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 days, if they do not take their pleasures more sadly, do so at least with more discretion. The Prince of Wales, for instance, is criticised, condemned, and even prayed for, because he has a modest racing stable, encourages the sport of kings, and loses a modest stake at cards. But what sort of a paragraph would appear in The Weekly Scandalmonger if he followed in the footsteps of that previous Prince of Wales whose tavern-frequenting is matter of history. Our celebrities do not now play pranks publicly. If Lord Tennyson, instead of meditative wanderings by the sea, were to indulge, as Cowper did, in glazing windows, a snapshot of a detective camera might be relied on quickly to give publicity to the fact. If Professor Tyndall, instead of climbing the Alps, were to copy Rousseau, and roll boulders down Primrose-hill, he, too, would quickly achieve an unenviable notoriety. Or if any of our present-day celebrities were to seek their relaxation and amusement in the form which delighted Dean Swift, by harnessing his servants and driving them up and down stairs, what "snappy" paragraphs there would be in the society journals.

The amusements of our celebrities are tame and commonplace in comparison with some of these. But even nowadays the idiosyncrasies of public men are sometimes curious. For instance, there lives in the neighbourhood of Nottingham the Rev. Dr. Cox, the late editor of The Expositor, the most famous Hebrew scholar in the country. He and his wife are to be constantly seen playing at ball in the front garden of his residence. If it was done in the sanctity of the back garden, there would be no ground for comment, for the fact of a learned divine playing at ball is not more remarkable than that recorded by Disraeli the elder, of Knox visiting Calvin one Sunday and finding him engaged in a game of bowls. No one has presumed to whisper that our greatest Hebrew scholar was ever guilty of amusing himself in his own peculiar way on a Sunday, and certainly no one has ever complained of annoyance. This cannot be said with regard to the amusements of some "celebrities," especially when they take the form of pets. Sarah Bernhardt came under the notice of the authorities in America on one occasion, when her pet tiger got loose and created a large amount of consternation. Everyone must remember the notoriety a certain Countess achieved a few years ago with respect to her cats. That was perhaps the worst instance that could be cited. But there was a doleful story told some time ago by the "interviewer" employed by a