Is it not a true simile of the favour of the fickle crowd? The most brilliant phenomena are forgotten after a moment. Life and Time are full of such fireworks--religions, philosophies, fashions, dynasties. And overhead the sure stars shine on. In literature fireworks rarely last. They are too clever to live. A humble rushlight lasts longer. "All fireworks are unsound," says Steinitz. He is talking of chess, and chess is very much like life. Whistler has painted fireworks--I mean literally--in his blue and silver nocturne of old Battersea Bridge. Tennyson has painted them in his "Welcome to Alexandra" and elsewhere. Flash, ye cities, in rivers of fire! Rush to the roof, sudden rocket, and higher, Melt into stars for the land's desire! "Sudden rocket." How good the adjective is! A poet I know spent hall a day in finding the correct epithet for rockets, and was equally pleased and annoyed to discover subsequently that he had chosen the same adjective as the Master. [Sidenote: Time's Forelock.] Nowadays we let off all our fireworks a day before the fair and tug Time by his forelock. A magazine coming out in January must be dated February at the very earliest. We "go ahead" in an Irish-American sense, and cannot endure not to be in advance of our age. We live entirely in the future, and are too busy to live just at present. Christmas falls late in October and extends to the end of November, the period being marked by heavy showers of Christmas numbers. The Jews begin all their festivals the day before, and Christmas is by far the most Jewish of our holidays. Our evening papers come out in the morning, though this will right itself in time, for they are getting earlier and earlier, and will ultimately come out the evening before. Dr. Johnson's line about Shakespeare, "And panting Time toils after him in vain," is truer of the man of to-day. What's that you say? All this has been said before? Naturally. [Sidenote: Diaries.]