"I hate you horribly in advance," said Linger, "for giving yourself such infernal airs. Fortunately for us, the British elector will detest you for political coxcombs, as much as we do."

Quaver laughed. "You will see!" said he. "Roebuck is our chief; and did he not tell the non-electors the other day, that they are now electors, in a great measure, through his instrumentality? Our pretensions will be equally lofty."

"We have all a good case," said Sir Peregrine; "but Quaver will spoil his through his insufferable pretensions. We are all disposed to go into it with spirit, and to spend money. But then the prospect of a visit from one of her Majesty's Judges to inquire into corrupt practices! Will that make our men more cautious, and save our pockets?"

"The best whip we have had in the House for years," said Lord Linger, "used to say that no man should come into the House of Commons unless he has a good competency. Young Trevelyan told some people in Scotland, the other day, that one of the reasons why he leaves Tynemouth, is that he was expected to subscribe to concerts and local charities, and that the representation cost him 300l. a year. Is it desirable we should have in the House a class of men to whom that sum is an object? I agree with the Whip, and say, 'No' He knew that they were always coming round him for something or other, and that they listened to reason' whenever he opened his mouth.”

"I don't see what Trevelyan has to complain of," cried Sir Peregrine. "M.P. after a man's name is worth 1000l. a year in the City in ordinary years, and was worth three times that in the year or two before Black Friday. Almost all our needy men and men of doubtful social standing, take to directorships of public companies as naturaily as ducks to water. So if a man pays it in meal, he gets it in malt."

The conversation was here interrupted by the sound of the division bell and the appearance of two rival whips, who abruptly put a stop to the conversation, and made us throw away our cigars. I shall ask Trevelyan to propose a vote in the estimates for "cigars thrown away on hearing the division bell."

EPICURUS EYDEL, M.P.

THEODORE THE KING.

"Annulus ille, Cannarum vindex!"

HAT a bitter little scrap of Latin that is! How Juvenal's lip seems to curl with contempt, and to taste, as it were, the fine sweet flavour of old heathenish revenge as he utters it. "Annulus ille, Cannarum vindex"-"The ring that did avenge the rings of Canna!" The phrase is like the thrust of the dagger into a dying gladiator. A Christian satirist would never have dared to write such words. They come from a thorough-going Pagan, a Pagan heart and mind-from a writer who had heard the "Habet" screamed and shouted in the circus, when the blood smoked out upon the sand, and the Roman thumbs, elevated or depressed, as the mood took the citizens, settled the mortal business. of some Gallic or German slave, or gave him leave to get his gashes healed, to make sport and die another day. And certainly it was strange that Hannibal, who sent to Carthage all those bushels of gold rings from the fingers of the Roman knights slain at Cannæ, should die himself of a ring! Poet, Heathen, and patriot as he was, Juvenal cannot resist chuckling over the irony of fate. It was such a bloody memory for Roman gentlemen, that battle-day at Cannæ ! The perfidious Carthaginian ploughed the dry plain up the day before, so annals told, to make plenty of dust; which the wind blew into the faces of Varro's army; and then he came down upon them with his Africans and Spaniards; crumpled up their Velites, routed their Hastati, cut their stout Triarii to pieces where they stood; till at the end of the fight, the tent of Hannibal was pitched far on the road to Rome, while

-"half the Roman senate lay in blood

And groaned as he caroused."

Forty-seven thousand citizens dead, together with eighty senators! and those twelve bushels of golden rings plucked from the dead men's fingers, to go to Carthage! Had the African listened to Maharbal he might perhaps have won even Rome herself, and filled a trireme with trophies. But fate had her awful eyes upon the one-eyed conqueror,

and by-and-by he dies of a ring. "Annulus ille, Cannarum vindex!” Clearly Juvenal enjoys in contemplation that other scene, when the great Hannibal,-beaten, despairing, betrayed by the unkingly king, Prusias, of Bithynia,-set the hollow signet to his lips and sucked out of it the poison hidden in its pala against such a moment. Did they ever get possession of that fateful trinket at Rome? Did they put it before the public sight in the temple of Fortuna Victrix? Did the Romans go to see it ?—young and old, men and women-and quote Juvenal's line, and talk of the odd ways which the gods have with men, black and white, great and small alike, ancient and modernsetting them up and plucking them down; giving them the cup of glory, or pride, or bliss, to drink; and then when the lips are deepest in the draught, snatching away the chalice?

"Oh faciles dare summa Deos, eademque tueri
Difficiles!"

