TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume LVI, Issue 10269, 11 February 1899, Page 7

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Amoxo the studies purAn Empress's sued with such diligence Tutor. by the late Empress of Austria was that of Greek, in which she became a fair scholar. Her tutor, one Christomanos, is just about to 1 publish a book, in which he gossips pleaaantly about his walks and talks with her : Majesty, for the Empress carried her rove of fresh air to such a degree that the greater part of her lessons in Greek appear to have been learned in tho gardens and grounds of the Castle, It was partly on account of her desire to take long walks with her Greek master that M. Christomanos was chosen for the post, for be himself believes that, being »hunchback, he was so unprepossessing that his continual presence with the Empress was not likely to give the slightest cause for •eandai His first meeting with his Imperial pupil served to convince liim that he would h»ve to get used to exercise, for she walked _ him through the Castle grounds for more than three hours. After he became an inmate of the Castle the Greek lessons began while the Empress's liair was being done, an operation which took two hours. Her Majesty . Ist in the middle of the large room, entirely I •nveloped in a dressing gown of cambric and **cc, "over which her liair streamed in brown waves to the ground." Her hairdresser "had to separate each hair with her fingers, then to comb them out—there was no brushing —to make the plaits, and to raise them on the Empress's head like a crowu. When all was finished she would present the few hairs which had come out on a silver dish. The Empress would give her a reproachful look, | *nd the hairdresser would crave pardon." Tben the Empress would drive off with her tutor to Schonbrunn. where she and he would walk about for hours, no matter wliat the weather might be; in fact, the wetter and colder and stormier it was the better she liked it. "Sho said it was like King Louis of Bavaria's separate performances in the theatre. The world was hers in such weather." Her deep appreciation of Nature Was all the stronger as she came face to face I With its sterner moods. Her tutor, too conr «cious, perhaps, of liis aching legs, one day ventured to ask her why she-never felt tired. V&he owed that, site said, to her father, who had had his daughters taught walking as an •"Ceomplishment, with the resak that the Empress and her sister were said to walk "like butterflies." But tiwugh in this and fcany other things she talked freely wrthj

. her tutor, the distance between them was ? never forgotten, and whether the subject , under discussion was Greek or the emancipu- , tion of woman, wltether they read or talked, the tutor had always to walk a step behind f her Majesty. r A Miss Jeaxnette Gil- • Poets' Views deb has given hi an ■ on American periodical the 1 their Poems, answers she received to her request to a number of - poets that they should select their special I favourites among their own poems. The 1 replies are most interesting from the light - they throw on the inner workings of each 7 jKict's mind, but as subjects for a popular i selection, we must beg leave to quarrel with s the list. It is notorious that from Milton (who preferred "Paradise Regained" to "Paradise Lost") to the present-day literary , artists are very bad judges of their own works ; and have little idea which are the most likely to take popular fancy and live the longest in men's hearts «_nd brains. Most of the poets of the Victorian era pro- ' tested a little too much about the demerits ' of their verses; Lowell even said he "hated J 'em all without distinction" : Whittier and Sir Edwin Arnold had entirely forgotten what verse they did write, and had not time ■■ to hunt them up ; Andrew Lang "only aimed • at versifying, «.nd made no pretence of ■ poetry." Colonel John Hay is hardly • glorious enough to merit a place with the ■ immortals, and he distinctly marked his f re-' "Confidential." Of course the lady thereupon assures us that this particular • communication which she mayn't reveal is . tantalising, interesting, and amusing; but . until Colonel John Hay shines a little more . in verse, we shall not greatly desire to know | what he thinks of himself. Robert Browning's reply alone has the ring of a great I poet, conscious almost to carelessness of his powers, and not over anxious to ac in nublic ( the part of a modest violet. "Being restricted to four dips in the lucky-bag," as he says, he chose "Saul," "Abt Vogler,'* "A . Forgiveness, and "dive." He adds, "there is something behind,' and we should say