TOAST--We beg to propose the health of the liberal-minded purchaser of the Althorp Library, who intends to keep the books in a building open to all readers, adapting the toastmaster's phrase for the occasion, and giving, "Our Noble Shelves!" * * * * * LAYS OF MODERN HOME. NO. 4.--CHLOE'S APPROPRIATION CLAWS. [Illustration] A ye who bless the wedded state With tributes born of generous blindness, Bemourn the fate that well may wait Your gifted kindness. My CHLOE's ultra-modern mind Transforms your Dresden's grace and Chelsea's, The toys for special use designed, To something else's. For CHLOE reads each weekly print, Where Art's resource is blent with Scandal's, Where decorative females hint Their cure for Vandals. Your large, expensive Wedgwood bowls, She bids her "Lor!"-exclaiming waitress To cram with large, expensive coals, The pretty traitress! On daintiest overmantel's ledge She sets enshrined your prosy platter; Your salt-cellars she stocks with veg- etable matter. And when the Summer comes (if hail For once not hails the sunny swallows) Our fenders hold your statues pale Of chipped Apollos. With out-of-fashion toilet sets, Their sprigs of ringstands, bits of boxes, She picturesques her cabinet's Quaint heterodoxies. My blue tobacco-jar she'll hoard For party-nights, and on the basket Whereon my manuscripts are stored Will throne--a casket! "Ingenious" CHLOE, sure, opines Is Genius' proper derivation; "Appropriate" with her defines Appropriation. Poor STREPHON, fond, bewildered wight! He doubts, amazed by changes showy, If CHLOE's own be STREPHON quite, Or STREPHON's, CHLOE! * * * * * BIRDS OF A FEATHER. ["He (Mr. GLADSTONE) has not as yet even secured the spoil, but the Vultures are already gathered together."--_Mr. Chamberlain at Birmingham._]