Chapter XXXV (2)

Following him out, he could just see him galloping down the course, and hear the people cheer as their favourite went by in his crimson jacket, with scarlet sash, green hoops, pink sleeves, and yellow cap. Before he could get to the starting-box the horses were off; but disdaining to join them in the middle of the race, and wishing also to exchange a few compliments with the starter, he rode up to him, and after relieving his mind, dashed after the others. By the time he got to the ‘Corner’ he was only two furlongs behind; at the distance a hundred yards; at the Red House fifty; and as they passed the Stand he was but a length from the leaders. He touched his gallant steed with the spur for a final effort; but instead of leaving the others behind as usual, it staggered, stopped, and went to sleep. _The laudanum had done its work._ Just then his rider heard a great shout, and looking up saw thousands of arms carrying the victorious jockey back to the scales. La Merveille had won the Cambridgeshire.

ORACLE. (_E. E. D. Davis._)

SECOND PRIZE.

‘Four to none against Hartington!’ ‘8 to none against Sarserperiller!’ ‘25 to none against Stylites!’ (pronounced by the ‘welchers’ as a dissyllable, like Skylights). ‘20 to none against Lar Mervilly!’ (La Merveille). ‘2 to none bar none!’ These and a hundred other cries rose high above the roar of the Ring on the bright October afternoon that shone for the nonce over the wide windy fens and sandy loams of Cambridgeshire and Suffolk on the day of the last great scrambling handicap of the year.

Maunderers muttering to their moustaches, layers, takers, ‘ossy’ cards, tiptop swells, who had ‘put the pot on’ to any extent, ladies of rank and ladies of pleasure (the latter in sealskin and velvet, and gracefully puffing the daintiest of _papilitos_)――all, with an instinct of stupidity, came down eager for a ‘go in’ on the scratching Cambridgeshire.

The bell was throbbing and sobbing spasmodically; and, as that cynosure of all eyes, Hartington, whose magnificently-desiccated veins bulged out black as the bloody cords of an injected ‘subject,’ strode grandly forth, a roar, deep as the voice of forests or the moan of the sea, went suddenly up――‘the crack!’

La Merveille, the blue filly, whose neck had the Arch of Marble, was a thick, short, long-barrelled horse, with superb Watteau eyes, and an I’ll-take-the-conceit-out-of-a good-many-of-you-if-I-choose-looking head. She belonged to the Lord of the Durdans, Earl Elderberry, whose colours were Hebrew lily inclining to Primrose.

See! Twice ten thousand starters are hoisted in admirable time; the competitors muster at the post, and the _coup d’œil_, as they glimmer and shimmer there in the sunlight, is as that of an early Turner sunset gone ineffably mad.

Three breaks; the flag falls; a glorious start, and away they go like no end of a line of eager harlequins before their creditors. ‘Off!’ and Out of Pounds, after taking up the running, ‘compounded;’ Adamite fell; Sunburn cooled down; Caxtonian ‘pressed’ onward; Fitz-Pluto ‘warmed’ to his work. ‘_Now_!’ Blood lashes to fury. The Ring roars――‘It’s a skinner!’ And Breadloser, Lord Strive, Hartington, and Lar Mervilly dash like fiends through the cold, fresh, wild winter wind, blowing as it might have done in Stuart times, when Mistress Nell Gwynn, the fat King’s ‘fancy,’ was here to inhale it.

Hark! ‘The foremost wins!’ ‘Rob Boy’s a “teaser”!’ ‘Mervilly’s lost!’ ‘Flash Man’s a brilliant failure!’

Lost? A palpitating lie!

’Send me a cropper!’ exclaimed Constable, a ‘clipping’ jock who had landed many a mount. ‘Send me a cropper, if you like, but “plant” me a winner!’

The blue filly answered with lightning spontaneity. Game to the last, Constable, a great Pickwick in his mouth, coaxed a final effort out of her. The delirium of pace was upon him. ‘Go in a perisher!’

On came the trio――on, until one last convulsive impulse of the outstretched limbs, and――hark! The cry has changed. ‘Mervilly wins!’

