FOREIGN AND HOME NEWS.--"The Prussian Education Bill," remarked an elderly bachelor to. Mr. PETER FAMILIAS, "is a very important matter; because you see--" "Hang the Prussian Education Bill!" interrupted PETER F., testily. "You should see the English Education Bill I've had for my boy's schooling last half!" * * * * * MR. PUNCH TO THE LIFEBOAT-MEN. [Illustration] [The President of the Board of Trade has, by command of the QUEEN, conveyed, through the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, to the crews of the lifeboats of Atherfield, Brightstone, and Brooke, Her Majesty's warm appreciation of their gallant conduct in saving the crew and passengers of the steamship _Eider_.] Your hand, lad! 'Tis wet with the brine, and the salt spray has sodden your hair, And the face of you glisteneth pale with the stress of the struggle out there; But the savour of salt is as sweet to the sense of a Briton, sometimes, As the fragrance of wet mignonette, or the scent of the bee-haunted limes. Ay, sweeter is manhood, though rough, than the smoothest effeminate charms To the old sea-king strain in our blood in the season of shocks and alarms, When the winds and the waves and the rocks make a chaos of danger and strife; And the need of the moment is pluck, and the guerdon of valour is life. That guerdon you've snatched from the teeth of the thundering tiger-maw'd waves, And the valour that smites is as naught, after all, to the valour that saves. They are safe on the shore, who had sunk in the whirl of the floods but for _you_! And some said you had lost your old grit and devotion! We knew 'twas not true. The soft-hearted shore-going critics of conduct themselves would not dare, The trivial cocksure belittlers of dangers they have not to share, Claim much--oh _so_ much, from rough manhood,--unflinching cool daring in fray, And selflessness utter, from toilers with little of praise, and less pay. Her heroes to get "on the cheap" from the rough rank and file of her sons Has been England's good fortune so long, that the scribblers' swift tongue-babble runs To the old easy tune without thought. "Gallant sea-dogs and life-savers!" Yes! But poor driblets of lyrical praise should not be their sole guerdon, I guess. On the coast, in the mine, at the fire, in the dark city byeways at night, They are ready the waves, or the flames, or the bludgeoning burglar to fight. And are _we_ quite as ready to mark, or to fashion a fitting reward For the coarsely-clad commonplace men who our life and our property guard?