In the “good old times” when railways were not, and the _nec plus ultra_ of speed was, after all, but ten miles an hour, he who would take in hand to construct a tale, a poem, or a drama, was much hampered by certain material conditions of time and place, termed by critics the unities, and the observance of which effectually prevented all glaring vagaries of plot, and many a _deus ex machinâ_ whose unaccountable presence would have saved an infinity of trouble to author as well as reader. But we have changed all this now-a-days. When Puck undertook to girdle the earth in “forty minutes,” it was no doubt esteemed a “sporting offer,” not that Oberon seems to have been man enough to “book it”; but we, who back Electra, should vote such a forty minutes “dead slow”--“no pace at all!” Ours are the screw-propeller and the flying-express--ours the thrilling wire that rings a bell at Paris, even while we touch the handle in London--ours the greatest possible hurry on the least possible provocation--we ride at speed, we drive at speed--eat, drink, sleep, smoke, talk, and deliberate, still at full speed--make fortunes, and spend them--fall in love, and out of it--are married, divorced, robbed, ruined, and enriched, all _ventre à terre_! nay, time seems to be grudged even for the last journey to our long home. ’Twas but the other day we saw a hearse clattering along at an honest twelve miles an hour! Well, forward! is the word--like the French grenadier’s account of the strategy by which his emperor invariably out-manœuvred the enemy. There were but two words of command, said he, ever heard in the grand army--the one was “_En avant! sacr-r-ré ventre-bleu!_” the other, “_Sacr-r-ré ventre-bleu! en avant!_” So forward be it! and we will not apologise for shifting the scene some thousands of miles, and taking a peep at our friend Cousin Charlie, fulfilling his destiny in that heaven-forsaken country called Kaffirland. When it rains in South Africa it rains to some purpose, pelting down even sheets of water, to which a thunderstorm at home is but as the trickling of a gutter to the Falls of Niagara--Nature endues her whole person in that same leaden-coloured garment, and the world assumes a desolate appearance of the most torpid misery. The greasy savage, almost naked, crouching and coiling like a snake wherever covert is to be obtained, bears his ducking philosophically enough; he can but be wet to the skin at the worst, and is dry again almost before the leaves are; but the British soldier, with his clothing and accoutrements, his pouches, haversacks, biscuits, and ammunition--not to mention Brown Bess, his mainstay and dependence--nothing punishes him so much as wet. Tropical heat he bears without a murmur, and a vertical sun but elicits sundry jocose allusions to beer. Canadian cold is met with a jest biting as its own frost, and a hearty laugh that rings through the clear atmosphere with