A thousand jewelled hands hold forth bouquets of hissing _eau de Cologne_. And Constable, true to the canons of his Order, ‘runs her in.’

A cry as of the disappointed, the desperate, or the d――d, went out over the ghastly fens; seemed to reel from many a gallant ‘plunger’ in anticipation of an approaching ‘weigh-in.’ Next to first was Second; Better Last than Never, whose dominant instinct it was to lose, third.

There was much wisdom after the event. Two minutes eight seconds! A man on a bicycle might have done it in less time!

CYRIL. (_James Silvester._)

_The World_ November 12, 1879.

――――

A parody of Ouida’s _Ariadne_ was published in _The Weekly Dispatch_ parody competition, September 13, 1885, but owing to the enforced brevity of the compositions, this one consisted of little more than a catalogue of names and facts, without any fun, or humour.

Of course Mr. F. C. Burnand wrote a parody on “Ouida,” it appeared in _Punch_ in 1878, and was entitled “_Strapmore!_ A Romance by _Weeder_, author of Folly and Farini, Under Two Rags, Arryadn’ty, Chuck, Two Little Wooden Jews, Nicotine, A Horse with Glanders, In Somers Town, Shamdross, &c., &c.” This wild weird story of blood and crime was republished in book form by Bradbury, Agnew & Co.

_Judy_ also published a parody, entitled “_Bluebottles_. A Novel of Queer Society” Idylised à la Ouida. This was commenced July 7, 1880.

――――:o:――――

The following very happy burlesque of the nautical tales in the style of Captain Marryat and Captain Chamier, was written in 1842 by the late Professor W. E. Aytoun, who, in conjunction with Sir Theodore Martin, wrote the _Bon Gaultier Ballads_.

THE FLYING DUTCHMAN.
_A Tale of the Sea._

We were in the midst of the storm-tossed Atlantic. A heavy simoom, blowing N.E. by S., brought in the huge tropical billows mast-high from the Gulf of Labrador, and awoke old ocean, roaring in its fury, from its unfathomable depths. No moon was visible among the hurricane rack of the sky――even the pole-star, sole magnet of the mariner’s path, was buried in the murky obscurity of the tempest; nor was it possible to see which way the ship was steering, except by the long track of livid flames which followed in the wake of the bow, or when, at times, some huge leviathan leapt up from the water beside us, and descending with the vehemence of a rock hurled from heaven, drove up a shower of aquatic splinters, like a burst of liquid lava from the sea. All the sails which usually decorated the majestic masts of H.M.S. Syncope (a real seventy-nine of the old Trafalgar build, teak-built and copper fastened) were reefed tightly up, with the exception of the mainsail, the spritsail, the mizzen-boom sail, and a few others of minor consequence. Everything was cleared away――halyards, hencoop, and binnacle had been taken down below, to prevent accidents; and the whole of the crew, along with the marines and boarders, piped to their hammocks. No one remained upon deck except the steersman, as usual lashed to the helm; Josh Junk, the first bos’un; and the author of this narrative, who was then a midshipman on board the vessel, commanded by his uncle, Commodore Sir Peregrine Pendant.

“Skewer my timbers!” exclaimed Mr. Junk, staggering from one side of the deck to the other as an enormous wave struck us on the leeside, and very nearly unshipped the capstan――“Skewer my timbers, if this a’n’t enough to put an admiral’s pipe out! Why, Master Tom, d’ye see, it’s growing altogether more and more darkerer; and if it a’n’t clearer by twelve bells, we’ll be obligated to drop anchor, which a’n’t by no means so pleasant, with a heavy swell like this, running at nineteen knots an hour in the middle of the wide Atlantic. How’s her head, boy?”

“North by south it is, sir,” replied the steersman.

“Keep her seven points more to the west, you lubber! Always get an offing when there’s a wet sheet and a flowing sea. That’s right, Jem! Hold her hard abaft, and she’ll go slick before the wind, like a hot knife through a pound of butter. Halloo, Master Tom, are you holding on by the seat-railings already――you a’n’t sick, are you? Shall I tell the steward to fetch a basin?”

