"The Elizabethan spirit," says a _laudator temporis acti_, "is dead among us." We beg to challenge this statement. When the Armada was sighted DRAKE went on with his game of bowls. To-day, in similar circumstances, we are confident that thousands of Englishmen would refuse to leave their game of golf. * * * * * [Illustration: CAPTIVE GOLF. DEFAULTING GOLF-CLUB OFFICIAL TRYING TO IMPART A LITTLE INTEREST TO THE DAILY ROUND.] * * * * * PROFESSIONAL ANACHRONISM. Mrs. Andrew Fitzpatrick, who looped the loop last Friday at Hendon with her son Hector, is certainly one of the youngest-looking women in the world of her age--for she is put down in black and white as forty-four in more than one book of reference. Her miraculous _Lady Macbeth_, which she impersonated at the age of seven, is still a happy memory to many middle-aged playgoers, though the miracle was eclipsed by the nine days' wonder of her elopement and marriage to Mr. Fitzpatrick, the famous Ballarat millionaire, on her thirteenth birthday. Her daughter Gemma, who made her _debut_ in Grand Opera at the Scala in 1895, is already a grandmother; and her son Hector, who fought in the Russo-Turkish war of 1878, is the youngest Field-Marshal in the British Army. M. Atichewsky, the famous Russian pianist, who gives his first recital in the Bluethstein Hall next Wednesday, is no stranger to London audiences, though he is only just twenty years of age. In the year of QUEEN VICTORIA'S Diamond Jubilee he visited England as a _Wunderkind_, being then only thirteen years of age, and created a _furore_ by his precocious virtuosity. About eleven years later, while he was still in his teens, he appeared at the Philharmonic Concerts with his second wife, a soprano singer of remarkable attainments. The present Madame Atichewsky, it should be noted, has a wonderful contralto voice, which is inherited by her second daughter, Ladoga, who recently made her _debut_ at the Theatre de la Monnaie, in Brussels. * * * * * The Poetry of the Ring. For two pugilists, shaking hands before the knock-out fight begins:-- "Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech Each on each." _BROWNING, "Love among the Ruins."_ * * * * * "It is interesting to learn that the swans on the lower lake have built a nest and that one of the pairs on the upper lake have followed suit, so that there is some possibility of signets on the lakes presently." _Beckenham Journal._ We shall be glad to see these freshwater seals. * * * * * THE UNION OF IRISH HEARTS. (_How the prospect strikes an Englishman._) ["In ancient times ... the Devlins were the hereditary horseboys of the O'Neills. (Loud laughter.)"--_From the "Times'" report of Mr. TIMOTHY HEALY'S speech in the House._]