"Field Glasses, powerful magnification; sacrifice, 37/6; cost £175."--_New
Zealand Paper_.

We don't know about the magnification, but the diminution is most
remarkable.

* * * * *

THE EVERLASTING ROMANCE.

The other day I did a perfectly dreadful thing: I intruded, all
unconsciously but in the most blundering way, on a love scene. It was in
the National Gallery, long famous as the meeting-place of affinities, in
the big room where the pictures lent by the Duke of WESTMINSTER and the
Duke of BUCCLEUCH are now hanging, and before I knew it I found myself
standing between two young people whose eyes were fixed on each other.
Naturally I moved away at once, but later I returned and made so bold as to
study them a little, for it was clearly, if not yet a passion, a mutual
interest of such tender depths that no outsider could affect it.

The boy--for he was no more--was one of the most beautiful that I have ever
seen. His hair was perhaps a thought longer than we encourage to-day, but
one always sees odd people in the National Gallery, where artists--most
careless of men--are now constant visitors, drawn there by the many new
pictures, and especially, perhaps, the modern French examples from Sir HUGH
LANE'S collection. His hair was the more noticeable because he carried his
hat in his hand; his clothes were noticeable too, being a shade too
fanciful for London in winter--but then, who cares how people dress in
London? I am sure I don't; and especially so when they have such eyes as
this boy's, dark and rich, and such a curve to such lips.