“No, no, Josh,” I replied, “’tis nothing――merely a temporary qualm. But tell me――do you really apprehend any danger? If so, would it not be prudent to call up the commodore, and hang out the dead-lights?”

“Why, Master Tom,” replied the bos’un, turning his quid, “them ere’s kevestions as I can’t answer. ’Cos, first――there’s no knowing what danger is till it comes; secondly, it’s as much as my place is worth to disturb old Fire-and-Faggots――axing your pardon for the liberty――afore he’s finished his grog with the mates below; and, thirdly, it’s no use hanging out the dead-lights, ’cos we’re entirely out of oil.”

“Gracious heavens!” cried I, “and suppose any other ship should be in the same latitude?”

“Then,” said the bos’un with all imaginable coolness, “I reckon it would be a case of bump. Oak varsus teak, as the law-wers say, and Davy Jones take the weakest.――But hitch my trousers! what’s that?”

As the non-commissioned officer spoke, a bright flash was seen to the seaward immediately ahead of our vessel. It was too bright, too intense to proceed from any meteoric phenomena, such as sometimes are witnessed in those tropical climate, and the sullen report which immediately followed, indicated too clearly that it proceeded from some vessel in the vicinity.

“A first-rater, by jingo!” said Mr. Junk, “and in distress. Hold my telescope, Master Tom, till I go below and turn out the watch,”――――but that instant his course was arrested.

Scarce a second had elapsed after the sound of the discharge reverberated through our rigging, when, only a hawser’s distance from our bowsprit, a phosphoric light seemed to rise from the bosom of the shadowy deep. It hung upon the hull, the binnacle, the masts, the yards of a prodigious ship, pierced apparently for three tier of guns, which, with every sail set, bore down direct upon us. One moment more and collision was inevitable; but Junk, with prodigious presence of mind, sprang to the helm, snatched the wheel from the hands of the petrified steersman, and luffed with almost supernatural force. Like a well-trained courser who obeys the rein, our noble ship instantly yielded to the impulse, and bore up a-lee, whilst the stranger came hissing up, and shot past us so close that I could distinctly mark each lineament of the pale countenances of the crew as they stood clustered upon the rigging, and even read――so powerful was that strange, mysterious light――the words painted within her sides,――“THOSE WHO GO ABAFT THE BINNACLE PAY CABIN FARE!” On, on she drove――a lambent coruscation, cleaving the black billows of the Atlantic main, about to vanish amidst the deep darkness of the night.

“That was a near shave, anyhow,” said Mr. Junk, relinquishing the wheel, “but we must know something more of that saucy clipper,” and catching up a speaking trumpet, he hailed,――

“Ship ahoy!”

“Ship yourself!” was the response.

“What’s your name?”

“What’s yours!”

“Syncope――Britannic Majesty’s seventy-nine――for Trinidad.”

“Yung Fraw――merchant ship, for Rotterdam.”

“What cargo?”

“Soap!” was the reply. “How are YOU off for it? Ha! ha! ha!”

A peal of diabolic laughter rolled across the deep, mingled with the rushing of the waves and the whistling of the winds. Another flash――another report――and the meteor light sunk as noiselessly as it had arisen into the bosom of the watery surge. At that moment the moon burst out from behind a cloud, clear and queenlike, illuminating the ocean for miles. We rushed to the stern and looked back. In vain! no vestige of a ship was there――we were alone upon the warring waters!

“By the Lord Harry!” said the bos’un, dropping the trumpet――“as sure as my name’s Josh Junk, that ’ere was the FLYING DUTCHMAN!” - - - - -

That night we were SWAMPED AT SEA!

――――:o:――――

OUR NEW ACTORS.

Three imitations of Charles Lamb’s essay on “_Some of our Old Actors_” were published in a Parody Competition in _The World_, October, 15, 1879. The first prize was awarded to the following:――

Taking up a to-days _Standard_――I know not by what freak of fancy I came to purchase one――I glanced at a few of the theatrical advertisements, which occupy no inconsiderable space in its columns. One of these presented the cast of parts in the _Iron Chest_ at the Lyceum Theatre――Sir Edward Mortimer, by Henry Irving. What an ambitious sound it has! How clearly it brings before me the comely sad face――thoughtful and therefore sad――and the almost painfully-intense manner of the modern actor!