Ah! mocking gods! who give to take away, and raise high to bring low! Perhaps Juvenal had himself seen the ring side by side with one of those old signets from Cannæ, and a sense of the strange tricks of destiny, with some touch of the passionate "Civis Romanus sum" feeling, made him break out with this savage little half line-" Annulus ille, Cannarum vindex!" "Little ring! that paid for all the golden rings crusted with the best blood of our great houses! Well done, little ring! well jested Fate! well played, Nemesis! Aha! our enemy, gone to the infernal gods! You never thought, when you went a gleaning sardonyx and gold by bushels from Roman digits, that a thumb-ring would be the end of you!"

Ought we, Mr. Sylvanus Urban, to feel like Juvenal, as we gaze down at South Kensington, on this show-case full of victorious trophies, spolia opima of our late enemy, his Majesty King Theodore of Abyssinia? Yet the irony of the exhibition is certainly as intense in its way as Hannibal's poison ring. It is all" annulus ille " over again, if anybody can think it worth while to enjoy the flavour of the old ferocious heathen contempt and vengeance, as he looks upon article after article of this African regalia. These be the leavings of him who laid hands on British subjects. Poor rash royal Libyan gentleman, what a scurvy trick Fortune hath played thee! A polygamous ambition (and too much tej in thy latter days, say thy detractors) have ended in this, that a glass-case in the museum of South Kensington encloseth thy sorry royalties, as six feet of Abyssinian earth encloseth thee. Thou wert surely more royal, nevertheless, than thy royalties, Theodore ! for these be but paltry belongings for a "king of kings,”

however hard-up, and short of a civil list to show as proof of his Divine right. Here is a blue robe hung with what look like extinguishers, and warlike effigies punched rudely out of silver, at which

a Wallachian peasant dressed for a holiday would turn up his nose. And here a grubby "tarboosh," with silver bars, sorely the worse for wear, and lack of plate powder; as also a melodramatic crown of the stage pattern, which was to be the hereditary diadem of a line of "Negus-Negests," but has come hither at the price of twenty dollars by hand of Mr. Holmes: so ill is it to clap chains on the Britons, and so satirical is Fate. But her best joke lies on the other side of the show-case. This blue "kincob" dress with the violent ornamentation-" common kutcha stuff" as any Delhi tissue

merchant would say was meant, it is declared, for a present of tender kind to the Queen of England. Oh, Theodore! Fate was very merry with thee! It is bad enough for a common man to hear his loveletters read in the merciless atmosphere of the Court of Probate and Divorce, when all the gay colours of "love's young dream" are exposed by the horrible spectrum-analysis of a junior counsel; but for a "king of kings" to have his love-gift suspended thus like clothes hung out to dry in a back yard, or ancient garments offering for sale in Petticoat Lane! Was it quite decent of Fate? Is it quite gentlemanly or right of us? Of course

"Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind;"

and his Majesty's conduct in presuming to detain our countrymen, because he could get no answer to his letter, was perhaps enough to make this piece of votive clothing un-sublime. Yet how he would have "fallen to their throats," and especially the reverend throats, if he could have seen that his pledge of royal affection would decline to this. How the tropical lightning in the eye of the "Black Prince" would have flashed out and consumed Messrs. Flad and Blanc and Stern, and all the other valuable persons whom we have now re-purchased for 7,000,000/., had his Majesty foreseen the fate of his blue and gold chemise. And then this big seal, with the Abyssinian lion and the tremendously arrogant inscription! It is only eighteen-pence in a cab to the shop where they cut it to his order, with a view to stamp the edicts of Magdala and seal the mandates of the "king of kings." This seems more startling than even Hannibal's ring: one would think there hung a spell about the agate and a mystery in the metal. It were as if the Punic leader had sent to Rome to have his poison-ring made by the goldsmiths of the Forum. We should like to ask Mr. Strongi'th'arm to tell us more about this sigillary of Fate. Did he have a mysterious commission from one of the Parca-a severe-looking female with a distaff and pair of shears? Did a lady of majestic appearance, in a Greek dress and holding a pair of scales, who gave the name of Nemesis, and the address Hades, call and bid the engraver cut that ramping beast upon the silver,-type of the British lion which was to "break in pieces" the kingdom of the king, and teach him what comes of laying hands on British subjects, and "making eyes" at a British queen? Better for Theodore to have stuck to native manufacture, like this other piece of the engraver's art in the greasy silk bag. Destiny sealed his doom with this very seal as he ordered it, because