There’s no doubt that the Powdered Ball has been a very fine affair; but the Ball of next season will be the grand thing. A nobleman’s footman, as I last night drove, told me that at the Ball of next year all true folks will wear supposed dresses from the time of 1915 to 1954--that is, about a hundred years ahead. There’s a good many opinions as to what they’d be. Some folks declare they’ll be as plain as drab, and some that we shall have all gone back again to the fashion of the painted Britons, as you see ’em in the “History of England.” By that time, it’s thought, soldiers’ uniforms will have gone quite out--the electric gun and such nick-nacks having killed War, body and bones. Howsomever, ’twill be odd to see how people’s fancy will dress themselves for a hundred years on; there’ll be more cleverness in that, if well done, than in wearing the precise coat and petticoat of your grandfather and grandmother.--Your loving brother, JUNIPER HEDGEHOG. LETTER XVI.--_To Mrs Hedgehog, New York._ DEAR GRANDMOTHER,--The Maynooth Grant is granted, and the British Lion has once more gone to sleep. When either Sir Culling Smith, Mr M’Neile, or Dr Croly shall pinch his tail and make him roar again, you shall have due notice of the danger. I think, however, that the Lion is safe to sleep until next May, when, of course, he’ll again be stirred up for the folks at Exeter Hall. In the meantime he must be tired, very drowsy, after the speeches that have been made at him; so let him sleep on. Yes, Maynooth College has got the new grant; nevertheless, to the astonishment of the Duke of Newcastle and company, the sun rises every morning as if nothing had happened; and, so hard does the love of shillings make men’s hearts, London tradesmen still smile behind their counters, never thinking that their tills are threatened with an earthquake. Newcastle and other peers--just out of consolation to their shades--have written what’s called a “Protest” against the grant; and a hundred years hence, when England is blown to atoms by the measure, very comfortable it will be to their ghosts, as they walk among the ruins, to see men reading the aforesaid “Protest,” and hear them crying, “A prophet!” “a prophet!”