+The Two Canons and Bean-baggers.+--The Bean-baggers are likely to come badly off with two such big guns against them as Canons +Liddon+ and +McColl+. Let the matter be settled amicably by agreeing that whatever it was they did see was a "What-you-+McColl+-it." * * * * * HOW TO ESCAPE THE FOG. Fogs? Nonsense! Fogs are always mist. And the way to miss them is to go to the Institute of Painters in Oil. That will oil the wheels of life in this atrociously hibernal weather, and make existence in a fog enjoyable. There, in the well-warmed, pleasantly-lighted rooms, will you find countless pleasant pictures--delightful sea-subjects, charming landscapes, and amusing scenes, by accomplished painters, which will infuse a little Summer into the dull, depressing, brumous, filthy atmosphere of a weary London Winter. If you cannot get away to Monte Carlo, Mentone, Nice, or Rome, hasten at once and take one of Sir +John Linton's+ excursion _coupons_, and personally conduct yourself--if you don't conduct yourself as you ought, you'll probably be turned out--round the well-filled galleries in Piccadilly. * * * * * Sir +Drummond+ is ordered off to Teheran. "Well, we're successful in keeping one +Wolff+ from our door," as Sir +Gorst+, Q.C., observed to +Grandolph+. "Poor +Wolffy+!" sighed +Grandolph+. "I shall write a fable on 'The +Wolff+ and the Shah!'" * * * +Sardou and Sara.+--+Sara B.+ has made a hit in what is reported to be a poor play called _La Tosca_, by +Sardou+. But in consequence of +Sara's+ acting, it is in for a run. _Che Sara sara_, _i.e_. (free translation), "Who has seen +Sara+ once will see +Sara+ again." * * * * * [Illustration: LIGHTING THE DUBLIN BEACON.] * * * * * A DOWN-Y PHILOSOPHER; _Or, Memoirs of a Missing Link_. I've no particular reason to think an account of my life will interest anybody. That being so, I don't know why I write it. But I do. I suppose it's Chance. +H-xl-y+ (who _is_ such fun!) calls my Memoir, because I'm a F.R.S., a case of "_Fellow-De-Se_." [Illustration: Seal making a Deep Impression.] Talking of Chance, everything that has ever happened to me _has_ been Chance! For instance, what could have been more a matter of luck than my choosing a house at Down? +H-xl-y+ says something about being "Down on my luck." (What a master of style old +H-xl-y+ is, to be sure!) Then there was that voyage on the _Sea-Mew_. If it hadn't been that my Uncle kicked me six times round his garden at Shrewsbury, because I said "I'd be jiggered if I went," I don't believe I should ever have had courage to accept the appointment of Naturalist to the expedition. That voyage gave me an object in life. My nose had _made_ me an object in life before that (_vide Portrait_), but Natural Selection triumphed over my nose, and so I became in due time famous, and an Ag-nose-tic!