_Advertisement Agent._--There is, we fear, no opening for you in this direction. "Silonio" is not the name of a new shaving soap, as you surmise. It is the title of honour given by the delegates of a remote but respectable African race to a great and good British statesman. Its literal translation into the English tongue is, we are informed, "Open-mouthed." _A Subscriber for Seventy Years._--Your poem, commencing, DIGGLE DIGGLE den, How is Brother BENN? Really, Mr. RILEY, Ain't you rather wily? is perhaps a little monotonous in its interrogative form. But it is not without merit, especially from one of your advanced age. A fatal objection is that it should be out of date. The School-Board Elections, we are glad to say, were completed a fortnight ago. Try again--for some other paper. * * * * * THE NEW NECTAR. [Professor HUXLEY, at the anniversary meeting of the Royal Society, suggested that in the future imaginative speaking at their dinners might be stimulated by the drinking of liquid oxygen, _bien frappé_.] AIR--"_Take hence the Bowl!_" Take hence the bowl; though beaming Brightly as bowl e'er shone, With Fizz sublimely creaming, Or Port or Zoedone. There is a new potation To warm the hearts of men, And wake imagination-- In Liquid Oxygen! Each cup I drain, _bien frappé_, My tongue pat talk can teach; It helps to make me happy In after-dinner speech. At banquet, or at gala, I match such mighty men As GLADSTONE, CARR, or SALA, On Liquid Oxygen! A fig for Mumm or Massio, Falernian and such fudge; (Thin stuff those tipples classic If I am any judge.) But burning thoughts come o'er me And fire my tongue, or pen, When I've a bowl before me Of Liquid Oxygen! When fun needs stimulation, Or fancy fails in fire; When lags the long oration, Or tongues postprandial tire; Then take the tip Huxleyan, And one long swig,--and then You'll promptly raise a pæan To Liquid Oxygen! * * * * * FIRST IMPRESSIONS. "There is nothing in Italy more beautiful to me than the coast-road between Genoa and Spezia." Remember these words of DICKENS, in his _Pictures from Italy_, as I start from Pisa to see that lovely coast, and the Mediterranean, for the first time.