Volume 25 — A BISHOP IN DISTRESS.

It is seldom that signals of distress are hoisted from the episcopal bench; but the signals in question have actually been hung out recently on behalf of the Bishop of Durham. One of the "friends of the Church" has made the melancholy calculation that the good Bishop is in such an impoverished state that, after making sundry deductions, the poverty-stricken prelate has scarcely more than seven thousand a year to live upon. Considering how bishoprics go in the present day, we are astonished how the prelacy of Durham can pay at the price, and how, in fact, the bishop can manage to do it for the money.

We shall probably be told next that it is a losing concern, and that the occupant of the wretchedly seedy see is about to give it up in consequence of his being "out of pocket." We recommend the Bench of Bishops to fraternise with the cabmen in making one common stand against the system of reduced fares to which both have been doomed in obedience to the modern principles of economy. The Bench may object to the association, but it is clear there is some affinity between the episcopal and the other class, for the cabman can drive his horse, while both cabman and bishop can drive a bargain.

A Mysterious Visitor.

Among the recent visitors to London we find notified an extraordinarily dense fog. This visitor, though somewhat obscure, created considerable sensation, and a sort of general illumination was got up by the London shopkeepers on the occasion. The fog arrived by the Thames, and made so much of the short time of remaining that the visitor was nearly all over London in a very brief period.

Standing by their Orders.

Frenchmen having foreign orders are, by a recent decree, to be allowed henceforth to wear them. If the French boot-maker in Regent Street should really wear all the foreign orders he receives he will be papered from head to foot, and it will be necessary for him to wear an additional placard requesting bill-stickers to beware, to prevent them from mistaking him for a hoarding on which bills may be exhibited.

"Gentle Subscriber! Did you ever see two strange Englishmen breakfasting at a Table d'hote abroad. Well! Isn't it a cheerful thing?"

GREAT AND LITTLE SPORTSMEN.

OUR fashionable contemporaries have been amusing their readers with the details of how many birds have been bagged by my Lord This, or the Honourable Captain Tother; and, as every class has a peculiar interest attached to it, we have been at some pains to collect the results of the sporting season among a somewhat humble order of individuals. The best accounts assure us that the Dishonourable Bill Soames bagged no less than twenty pocket-handkerchiefs in a few hours, and brought down—off a clothes' line—everything within his reach. In the juvenile sporting circles Master Jones bagged twenty blue-bottles off his own pop-gun, and young Smith had a splendid run after a butterfly with a few young dogs of about his own age.

Zoological Gardens to Jardin des Plantes.

The following brief note has been forwarded by the Rhinoceros of our Zoological Gardens to Cow, the Rhinoceros of the Jardin des Plantes:—

"Dear Cow,—The French papers say you're the first rhinoceros in Europe since the time of the Romans. Gammon! I've been here more than these two years. But then, as it's only London, what should Frenchmen know about it?

Yours, from the bottom of my tank, R."