_Frog._ "I MEAN TO BE AS BIG AS YOU, ONE DAY, AND SWALLOW YOU UP. BUST IF I DON'T!"] * * * * * A "FISH OUT OF WATER" AT GREENWICH. In a not very wise speech delivered while presiding at the opening of a new series of lectures in connection with the Greenwich Branch of the Society for the Extension of University Teaching, Lord WOLSELEY modestly admitted "that whatever information he had acquired in life had been acquired from the ordinary penny newspaper which he had read day by day." No doubt this rather humiliating fact accounts for the florid style of the proclamations "Our Only General" used to publish in Egypt and elsewhere--proclamations at the time recognised as having the tone of Astley's in the good old days of the _Battle of Waterloo_ and other military melodramas. However, if it pleases Lord WOLSELEY to give materials for a future biography, that is no one's concern but his own. Unfortunately he touched upon another matter, about which he knows evidently very little, if anything at all. His Lordship spoke in very disrespectful terms of what he called the "Shilling Dreadful," which, he declared (in this instance accurately enough), was "prized by many people." Certainly the novelette is more popular than _The Soldier's Pocket-book_, although both _brochures_ are equally works of imagination. So it should be, considering that amongst the authors who have produced it have been WILKIE COLLINS, HUGH CONWAY, F. ANSTEY, ROBERT BUCHANAN, GRANT ALLEN, WALTER BESANT, RHODA BROUGHTON, and others equally well known to fame. He concluded by remarking, "that if men of all politics were to be shaken up in a bag, he believed there would be very little difference between them." Quite true, if the bag were shaken sufficiently long to complete the transformation--but it would be rather a brutal experiment! * * * * * A PAGE FROM A DIARY. (_Purely Imaginary._) _First Week._--Now let me see what I have to do. I will leave out of consideration my extra-parliamentary utterances--they will take care of themselves. Shan't forget _them_. But other matters. Well, I have to turn the works of my dear old friend ALF TENNYSON into Greek--of course, omitting certain highly injudicious lines of a reactionary character. Then I must read through the last edition of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_. No skipping, but go through _every_ article thoroughly and conscientiously. Then, of course, there is Grand Day at Gray's Inn. Must _not_ forget that. Should like, above all things, to be present. Now let me see that I have got the date all right. Yes, I remember. Grand Day, Hilary Term. Falls on a Thursday. I shan't forget.