there was not only "something' but all 1 his best work behind. Imagine a selection from Browning in which "Rabbi Ben Ezra," one of the finest philosophical poems • in our language, had no -art! Perhaps he 1 rejected the famous "Pied Piper" and 1 "Herve Riel," as too hackneyed, but we f cannot forgive his judgment for ignoring i his own fine cavalier songs, and especially 3 "Marching Alone;," while we should miss . "Pictor Ignotus" or "The Boy and the Ani gel," and his "Evelyn Hope." His choice 1 allows plainly what we might have sus- . pected from his work, that he himself valued j most highly striking dramatic situations. (. Matthew Arnold mentioned only his "Forsaj ken Merman," a beautiful piece of pure 3 imagination; but he might at least have added his Requiescat— _ "Strew on her roses, rosea , With never a spray of yew," a poem that fulfills all the Miltonic requirementa of being "simple, sensuous, and passionate." l Stevenson begins by saying he Som.3 "can't and won't choose from his Minor own verses, and then he "goes s Poets, and does it" in very good taste. 5 Ho wrote nothing equal to the 3 poems in his "Child's Garden of Verses," on 1 which he stakes his reputation. They are in a verse what Schumann's "Scenes of Childhood" i are in music—perfect embodiments of the 9 floating ideas and visions and emotions of earliest youth. Lowell, on the contrary, ] cannot be pardoned for ignoring the fine i humour of his Bigelow verses. We really I cannot do without the "Pious Editor's ■ Creed," a perfect gem of satire. His > "Parable," however, is certainly one of his 5 most representative poems, and he did right . to chose it; and "The Corn-tin'" will pro- ; bably be familiar to all lovers of his verse; ( , p it is a charming American idyll, and has the . Bigelow humour with the edge off. Take , "for a taste"— } "She thought no vice hed such a swing as j his'n in the choir, My! when he made 'Ole Hunderd' ring, she r knowed the Loii was nigher." This is one side of Lowell as accurately as the descent of Christ to earth (in the i "Parable") is the other. Swinburne must ? have been affected in his choice by the restric--1 tion as to length, but most people will agree ' with him in his preference for his "Songs • Before Sunrise," though we want, too, his 1 fine ode from "Atalanta" ("In the beginning ■ of years.") Mr Austin Dobson selected • "Good Night, Babette," "The Dead Letter," i "The Sick Man and tlie Birds," "The Bal- • hid of Prose and Rhyme," "Queen Eliza- >' beth," and "The Paradox of Time." Whit- ; tier's choice was "The Slave of Martinique," i "Two Angels,'.. "The Pageant," and "My Playmate." On the whole, the selection make 3 a valuable literary curiosity, but can hardly satisfy the poets' admirers. In spite of any wrangling between poets and their editors, the latter would probably make the better compilation. i _____-__- Tht Panama Canal project is The not so dead, after all, as most Panama people probably think. The 1 Canal. scandals .hat sprang up and choked its promoter, the corruption and bribery and sinful waste of life and money which marked its career almost from the beginning, did not quite serve to extinguish the vitality of the scheme. In France, where the enterprise was bora* and where, one would lave thought, every one was too disgusted to have anything more to do with it, there is a large amount of confidence that it will yet prove the success which De Lesseps the sanguine predicted for it. The new company which has taken up the matter has the advantage of being able to profit by the awful mistakes into which mismanagement, and worse than mismanagement, led its. predecessor. Among these mistakes were the superficial character of the preliminary surveys and studies of the engineering problems; vaguely-drawn specifications which left loopholes for enormous losses on contracts; criminally deficient overseeing of the work ; whereby opportunity was given for great waste of money, and for swindling on the largest scale; tha idea of a canal at sea level, which was impracticable from the start; and culpable negligence of the health and lives of the armies of workmen. These are all which are mentioned by a recent writer on the Canal, but they could be increased by almost every blunder which those * in charge of a great engineering work should not commit. The new company, we are told, starts modestly with a capital of less than three millions. It has decided not to attempt to make the canal on one level — ( that of the sea—throughout, but to adopt , a system of four locks, this determination s being arrived at on the report of a commis- ; sion of experts which included the engineers . of the Manchester Ship Canal and the Kiel i Canal respectively. It is admitted that the enormous mortality among the workmen employed by the old company was due to the disturbance of the surface of the earth and the consequent release of quantities of deleterious germs. Since then, it is claimed, the climate has improved. If it has altered at all, it must have been for the better, for a more unhealthy spot than the Isthmus of i Panama probably is not to be found on j , earth, but it can hardly be. we should think. :

