29 JANUARY 1876, Page 3

At Bath on Thursday, Sir Wilfrid attended an Alliance meeting,

and quoted there a very beautiful verse which had been sent to him, apropos of the recent assertion of the Times that every man in Lancashire gets drunk as often as he can. The rhyme ran thus, -according to the Times report :— "I'm a Lancashire man,

And get drunk when I can, Sir Wilfrid may scold, but I will ; Patriotic's my thirst, For this liqueur accursed Has purchased the Suez Canal."

:Surely Lancashire men don't rhyme the worse for their deep potations, and we suspect that what the Lancashire man really wrote was, "Sir Wilfrid may scold, but I shall," which introduces the Suez Canal with a much better grace than the halting -" will " of Sir Wilfrid.