The sale by auction last week of what the retiring newspaper paragraph chronicling the melancholy fact described as the "materials of the unfinished Grand National Opera House on the Thames Embankment," cannot but afford food even to the least artistic mind for some rather disagreeable reflections. That after a six years' struggle, involving the sinking of something like £100,000 in hard cash, the speculative element, that ought to have been equal to the emergency in the first capital in the world, should have been contented to look on and smile, while, to quote once more the paragraph in question, "157 lots, the principal portion of which consisted of the iron girders and columns used in the formation of the pit and box circles, originally costing, it is said, £40,000," were knocked down for "the small sum of £218" is something not very far removed from a national disgrace. The building was finally demolished in 1888. Another scheme which also ended disastrously, though the building survives, was D'Oyly Carte's venture into the domain of serious opera. The new English Opera House in Shaftesbury Avenue opened in 1891 with Sullivan's _Ivanhoe_, but the analogy of the Gilbert and Sullivan light operas was deceptive: the expectation of a long run was doomed to failure, and the English Opera House was shortly afterwards converted into the Palace Music Hall. _Punch's_ patriotic _amour propre_ was wounded by the fact that where _Ivanhoe_ had failed, the _Basoche_, its successor, and an essentially French opera, had caught on. Why, he asks, call it the English Opera House? Why not the "Cosmopolitan" or the "Royal Babel Opera House"? But these are questions which do not fall within the scope of our immediate inquiry. It is enough to record the fact that an abortive attempt to establish English opera on a permanent basis succeeded in enriching the variety stage with a new temple, while the site of Mapleson's projected Grand National Opera House is now occupied by New Scotland Yard, generally admitted to be the most successful outcome of the genius of Norman Shaw. In earlier days _Punch_ had constituted himself an unofficial Inspector of Nuisances for the Metropolis, and he never fulfilled these self-imposed duties with greater zeal and even fury than in the long campaign which he waged throughout the 'eighties against the then Duke of Bedford. London was a "City of Dreadful Dirt" and Covent Garden Market and the small streets around it, in _Punch's_ view, held the palm for filthiness. He had given the Dukes a rest for a good many years, but the scandal of "Mud-Salad Market" revived in him a truculence worthy of Douglas Jerrold:-- [Illustration: A HOLIDAY TASK Scene--Mud-Salad Market DUKE OF MUDFORD: "Sweet pretty place, ain't it?" MR. P. (_Inspector of Nuisances_): "No, my Lord Duke, it isn't pretty, and it isn't sweet! Here, take this broom, and make a clean sweep of it!"] [Sidenote: _Mud-Salad Market_]