However, it is, perhaps, scarcely fair of laymen to dwell too sternly on the joy which so many legislators seem to feel in hearing their own voices. Man is a talking animal, and can 'hold forth' outside the Houses of Parliament as well as in. And though in the term 'man' we may include woman, let us give no countenance to the old calumny, that the fairer and weaker is also the more talkative sex. There are some old lines to the effect that Nature wisely forbade a beard to grow on woman's chin, 'For how could she be shaved, whate'er the skill, Whose tongue would never let her chin be still?' There is also a certain epitaph on an old maid, 'Who from her cradle talk'd till death, And ne'er before was out of breath,' and of whom it was opined that in heaven she'd be unblest, because she loathed a place of rest. But these flouts and sneers are as cheap as they are venerable. Let the ladies take heart. Men have been censured for their 'much speaking' at least as frequently as women. Prior declared of one Lysander that he ought to possess the art of talk, if he did not, for he practised 'full fourteen hours in four-and-twenty.' And we owe to a more recent writer this paraphrase of an epigram by Macentinus: 'Black locks hath Gabriel, beard that's white-- The reason, sir, is plain: Gabriel works hard from morn till night, More with his jaw than brain.' It is well that satire should go that way for a change. All the talking is not done by women or by Parliament. There is, at times, as much chatter in the smoking-room as in the boudoir and the Senate. Tongues, as well as beards, 'wag all,' when we are 'merry in hall.' PEERS AND POETRY. The succession of the Hon. J. Leicester Warren to the barony of De Tabley was something more than a change in the _personnel_ of the House of Lords; it amounted to a conspicuous addition to the Chamber's intellectual power, and especially to the number of its poetic votaries. The author of 'Philoctetes' and 'Orestes,' of 'Rehearsals' and 'Searching the Net,' is no mere versifier. He has felt the influence of the old Greek dramatists, and apparently also that of Mr. Swinburne; but, for all that, his work has undoubted individuality, as well as solid interest.