NEWS AND NOTES.

The Son of Balfe, the composer of "The Bohemian Girl, ' is nearly 70, and destitute. He is to be admitted to the Charterhousa as soon as there is a, vacancy. The son of Wallace, the composer of "Maritana," is -already an inmate. Dunchurch, near Rugby, claims^ that tits smithy is the oirginal forge which inspired the famous verses on "The Village Blacksmith." It is a picturesque old place, says the "Sunday •Strand," and the "spreading chestnut -tree" still flourishes in front of it. Among recent deaths is that of June. TLeonie Leon, who for the past twelve ;years of Gambetfca's life was the great rdiplomat's most intimate friend. .They -were engaged to be married, but he died a fortnight before tho ceremony ;tooA place. Mrs. Famham, the sculptress, has •completed a bas relief of Mr. Roosevelt, which bore, says Laffan, the inscription, "Better faithful ■ than famous." The President approved of the work, but suggested that the words should be altered to "Do not flinch, do not foul, birt hit the line, hard." His suggestion wil! be adopted.; A decree of tho Kaiser ordains that certain classes of military officials shall wear in some cases golden epaulettes for silver epaulettes, and in another case-red epaulettes for blue. These-altera-tions make a total of more than forty changes in uniform which have been carried out during the reign of the present Emperor. Miss Ann Owen, the oldest - Sunday school teacher in Great. Britain, died on 9th November at Warwick, as the result of a fall, which fractured- her leg, about a month before. She was in her ninety-fifth year, and had taught regularly at the local Congregational Sun--day school forrthe last eighty-two years. The Dnko of Westminster, who owns 19,vajO acres in the Orange River Colony, has built eighteen farmhouses, and=outbuildings, erected schois, and sent out every sort of machinery which might be useful to the tenants. Some eighteen families of British blood have emigrated, and the settlement now numbers seventy isouls. Up to the present the Duke. has •spent £150,000 on this scheme. Concerning the Ferreira raid, The Times writes': — No justification, however shadowy, of political unrest, of race sympathy, or of actual pressure, such as was sometimes employed by the invading Boer comniandos in the war, can be urged in this case to mitigate the charges of treason, of coldblooded murder, and of robbery which these men have incurred." Ever sinco the restoration of the Campanile at Venice has been going on doubts have been expressed as to the quality of the bricks and mortar employed. An expert emphatically declares that they both contain qualities which give no guarantee of their stability, and it is now proposed to level to the ground the work which has been already done, in order to begin again with more satisfactory materials. Major Canra, of the Congo Free State service, has virtually trasiersed Africa from east to west, living under canvas. Throughout this immense journey he was accompanied by his wife, who shared all the hardships of the daily march, and returned to Belgium showing absolutely no sign of the physical strain- to which she had for so long a period been subjected. Because a cnrious fungus growth on rotten planks at Borghethout, an Antwerp suburb, is supposed to have taken the form of the statuette of the Virgin and Child, wild excitement has seized the inhabitants. The ignorant populace {says the Telegraph) are proclaiming .miracles from the housetops, while poli'tieiass are using the event as a forcible argument in favour of obligatory in- ■ struct ion to combat supecstitution. Samples of the late Colonel Saunder•son/.s humour are 'being recafied. Once Hn the House of Commons, in a debate on the financial relations between Great Briia±i><aß.d Ireland, he said that England never shed a tear for Ireland's woes without making Ireland pay for Che pocket-handkerchief with which the tear was wiped away. And this was regarded at- tie time as a Jflasb of inimitable wit. ¥ An attempt is being made to , raise tfjurds for the restoration of tho buried Jcborch of Perran-zabnloe, in Cornwall. 