Tour hand, Miss, with your heart in it,
You to the Mother Country proffer.
Beshrew the cynic would-be wit.
Who coldly chuckles at the offer!
BRITANNIA takes it, with a grip
That on the sword, at need, can clench too, too!
She will not that warm grasp let slip,
Health, boys of British blood,--and French

* * * * *

A NATIONAL APPEAL.

DEAR MR. PUNCH,--Cannot you do something to help us, and save us from
a permanent consignment to that wretched hole-in-a-corner back street
site thrust upon us at the rear of the National Gallery? We do not
know how far matters may have gone, but somebody wrote the other day
to _The Times_ to protest against the job, and we conclude, therefore,
it may not yet, perhaps, be too late to agitate for a stay of
execution. We are not difficult to please, and would be contented with
a modest but suitable home in any convenient locality. That such can
be found when really sought for, witness the happy facility with which
a fitting residence has been discovered in the east and west galleries
surrounding the Imperial Institute for the promised new National
Collection. At South Kensington _we_ had a narrow escape of a
conflagration, from too close a proximity to the kitchen of a shilling
_restaurant_. At Bethnal Green we have been having a prolonged merry
time of it, with damp walls behind us and leaking roofs above our
heads. At one time we were packed away in dusty obscurity, in the