But in this style of hasty conference in which we are running from the Sunshade to the Umbrella, let us not neglect the latter, whose last name is /paratrombe/ and /paradéluge/, which M. de Balzac, in the /Père Goriot/, calls "a bastard descended from a cane and a walking-stick." The Umbrella has inspired many writers--writers of vaudevilles, romances, poetry, and humorous pieces; on it little ingenious monographs have been composed, little sparkling verses, articles in reviews, very serious from the trade point of view; many couplets have been rhymed at the Caveau and elsewhere on the Pépin and the Riflard; on the stage has been interpreted /My Wife and My Umbrella/, /Oscar's Umbrella/, /The Umbrella of Damocles/, and /the Umbrella/ of the poet D'Hervilly. This useful article has also inspired the realist Champfleury in a joyous tale, entitled--/Above all, don't forget your Umbrella!/ Everywhere, with variations and unheard-of paraphrases, has the social part of the Umbrella been shown to us; the meetings occasioned by it on stormy days; the /Pépin/ gallantly offered to young girls eating apples in distress whilst it is raining on the Boulevards; we have had described to us the gentleman who follows the ladies fortified with his Umbrella, the weapon of his fight, and many tales and novels begin with one of these Parisian meetings at a street corner on a wet evening. The utility of the Umbrella in different ways has been insisted on, of the painter's Umbrella, of the Umbrella for men called /sea bath/; and the sad melopæa of the French seller of Umbrellas in the street, whose prolonged cry of /parrrphluie/ has been carefully annotated. Lastly, there have been too many pictures representing a coquettish workwoman, whose petticoats have been turned up by the wind, and whose Parasol has been turned inside out; but that which has never been written with the humour which such a subject allows, the master-piece which has never yet been accomplished, is the /Physiology of the Umbrella/. There is no doubt that bibliographers will put under our eyes a thin book of the lowest character which affects this title, and is edited by /Two Hackney Coachmen/, but it is nought but the "humbug" of the Umbrella--its /Physiology/ in its entirety is yet unaccomplished. Balzac would have found therein matter for an immortal work, for there is a dash of truth in that fantastic aphorism uttered by some journalist in distress, "The Umbrella is the man." Eugène Scribe has left us a modest quatrain on the Umbrella, worthy of his operatic muse-- A friend of mine, new, true, and rare, And all unlike the common form; Who leaves me when my sky is fair, And reappears in days of storm. This almost equals that other quatrain, more ancient still, signed by the good abbé Delille--