'This name, the. County Gentleman points •oat, is simply a corrontion of St. Prran•>insabolo, lx St. Piran in the Sand." As •if to justify the, name more completelj the shit ting dunes long covered tht little church completely from view, and M, was only rediscovered, like an Egyptian tomb, and laid bare in 1835. Thf surviving ruins are now railed in. According to the "Gil Bias," M. Cieinenceau has expressed himself as follows on the subject of the Entente Cordiale between France and Great Britain: — "In the present condition oi our relations with Germany, it is to th« honour of M. Delcasse, and excuses much, that he Has assured to France th( support of Great Britain. If he haci not done so I would have endeavoured to bring about an entente myself." Dr. Goodchild, pastor of the Baptisi Church, Fonty-second-street, New York, who not long ago encaged a lady tc give whistling solos from his pulpit, has hit upon another device to attract •those for whom, the 'ordinary service 'has no interest. He left the pulpit before the sermon, recently, and hi? place was taken by a performer on musical glasses, whose performance was greatly to the taste of tho large con, .gregation. I What could be simpler or better for I both nations (writes #ie Paris corresporaLent of lie- Times) than for the BanK of France and the Bank of England to -cease to regard 'each other as strangers, as they do at present. Tbus, while tfee-fijemer lias too much gold and the latter not enough,, they have not yet contracted the habst of exchanging bullion, the result being that one of them is suddenly obliged raise its rate of interest. England and France are like two veny polite old ladies who, having formerly quarrelled with euih •other and being very touchy, are afraid Ho sqeak out. Preaching in connection with anni- . verjary services at Bowes Park Congregational Ohorch, England, Dr. Horton expressed a strong desire to re-name the days of the week. At present, he explained, they arc named after ancient heathen deities of very questionable repute. Why not re-name them, ho asked, after some of the 'great and noble Englishmen whose lives constitute a jiperpetnal inspiration to succeeding generations? Following up this line iof thought, the doctor said he would like to see Monday identified with Alfred the Great, Tuesday with Sir Philip Sidney, Wednesd'a.y with Nelson, Thursday w-fth Sir Herbert Kftwaßds (a great Indian statesman), Friday with David ,'X.ivmgstonc, and Saturday with James Chalmers. The suggestion is not only reactionary but impracticable. It pwouJd give different names to the days .an overy country, oven if any group of could agree as to the seven greatest jnames in their history. Dr. Horton's

Mr. Andrew Carnegie has granted a life pension to Mr. Booker T. Washington, tho eminent colouied educationist. Mr. Carnegie takes a deep interest in Mr. Washington's work, aud sends an annual, -contribution to the Tuekegeo Institute, of which Mr. Washington is the president. According to Mr. J. C. Xolan, Special Commissioner for the Jamaica Government in the United Kingdom, the total quantity of 60-called "Jamaica rum" sold in Great Britain icaches a total of nearly four millions of gallons per annum, whereas the island only exports one and; a- quarter million gallons- annually. Recently Mr. Kcir Hardie surprised- 1 'the House of Commons by invading itssacred precincts in sandals. Such a ■thing hs3 never been known, and many of the constables on duty were uncertain whether they ought to have barred his entrance. Mr. Hardie laughed at his questioners, and complained that in deference to their wishes ho was obJiged to wear socks. In the country he discarded these. It would be no unfortunate eyent for Africa (writes Major Leonard in the West African Mail) if somo of tho European philanthropists who now squander their liamoepathic charities on the welfare of the negroes, wore to turn their sympathy a little to the pitiable lot which has befallen the elephant— destroyed morely for the sake of converting its teeth into billiard balls and useless ornaments. Professor Quincke, Heidelberg, has' the interesting discovery that water and all other liquids pass through an intermediate stage before solidifying. \x\ this they split up into what may be called foam-cells, giving a viscous -structure resembling jelly, and in cooled metals, "as in quickly solidified steel, some of these cells remain even in the solid -state. This may explain tho allotropic modifications noted in different specimens of the same metal. According to advices from Kabul, it is rumoured in Afghanistan that the Ameer is disposed to agree to the extension into his territory of the wireless telegraphy which is being established be*tween Pcsbawur and Lundi Kotal and the pew railway to the Afghan frontier south of Peshawar. The report is not well received by the people, who consider that tire Ameer will thus be drawn into ; closer political relations with Great Britain. An ingenious trick, practised in Paris by a woman kno>vn as the "human cashbox," has been stopped for a time. In a cafe at Montm.trtc, she picked up a t-wenty franc