Of all the ‘Sir Edwards’ who have flourished in my time――a dismal phrase if taken aright, reader――that mad genius, the great little man with the fine Italian face and flashing eyes, Edmund Kean, is the most unforgetable. That of Irving comes next. He, since Kean, most fully realises the author’s idea of the style of man best suited to fill the part――‘a man of sable hue, and one in whose soul there’s something o’er which his melancholy sits and broods.’ But the secret of Irving’s success lies in his fine annihilation of self――a rare quality among players――combined with an originality which triumphs over tradition. There is a marked naturalness about his acting of this character, bottomed on enthusiasm. Like genius, he seems at times to have the power of kindling his own fire into any degree of intensity.

Kean, of whom Mrs. Siddons said, ‘There is too little of him to do anything;’ but of whom his landlady said, ‘There is something about Mr. Kean, ma’am, that tells me he will be a great man;’ Kean, whose exclamation, ‘My God, if I should succeed now, I think it will drive me mad!’ was prophetic, and who, _when_ successful, cried, ‘D―― Lord Essex, Mary; the pit rose at me!’――Kean tore the passion of the play to tatters.

Irving’s recenter style does not go to work so grossly. Seemingly convinced of the facts that whatever is done for effect will be seen to be done for effect, and that Nature for ever puts a premium on reality, he interests, as all may, by being persistently and intensely human. There is a consonancy, so to speak, which the green probationer in tragedy spoils by failing to exercise that repression which is an index of power.

In Hamlet, Mathias, in the remorseful rant of Eugene Aram, and the rest, Irving has proved himself histrionic to a degree that will always command intelligent recognition.

All have seen Sothern! What a Dundreary the world has in him! What witty conceits that pleasant creature has to trifle an hour or two away!――he whose ineffable fooling, if done by another, would partake of the essentially ludicrous. Then there is my beloved Toole, whose quirks never left a sting, who drolls inimitably, and whose quality is so irresistible that like a sunbeam, he exists but to cheer――a touching function, reader. My beloved Toole is, in his walk, in no way inferior.

Shakespeare foresaw the existence of Miss Ellen Terry when he created Portia, as Sir Walter might that of Miss Neilson when he spake in _Kenilworth_.

There are who say that Barry Sullivan is the leading legitimate actor of the British stage――a big distinction, which few will, perhaps, be disposed to deny him. But the difference between Sullivan and Irving is, I take it, this: Sullivan has the _toga virilis_, and the old and obvious canons of his art; Irving is an actor less by tradition than instinct. Sullivan’s rich baritone, with its harmonious and not-without-skill-delivered periods, stirs the whole house like the sound of a trumpet: Irving’s shriller pipe is fuller of Nature’s own rhetoric for a finer few. Sullivan may fill the theatre; Irving may find an empty seat or two in the gallery.

CYRIL. (_James Silvester._)

LORD MACAULAY.

_The Quarterly Review_, for April 1868, contained a review of Lady Trevelyan’s edition of the works of Lord Macaulay, in which the following passage was quoted as a specimen of his style:――

“The misgovernment of Charles and James, gross as it had
been, had not prevented the common business of life from
going steadily and prosperously on. While the honour and
independence of the State were sold to a foreign Power,
while chartered rights were invaded, while fundamental laws
were violated, hundreds of thousands of quiet, honest, and
industrious families laboured and traded, ate their meals
and lay down to rest, in comfort and security. Whether Whig
or Tories, Protestants or Jesuits were uppermost, the
grazier drove his beasts to market; the grocer weighed out
his currants; the draper measured out his broadcloth; the
hum of buyers and sellers was as loud as ever in the towns;
the harvest-home was celebrated as joyously as ever in the
hamlets; the cream overflowed the pails of Cheshire; the
apple juice foamed in the presses of Herefordshire; the
piles of crockery glowed in the furnaces of the Trent; and
the barrows of coal rolled fast along the timber railways of
the Tyne.”――(Vol. iv. p. 189.)

