what seemed to me to be, _a hamper_! The above example of what is being done twice a week in Newcastle Street, Strand, will show how well worthy of the scholar's notice is the present revival of _Hamlet_ at the Globe Theatre. As actors, Mr. BENSON'S company are not entirely satisfactory. As thinkers, however, they are worthy of the greatest possible respect. Under these circumstances, it is to be hoped, that should they ultimately, for sufficient reason, decide to give up acting, they will yet resolve to continue what they do so well, and, in three words--go on thinking. (_Signed_) BENE VESTITUS. * * * * * COVENT GARDENING PROSPECTS.--The prospectus of the Italian Opera Season lies on _Mr. Punch's_ table; but though this is its attitude, there is no reason to doubt the truthfulness of its statements. More anon. _En attendant_, we may say that the stage-management, in the hands of AUGUSTUS DRURIOLANUS, is a guarantee for the excellence of the _mises-en-scène_, of the misses-_en-scène_, and of the "hits"-_en-scène_. * * * * * MODERN TYPES. (_By Mr. Punch's Own Type-Writer._) No. V.--THE DILETTANTE. The Modern Dilettante will have been in boyhood a shorn lamb, for whom it was necessary to temper the wind of an English education by a liberal admixture of foreign travel. A prolonged course of interrupted studies will have filled him with culture, whilst a distaste for serious effort, whether mental or physical, and an innate capacity for mastering no subject thoroughly will have produced in him that special refinement which is to the Dilettante as a trade-stamp to Britannia metal. In after-life, he will speak with regretful fondness, and with an accuracy which he fails to apply to other matters of his "days" (four in number) at a German University, and will submit with cheerfulness to the reputation of having drunk deep from the muddy fountains of metaphysical speculation, which are as abundant and as ineffective in Germany, as her springs of mineral water. [Illustration]