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 of themselves, hoping to get notoriety; but Mark Lemon was too old to be sold in that way'—as no doubt Shirley Brooks is.

'An hotel-keeper,' he added, 'who had lately opened a house in a watering-place, pleasantly situated, offered, if a cut of his premises were inserted, and a couple of letters were written and dated from his house, in the pages of "Punch," to let any two gentlemen connected with the office stay at his hotel free of charge for a month.' On one occasion, when the lecturer was in a railway carriage, the talk turned on 'Punch,' and a fellow passenger informed him in confidence that he had written a series of papers in the periodical of which Shirley Brooks himself was the author.

Our outline of the remarks the lecturer made on the history of 'Punch' is necessarily very imperfect. But the lecture on 'Satire' was altogether a very charming evening's entertainment. We wish the editor of 'Punch' would repeat it. We close this notice by quoting a few words from James Hannay's estimate of the satire of 'Punch:' 'The decorum which distinguishes; "Punch" from the best effusions of the class in the olden days belongs as much to the age as to the periodical. In the worst of times our facetious friend is innocent; and though our progenitors seem to have thought that all wit required great license, the student finds that they were often licentious and dull too, sacrificing decency, and getting nothing in exchange.'

Shirley Brooks, in accepting the duty of carrying out the traditional policy of the leading satirical journal on all social and political questions, in taking the chair so long and so well filled by one of the first promoters of the paper, and in essaying to maintain the prestige of the best journal of the kind in the world, took upon himself a grave responsibility. For 'Punch' belongs to the British nation. This step was taken two years ago. The result has proved how happy was the selection of a successor to him who had grown old with the paper, whose interests he watched so well—how capable and how gentle a follower has been found to hold the coachman's whip over the flyers that pull the 'Punch' coach.

Ten years ago, this couplet closed the lecturer's comments on the paper