There is no reason why this rhetorical diarrhœa should ever stop so long as there was a trade, calling, or occupation to be particularised: the pith of the proposition (which required no proof) being contained in the first sentence. Why not continue thus:――

“The apothecary vended his drugs as usual; the poulterer
crammed his turkeys; the fishmonger skinned his eels: the
wine-merchant adulterated his port; as many hot-cross buns
as ever were eaten on Good Friday, as many pancakes on
Shrove Tuesday, as many Christmas-pies on Christmas-day; on
area steps the domestic drudge took in her daily pennyworth
of the chalky mixture which Londoners call milk; through
area bars the feline tribe, vigilant as ever, watched the
arrival of the cats’-meat man; the painted courtesan
flaunted in the Haymarket; the cabs rattled through the
Strand; and from the suburban regions of Fulham and Putney
the cart of the market-gardener wended its slow and midnight
way along Piccadilly to deposit its load of cabbages and
turnips in Covent Garden.”

――――:o:――――

A PAGE BY MACAULAY.
(_From the History of the Beadleship of Brown._)

When Brown grasped the staff of office, he was in need of the staff of life. Raised at once from want to wealth, from obscurity to renown, from the practice of submission to the habit of command, he did his work sternly; but not too sternly to do it well. The unexpectedly chosen Beadle became a correspondingly energetic Beadle. The new broom swept clean. A week had not passed ere abuses were remedied――the indolence of one portion of the parish officers pricked into action――the disaffection of another crushed into obedience. A benevolent despotism is the best form of government――Brown was despotic, benevolent, and a Beadle.

Let us review the state of affairs as they existed when he first assumed the cocked hat of office as Beadle of St. Tomkins. Apple-women usurped the pavement. Piemen obstructed the roadway. Professed beggars demanded alms at every door――impostors exhibited artificial sores at every corner. What the parish of St. Giles is to the parish of St. James, the parish of St. Tomkins was to the parish of St. Giles. Nuisances of another nature throve also and waxed great from day to day. The pew opener grumbled; the turncock muttered to himself; the churchwardens squabbled, and the rate-payers complained. There was murmured disaffection in the vestry――open revolt amongst the charity boys. It was a time of mutual recrimination――of mutual dissatisfaction. Jones abused Smith, Smith retorted upon Jones. Robinson hated Thomson, Thomson repaid the compliment with interest to Robinson. There was an unruly license of tongue, a general saturnalia of speech. Whispered scandals grew into outspoken charges, and the malicious reports hatched from the tea and muffins of old maidish parties were repeated with envenomed aggravations over the port and sherry of parish dinners. Then it was that short weights were publicly attributed to Smith, and a false steelyard confidently asserted to belong to Jones. Johnson, heated with gin, said that Jackson beat his wife――Jackson, inflamed with rum, said that Mrs. Johnson beat her husband. Charges, counter-charges, insinuations, inuendos, ran riot. No man looked with complacency on his neighbour; no husband looked with confidence upon his wife; no wife looked with respect upon her husband. As yet the band of Reformers who were shortly to arise was unheard of. Thomas Styles was but sixteen; John Nookes but thirteen-and-a-half. The pen of the great Smythe Smithers was yet employed upon half text. No word indicating his future destiny had fallen from Tomkin’s lips――Gubbins had not yet been born――Snooks was in long clothes――and Trother yet unemancipated from parish leathers.

On Brown then it alone devolved to grapple with the task. He was the dauntless pioneer of a dauntless army, a champion destined to show the world that the glitter of a Beadle’s staff may outshine the splendours of a Marichall’s baton, if it did not dim the magnificence of a Monarch’s sceptre.

From _The Man in the Moon_, edited by Angus B. Reach. February, 1849.

