2 AUGUST 1873, Page 3

The Lord Mayor's banquet to the Ministry was rather dull,

Mr. Gladstone not being able to attend. Lord Selborne took his place, and paid a magnificent tribute to the Premier, as a man who would be regarded by English history as without a superior, either for intellectual power, or private virtue, or dis- interested public spirit. The Lord Chancellor, however, could find only one measure—the Judicature Bill—to praise, and rather weakly fell at last upon the grandeur of the reception given to the Shah. Mr. Bruce made a point by saying that the House of Commons was like the engineer Telford, always the brighter for three days' study in bed, and rapped the House of Lords ; but Mr. Lowe was reduced to answer the toast of " The Ladies," which he did as neatly as Lord Palmerston, describing that happy time which is to come, when ladies shall be legislators, like their lords. He failed, however, in a sudden endeavour to find a feminine equivalent for the Lower House, and had to make a palpable " shy " in his speech, to avoid a double entendre.