16 AUGUST 1879, Page 3

The Ministerial Whitebait Dinner came off on Wednesday, at the

Ship Hotel, Greenwich, but the hero of the occasion, Lord Beaconsfield, was absent, which was a pity, as the trout which Lord Beaconsfield had tickled and caught with his Oriental cunning was eaten in effigy,—" truite 1 l'Oriental," and the general prospects of Conservative progress were typi- fied in the "omelette de crabe h la blue seal." But the meet emblematic element of the dinner was its close. As the Minis- terial party left, the face of "the Ship" was illuminated with fireworks,—in the glory of which, the Ad-ministration of fire- works vanished.