――――:o:――――

A BIT OF _WHIG_ HIS-_TORY_.
(_From what we “Macaulay” History of our own._)

The King had been thrown from his horse at Hampton Court, and was dead. Great were the rejoicings in Paris and Rome on receipt of the tidings, and the hopes of the Jacobite party rose; however, the accession of the second daughter of the last Stuart monarch to the throne as Anna Regina once more clouded their prospects. Her Court, adorned by Marlborough (who did not sell his pictures), Bolingbroke and Swift, would have been as nothing without the genius of one whose name does not figure in the accepted histories of that reign, but whose influence at Court not even the imperious Sarah Jennings, nor her rival, Lady Masham, nor any of the Whigs or Tories of that distracted period, could afford to ignore. A peaceful citizen, whose Hair Preparations gave that graceful brilliancy and tone to the brown hair of the Sovereign, and whose marvellously manufactured Wigs adorned the heads of the noblest in the land, was not one to be lightly passed by, and thus it was Professor Browne was the ruling spirit at the Court of Queen Anne. No Wigs could equal his in form, graceful folds, and luxuriant masses of hair; they covered the heads of the wisest and best in the land, so that it was no wonder the Professor, who had long studied the heads of the people, was universally consulted on all matters of such vital importance. Unfortunately, however, Prince Eugene of Savoy, who at this time came over on a secret mission from the Emperor to the Queen, foolishly declined to pay a visit to Fenchurch Street, and procured from some opposition hairdresser a short campaigning Wig in which to appear at Court. The same evening, the Prince, smoking his cigar at his hotel, happened to be trying on this new head gear when the Hanoverian Minister, Baron Hoffman, called, and seeing that neither in style, make, nor effect was it equal to BROWNE’S, endeavoured to induce the Prince, but in vain, to discard it and patronize F. B. Bye and bye Bolingbroke, who had a secret partiality for the Jacobites, and mistrusted the Prince’s mission, arrived, and affected such admiration for the periwig that the Prince actually did wear it the next day in the throne-room, to the horror of the Lord Chamberlain and Gentlemen Ushers, while the crafty Bolingbroke took care himself to appear in one of BROWNE’S most artistic and luxuriant head-coverings that could possibly be procured; the result being a perfect triumph for the Professor. The Queen expressed high disapproval of the Prince’s Wig, whose mission thereby failed, and once again the hopes of the Jacobites fluttered. At length the wily Bolingbroke was dismissed from Office, and Her Majesty, who had secured the succession to the Crown of the son of her cousin Sophia, ordered that Professor BROWNE, should henceforth be appointed Wig Maker in ordinary to the British Public.

From _Professor Browne’s Almanack_, 1885.

――――:o:――――

THE NEXT ARMADA.

_A Brief Chapter from the History of Macaulay Junior._

* * * * *

In the City the agitation was fearful. None could doubt that the decisive crisis was approaching. It was known, from the second edition of the _Times_, that the joint Armada, carrying everything before it, was continuing its victorious progress up the Channel. Plymouth had fallen without firing a shot. Portsmouth had speedily followed suit. The former had found itself, at the eleventh hour, unprovided with a single gun. The latter, at the crucial moment, discovered that it was still waiting the arrival of its ammunition. When these facts, mysteriously whispered at first with bated breath, became, later in the day, authenticated by the appearance of succeeding editions of the morning papers, the public excitement knew no bounds. A hideous panic seized the Stock Exchange. “Goschens” went down to sixty at a single leap. Five well-known Stockbrokers went off their heads, and were removed in cabs by the police in violent hysterics. The Lord Mayor appeared on the steps of the Mansion House, and endeavoured to quell the riot. He was at once recognised by the mob, and pelted with Pass-Books.

But things assumed a most threatening aspect at the Admiralty. A vast multitude had assembled at Whitehall, and rendered Parliament Street impassable. There was an angry howl at the “Board.” The Police took the precautionary measure of closing the gates. The First Lord appeared inside the enclosure, and his presence was the signal for an ominous roar. He was deathly pale and trembling, but he managed to scramble up the balustrade, and gazed feebly down on the raving thousands below. He was understood to say that when next Parliament met it would be asked to appoint another Committee to inquire into the naval administration of the country. His speech was cut short by execrations, and he hastily withdrew. Ten minutes later it was understood that he had escaped by the back way over the palings into the Park, and was hiding himself from the fury of the mob in an unfrequented slum in Pimlico.

