of his company could read, one of the actresses generously played from the printed book! But enough of BOLTON.

Oh, Committee-men of Drury Lane, what are you doing? Was there no badger to be baited on the boards (there are spectators for all sights in London), that you should allow SIR EDWARD LYTTON BULWER - (one made to draw, not to be drawn) to be bitten, and

To this lower world descending, gnawed, and worried by tormentors from Plymouth, Nomouth,
Allmouth, Wrymouth, and other towns and wapentakes? And
then KNOWLES-dear, good, right-hearted KNOWLES!-why should
he be tortured? Could it be any salve to the wounds of the poet to
(Somewhat like-and yet know that the actor who played Master Walter took a bold and original
how different!-to visible view of the Hunchback, playing him like a dromedary with two humps
MADAME POITEVIN of the instead of one? Why exhibit the poet's Hunchback-when a real
Cremorne ascent and Fall ?) dwarf was to be had-bossed all over like a potato? Why, too, expose
Is it, then, the contempla- SHAKSPEARE when Spotted Boys are to be had or manufactured? We
tion of the falling leaves- ask you why, because the exhibition in Drury Lane Van must be even
the dropping hairs of the more profitable than the exposure of the mangled bodies of outraged
garden trees-that imparts bards?
a pensiveness to the bosom
Oh, Committee-men-you may reply and say-"Drury Lane is a bad
of Punch? We think not: business; a dead thing; an extinct playhouse mammoth; the skeleton
we have pondered the of a dead whale-only a thousand times bigger-like the cutting of
matter; it is not the whalebone shown once upon a time in Trafalgar Square. What shall
autumn leaves, but the we do with it? Counsel, advise us, oh Punch! Shall we make of
autumnal play-bills. Thea- Drury Lane a brewery?"

tres begin to open; and we No: for what you have done, and are doing, will impart eternal flat-
sympathise with the feelingness to your vats: your theatric thunder will for ever muddle the beer.
"Shall we make of Drury Lane a monster cook-shop?"

of responsibility knocking at the heart of every manager. For great, as he knows, is his trust-solemn and very solemn his duty. For is he not made, or at least appointed by an anxious and most moral and most fastidious LORD CHAMBERLAIN, the teacher of the people in their play-hours ?-the pedagogue to instruct by loftiest sports-the Dominus to drop into the open mouth and open heart of laughter, a sweetening truth-the Teacher, to touch and refine by the "sacred source " of tears, the sympathies and the affections of a docile and affectionate public?

Great is the responsibility-tremendous the charge-and every London manager-(and though we have no certain truths to go upon, no doubt every manager civic and rustic also)-shows, especially at the commencement of the winter season, the sense of the mighty duty it is his happy mission to fulfil. You may know-especially about the fall of the leaf-a London manager by the placid loftiness of his expression. He is raised a little above the world that he may consider it from a moral altitude. The future season is marked in lines of thought gliding up and down his visage; lines indicative of many coming play-bills, and, therefore, all lines of truth. On certain occasions his eye will brighten with the thought of the Christmas pantomime: a very serious matter, and deep, withal; so deep it begins in the brain -on the very top of the pia mater where the soul is said to reside, and when microscopes are brought to perfection where it will, no doubt, be shown at so much a head-it begins, we say, in the brain, and only ends in the very bottom of the pocket. Perhaps, in this multitudinous London, there is not a more contemplative, more self-denying, more public-spirited, and private-thoughted man than a London manager about to open in the month of October. He has for many months to please, instruct, and, by the purest and most refined means, to elevate a British public, and-(we have now, by means of a hop-pole, jumped from October, lighting among roses in July ;)-and, of course, with scarcely an ignominious exception, of course he has done it. Anyway, he has done something.

Hail then, bail October; when the winter playhouses open! When the doors of the national academies turn on their" harmonious hinges to take in an English public. Hail, ye play-bills; ye chronicles of truth! Beautiful is the odour of your ink-whether of violet blue, or rosy red. And for your black, how often is your black white, and your white so very black!

salt from it.
No, for fate will hang about it still: no man will ever be able to get

66

What then, oh Punch, shall we make of Drury Lane ?"

Theatre a large Soap-boiler's; for only by so doing can you now by And Punch answers-oh, Committee-men, make of Drury Lane any chance come out of it with clean hands.

THE LIBERAL "ROPE OF SAND."

OSEPH HUME has administered a fatherly whipping to the nominal Liberals in the House of Commons. If the castigation be deserved; if the boys be as naughty as JOSEPH, with a touch of sorrow, declares them to be: why then must the EARL OF DERBY rub his hands composedly, and even MAJOR BERESFORD take heart, with the hope of taking further salary; heart and pocket being at times synonymous-in fact, one and the same "hollow muscle."

A rope of sand! And is it come to this? Can we believe in the truth of the image? We, with the words of protesting candidates-(the porwiggle members that have since become full M.P. croakers)still beating at our brain, can patriotic men of the hustings

we consider those ardent, voc ferous,
as only so many particles, incapable, from their individual angularity-
like particles of sand-of any cohesion? Is it impossible to bind them
together? Can nothing be made of them? Let us hope it.

Biggest, however, of managers-for at this writing he manages the biggest house is MR. GEORGE BOLTON, ensconced in the halls of Drury Lane, like the lady in the head of the lobster; and, it is said by Granted that all these Liberals can take the form, the semblance of a the malevolent, knowing as much about Drury Lane as the aforesaid rope of sand-and of such seemingly cohering, but really divided gentlewoman knows of her crustaceous dwelling-place. What of that? particles, JOSEPH HUME himself may make a tremendous weapon. Play-house knowledge comes-even to simpletons-naturally as swim- As thus.

ming to a goose. If a man can sit cross-legged as an irreproachable Sand, by intense heat, is vitrified; melted into one cohesive mass. tailor, can he not also sit upon the Drama? Surely, if he can face a Very well, then. What is easier than for JOSEPH with the fire and flame coat, he can face the public! But our BOLTON has had large expe- of his eloquence to turn the rope of sand into a twisted pillar of crystal P rience; as a wandering meteor he has often appeared. Now is he seen Ere now, eloquence has worked such wonders, melting and moulding fitfully sparkling at the Olympic-now he flickers and goes out at the divided bodies into one compact mass. Great-as PAXTON has shown, Strand-again he is lighted and guttering at Marylebone-and the and will further show us-are the capabilities of glass. We have had extinguisher being dropt, and after a while removed, he is, they our Crystal Palace: let us next winter have our Crystal Opposition. say, again lighted and burning in the big candle-shade of Drury The Roman boasted that he found a city brick, and left it marble. Lane. Let it be the pride of HUME to find the Liberals, not bricks, but grains of sand; and to leave them an entire and "perfect chrysolite.'

The thoughtful and imaginative declare that as our BOLTON crossed