SOME BEACONSFIELD EPIGRAMS.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIV, Issue 127, 29 May 1879, Page 4

SOME BEACONSFIELD EPIGRAMS.

Lord Beaconsfield said to a member of the Manchester Chamber [of Commerce, who oame to tell him that the Chamber intended to vote resolutions condemsatory of the Ministerial policy on the Eastern question :—" I have he-rJ a good deal about Manchester 'clayed cotton,' which is disgracing the English name in Chins. Pleaee tell your Chamber that if they attend to my business, I will try and attend to tbeira," Equally smart was a stricture of his upon Birmingham, pronounced in the hearing of the heir of tbe throne, whom it tickled : — " A curioaa city, Birmingham ; its prosperity is founded on the minufaoiure of instruments of war and shatn jewellery, yet it has tbe disinterestedness to elect three members (Bright, Diaoo, and Munta) who do not know a gun-barrel from a pea-shooter, and: who never had a watch-chain between them." 01 Mr Carlyle, he said : •« He has his reasons for writing civilly of Cromwell. — Cromwell would have hanged him." Of Mr Browning : "I like Mr Browning's verses, and wish somebody would translate them into English." A lady was telling the Premier that she had been to Mr Spurgeon's Tabernacle, and bad beard him preach a scathing political sermon, in which he (Lord B,) was much abased. " I wish I had been there," was the dry rejoinder. " I have heard he can be very amusing."