pieco belonging to a custoxner v;ho was paying his bill, and asked to be allowed to bite it "for luck." He consented, and she promptly swallowed the coin. The customer had seen the tnck before, and had the woman •arrested. She is said to have made a , comfortable income for somo time past by this trick. ''Gold to the value of £240 was found in •a bag on a seat by a boy at Xewton Heath Railway Station, near Manchester, Ho took it to the lost-property office, and it was discovered, on enquiry, that it belonged to a lady who had travelled from that plac& to Manchester. She had missed the money, but had no idea, where ehe had left it. On recovering ths £240 she gaxe tho boy threepence. Cases like this point to the necessity of jv defined right to claim "salvage" on land as on sea. An imitator of the hero of Kopenick has played an arcusing joke on the garrieon at Stuttgart. Attired in the uniform of a major, he arrived before the guard-house of the palace, and ordered the \i hole guard to turn out and present arms. The necessary commands were hurriedly givec (the Morning Leader says) the soldiers rushed for their rifles, and with their officers drew up in full war array, with drummers in position, when the supposed major took to flight. Before the eoldiers recovered from- their .-consternation, the joker had dieappeared, cand has 'not since been heard of. Many indications are apparent of the desire of the Chinese Government to check the use of opium, and, althoughthere is no fresh development in the matter, the Government is still considering the framing of the regulations to control the traffic in the drag. The use of opium has been strictly prohibited in the new Chinese army and in bchopk. Several officers of the old Manchu Banner "Corps have been, cashiered for smoking opium, and it is understood that the higher officials in all the Yamens have been ordered to. break themselves of the habit within six months. When the Boer war was at its height the women of Guelph, Ontario, engaged with thousands of others throughout the Dominion in making warm clothing for the wounded British soldiers. Among those was Miss Annie Callander. While at work one day, a correspondent at Toronto states, Miss (Jallander placed her name and address on a garment she was making, wondering if she vtauld over hear of it again. This ultimately reached a soldier named Thomas Huby, *of Sheffield, England, who, while in hospital, wrote to the address given, thanking the donor of the garment for her interest in the cause. A correspondence followed, which lias led to the marriage of Huby and Miss Calkmder. - The Oriental mind is Rupposed to be as Jfttle susceptible as any to exciting emotions. But although the Oriental suppresses all demonstrations of emotion, he does so only by the exercise of great force of will. When Shere AH was being shown the wondens of Western- civilisation he regarded all with seeming indifference, until some ono remarked that a machine at which he was looking cut iron as easily as sugar carte was cut. "No," he said, "not so ; we cut sugar cane with difficulty, while this machine cuts iron with ease." The sightseeing went on, and somp of the party laughed and joked and made light of things. But SQero Alj interposed, 1( I am ihclined rather to weep than laugh," ho said. "God has gnren me mnch. lam a king. I have an army ' and a .revenue, but He has denied me wisdom." Commenting on Sir Samuel Hall's "Short History of tho Oxford Movement," tho Westminster Gazette writes : — T.he men who joined tho Nonconformists in founding the Biblo Society, and t'»ose who, without going beyond 'tho borders of their own communion, set up the Church Missionary Society, are sufficient to show that when the Oxford Movement began the Church of England was not wholly asleep. Both societies were in full activity while Newman and Pusoy were only children. . , The writer Bccms to underrate the importance of the Homeward movement set on foot by Keble, Newman, and their disciples. Establishment has acted as a drag upon it, bat it has changed the aspect of tho Anglican, Church more than the Reformation changed it. If the next sixty years carry m.itteEfi as far as they hawe been carried in the last sixty, the victory of Borne will be- complete. Tho strangest "Result" is the development of theHiigher Criticism. Tho High Churchman who is being mov.ed t>y his rerigious emotions towards Rome, and by bis intellectual convictions to a freedom of thought and to conclusions with, which Rome can show no sympathy, is iin as difficult- a mosifcion* as "it isrpcssible< to*. conseiv*.^* r " —--' **■ '« ~ • '»