* * * * * Mrs. R. thinks she will not go abroad for a holiday tour. "You see, my dear," she says, "I don't mind owning that I am not well up in French and German, and I should not like to have always to be travelling about with an Interrupter." * * * * * [Illustration: "THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE." DESIGN FOR A STAINED-GLASS WINDOW FOR WESTMINSTER, BY W. E. G.] ["Would his right hon. friend excuse his suggesting an analogy of the character which he bore with that which was systematically assumed, he believed, under ancient rules, in the Court of Rome ... when it was proposed, in consequence of the peculiar excellence of some happy human being who had departed this life, to raise him ... to the order of the saints ... there was always brought into the Court a gentleman who went ... under the name of devil's advocate. His peculiar function was to go through the career of the proposed saint, to seize upon and magnify every human failing or error, to misconstrue everything that was capable of misconstruction.... That was the case of his right hon. friend."--_Mr. Gladstone on Mr. Chamberlain._] * * * * * [Illustration: A TRIAL OF FAITH. _Bertie (at intervals)._ "I USED TO----WHAT THE----DO A LOT OF----CONF----ROWING, ONE TIME!"] * * * * * "THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE." _Old Parliamentary Pictor soliloquiseth_:-- "_As when a painter, poring on a face, Divinely thro' all hindrance finds the man Behind it, and so paints him that his face, The shape and colour of a mind and life, Lives for his children, ever at its best And fullest._"