Hence you will see that though it may strike a superficial observer as odd that I, of all men, should, at such a juncture, absent myself from the field of battle and hide no one knows where, the course is not so unreasonable as it appears. Why should I run the risk of burning my fingers by pulling chestnuts out of the fire, when the foremost men in English politics vie with each other in the effort to do it for me? Amongst the few people with whom I come in contact here I pass for a curate of Evangelical views, who, for private reasons, has quitted his family and congregation, and tries, ineffectually they slily think, to disguise himself by dispensing with clerical garb. I encourage this self-deception, and am left free to sit in the sun when there is any--and there is really an astonishing amount on this Southern coast in November--and when it rains I put up my umbrella. Sometimes I hear on it the patter of distant conflicts in Ireland, and open revolt in London. These echoes of wild disturbance only make the sweeter my retirement. I know that I am foolish to imperil my pastoral peace by inviting a communication from you which may confirm the vague reports I have alluded to. Still, I am a little curious to know is it _really true_ that W-LL-M O'BR-N sleeps on a plank bed; that W-LFR-D BL-NT, wearied of the long repose of Egyptian affairs, has had his head broken by the Royal Irish Constabulary; and that, with a refined cruelty which testifies to the innate fiendishness of the Saxon nature, the presiding Magistrate at Bow Street Police Court has ruthlessly refused to commit for trial that truculent, dangerous personage, Mr. S-ND-RS, whom I remember in the House as formerly Member for Hull? Yours serenely, C. S. P-RN-LL. * * * * * THE WAIL OF THE WIRE. (_With apologies to the Poet._) "It is stated that Mr. SWINBURNE'S new poem was cabled to New York." Had I wist, wailed the wire in sea's hollow, That thousands of lines I should list, Pumped forth by a son of Apollo, I would not have lain here, not I, 'Twixt Briton and Yankee a tie: No messages through me should fly, Had I wist. Had I wist, they would make me swallow, Huge poems all moonshine and mist, In addition to "speeches" all hollow; They shouldn't have cabled a thing, They shouldn't have used me to wing, Leagues of rhymes that the word-spinners sing, Had I wist. * * * * *