that any great improvement has taken place since the navvies of all nations were dying there by scores and hundreds. The employment, however, of Jamaica blacks will no doubt lessen the death rate. The length of the canal when it is completed will be about forty-six miles, against the 175 miles of the Nicaragua Canal. Much of the work of the old comjxany will be made use of, but even with this saving the twenty millions of capital which it is hoped to raise will be none too much. As to the* profits to be derived from the enterprise, they can hardly amount to much, if. as will no doubt be the case, America perseveres with the Nicaragua Canal. If there is one thing more Meat-Eating than another u*>on which m ' Australian doctors have for Australia. years laid greater stress it is that Australians—with whom we New Zealanders may associate ourselves for this purpose—eat too much meat. The same thing has been said scores of times of Englishmen. Dr. Burney.Yeo, in his bock, "Food in Hearth and Disease," asserts that "many of our more troublesome chronic maladies are traceable to the consumption of food too rich in animal albuminates." And Sir Henry Thompson is quoted as saj-ing that Englishmen consume too much animal food, particularlr the flesh of cattle." We could multiply quotations of this sort "ad infinitum," were there any necessity. Statisticians show that, whereas in Great Britain the consumption of meat is 1181b per head per year, and in the United States 1501bs per head, in Australia it is In this respect Australia leads the world. And yet a week or two ago a Sydney doctor lectured on the text, "Australians do not eat enough meat," and proceeded to back up this amazing assertion by some startling arguments. With his opening statement, that all physiologists admit the necessity for a mixed diet, few but vegetarians pure and simple will quarrel. But he then went on to assume that the more meat a nation ate the better it was. The case of Japan, where the inhabitants are being urged by the authorities to eat more meat, and thus improve the standard of the race, was quoted, without any special appropriateness, so far as we can say, for it did nothing to prove that Australians eat too little meat. On the subject of the diet of babies, tlie doctor's remarks must have sounded simply heretical to the mothers among his audience. No harm, he declared, accrued to the youngest children from a meat diet, but a great deal arose from a farinaceous and fruit diet. He was especially averse to fruit and sugar being given to children, as they were "offensive to childgrowth," and he condemned with much vigour the idea that wholemeal bread was more beneficial than that made frcan white flour. Reserving his thunder to the conclusion of his lecture, he> wound up with tho assertion tliat during the last twelve years close medical observation had proved that the dreadful disease of diabetes was invading the Australian people. "He found that about eight out of every ten persons exhibited the most pronounced diagnostic feature of diabetes. He- had watched the advent of this disease amongst us, and found it coincident with the craze for eating fruit, which contained this sugar in a large proportion." A correspondent, whom we strongly suspect of being another doctor, forthwith entered the lists against the lecturer. He asked why if, as was said, eight out of every ten persons showed pronounced symptoms of diabetes —a disease which generally runs its course in from six months up to three or to six years —the death rate from tho disease in Sydney from 1892 to 1897 had never gene above 26, and had been as low as 14, a rate of mortality which must be regarded as extremely low. Further, he remarked that even if it were true that eight out of every ten people were suffering from the disease mentioned, it did not follow that it resulted from eating fruit. "In disease, as in many other things, causes are not always explained by effects." Wherefore let us take heart, and while not neglecting chop and steak and juicy joint, let ns not forget to qualify our diet of meat with sound, ripe fruit, defying the lecturer and his horrid warnings.