But while these events were transpiring in the Metropolis of the Empire, still graver issues were being arrived at on that “silver streak,” which, up to now, had popularly, but erroneously, been regarded as its sure defence. What had been left of the British Channel Fleet after its first disastrous encounter with the joint Armada off the Lizard had rallied, and was now awaiting the attack of the again on-pressing and advancing enemy, in what promised to be a decisive encounter for the possession of the Mouth of the Thames, in the immediate neighbourhood of Herne Bay. The Admiral, in his hasty retreat, had collected about the shattered remnant of his forces some auxiliary adjuncts. He had been joined by Her Majesty’s ironclads, _Styx_ and _Megatherium_, and by the belted cruiser, _Daffodil_; but owing to the fact that these vessels, not possessing any guns, had had to put to sea without their armaments, the recent arrivals could scarcely be counted on by him as an addition to his fighting power in any pending action. Nor was he sure of his own ship. Her Majesty’s ironclad _Blunderer_, which carried his flag, was armed with four of the famous 43-ton Collingwood exploding guns, and though hard pressed in the recent engagement, he had not thought it wise to give the order to “fire.”

Such was the position of the British Admiral at the commencement of that fatal afternoon which saw the last blow struck for the preservation of the Empire. The fight commenced by a general attack of the enemy. But it did not last long. In a very few minutes seven of the British ironclads, including that of the Admiral, were blown up by the explosion of their own guns. The rest found that they were supplied with the wrong-sized ammunition, and were rapidly put _hors de combat_. Within a quarter of an hour of the firing of the first shot the action was over, and the last remnant of the British Fleet had practically disappeared. That evening the advance despatch boats of the joint Armada anchored off Gravesend, and 120,000 men were landed on the Kentish coast between Margate and Whitstable.

When the news of the disaster appeared in the evening papers, the panic, which had been gathering strength as the day progressed, culminated in fever-heat. Everybody was in the streets asking, with staring eyeballs, for the latest news.

Gradually it became known that 75,000 of the enemy were advancing on the capital by way of Aldershot, and that the General in command at the camp, who had 1,371 men of all arms under him, all told, had received orders to oppose them, and this announcement seemed to restore in some measure the public confidence.

Meanwhile a quite phenomenal activity prevailed at the War Office, and the horses of the General Omnibus Company were at once requisitioned for the service of the Royal Artillery. The Duke of Cambridge, on hearing of the catastrophe, had applied to the Authorities instantly for the 11,000 men he had recently insisted on. With that force, he said, even at the eleventh hour, he would guarantee the safety of the country. Mr. Whitely forthwith undertook to furnish them within twenty-four hours. His offer was accepted with enthusiasm. It was known too that Lord Wolseley had already started with a miscellaneous force of Volunteers, Guards, and Policemen, hurriedly collected, for Sydenham, with the intention of taking up a defensive position among the antideluvian animals, and there waiting the course of events.

The Authorities were fairly on their mettle. They instantly supplied three Volunteer regiments with rifles of an obsolete and antiquated pattern. Nor was this all. They telegraphed to Woolwich to expedite the selection of a model for the new magazine rifle, and marked their communication “urgent.” Matters, meanwhile, at headquarters were not less vigorously pushed forward. Inquiries were made for Mr. Stanhope’s plan of “defending the Thames.” Every pigeon-hole was examined, but it could not be found. Still, the Department did not despair. They despatched a third-class War Office clerk to Greenwich to report on the situation and say what he thought of it.

When, however, it transpired the next morning that, spite all the efforts to stay their advance, 50,000 of the enemy had taken possession of the Bank of England, seized the Lord Mayor and Aldermen as hostages, and were prepared to treat with the Government, with a view to evacuation, on the cession of Margate, Canada, India, Gibraltar, Malta, Australia, and Madame Tussaud’s Wax-work Collection, together with a preliminary payment of fifteen milliards. Englishmen began soberly to recognise that what they had so long regarded as an impossible vision had really come about, and that the “Next Armada” was an unhappily accomplished fact.

_Punch._ May 19, 1888.

――――:o:――――

THE AGE OF LAWN-TENNIS.
(_After Macaulay’s “History of England”_) 1880-81.