Punch, or the London Charivari, page 19 by Various Authors
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language which seemed to cause some trepidation even to the Ministers he was supporting he denounced his right hon. friend for introducing "this stale and stinking bone of contention," and plainly hinted that it was part of a plot to get rid of the PRIME MINISTER. If that eminent temperance advocate, Sir THOMAS WHITTAKER, had not poured water into Mr. DUKE's wine, and emptied the House in the process, there might have been a painful scene.
* * * * *
AT THE PLAY.
"DISRAELI."
Our early-Victorian oligarchs disdained their DISRAELI as a mountebank because he wore the wrong waistcoats and had genius instead of common-sense. If he had grown to be the least like Mr. LOUIS NAPOLEON PARKER'S Disraeli, if he had taken to standing over Governors of the Bank of England and forcing them to sign documents under threat of smashing up their silly old bank, if he had been such a judge of men as to have made that prize ass, Lord Deeford, his secretary, or conducted his menage at Downing Street in the highly diverting manner exhibited in Mr. PARKER's second Act, one trembles to think what they would have called him--and done to him. And whether, if the Bank had ever had such a Governor as Sir Michael Probert, England would have ever been in a position to buy a single share in the Suez Canal or any other venture, is a question for the curious to consider.
No wonder the Americans enjoyed Disraeli! REINHARDT should pirate it for Berlin, as it would lend some colour to the imaginative Dr. HELLFERICH's airy dissertations on English finance. Can it be that our author is a hyphenated patriot in disguise and that this is merely a ramification of the so thorough German Press Bureau's activities? Perish the thought!
At the opening of the play, with Mr. Disraeli and his wife as guests at Glastonbury Towers, all went well. The almost uncanny lifelikeness of Mr. DENNIS EADIE's make-up, the steady flow of the great man's good things, which had