TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 11946, 15 July 1904, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

If anybody has a taste for About becoming a baronet—a Baronetcies, bogus baronet, that is— there is no difficulty about doing so. Any reader who fancies a " Sir" before his name, and " Bart" after it, is quite at liberty to annex both. No legal liability attaches to him for doing so, unless, indeed, he uses his bogus title to procure credit, when, if he fails to pay his bills, he may be prosecuted for fraud. Nobody whose name does not appear in the baronetage by "Dod," "Burke," or "Debrelt," is a baronet—at kaeti that is the bold assertion made by the editor ef "Dod." This statement created considerable excitement in England recently. The autocratic powers which tlie editor of "Dod" claimed for himself and his confreres of "Burke" and "Debrett" mean that the Sovereign does not make baronets. Tho editors of Peerages make them. Of course, this is absurd, and tho editor of " Dod " exaggerates. Everybody who can prove his title to a baronetcy has a right to have his name included in the. Peerages mentioned. AH that the editors can do is to exclude bogus baronets. As a matter of fact, there are at the present time a hundred and eighty-four baronets who could claim the title if they wished to do co. Probably family misfortunes deter them. Tho baronets are a hard suffering order. Since trfey were created no authority has ever been appointed to shepherd them, and they have no insignia. True, the origin of the order of baronets is not very exalted. James I. was their progenitor, and he created them solely for financial reasons. He found it a most convenient means of obtaining £200,000 to grant permission to 200 gentlemen to call themselves " Sir" and their wives " Lady," with right of succession in tho senior male line. He made 205 altogether, and intended that the creation of fresh ones should lapse at his death. But his successors were too cunning to forego tuch a source of revenue, and Charles I. added some 255 to the number. Charles 11. created 426 baronets, and George HI. 469. Many of tbeee baronets have never had lands, evil days have come upon them, and they have decayed. Much dishonour has been brought upon the order, moreover, by tho follies, crimes, and vices of baronets themselves. "Tho idea of the sensational novelist," says one writer, truly enough, "who makes 'the wicked baronet' the villain of the piece, is not without justifica-

tioo," On the other hand, there are baronets amongst the noblest of the land, and if, as Disraeli mates Lady Joan Fitewarene say, the baronetage is the peerage of the middle 'class, it will probably not lose prestige in colonial eyes on that account. A Moscow journal pubLast Letters lisfaes extracts. from the of last letters written by Verestdhagin. the late M. Vasili Verestchagin, who went down in the Petropwlosk, to his wife. From these we gather that on March 16th, days after the outbreak of hostilities, there were 150,000 Russian soldiers in Manchuria, and who were being reinforced by 3000 per day. But the writer expresses a fear that "an interval must follow later on, owing to spring floods and rains," and there is every reason to believe that that rate of reinforcement has been materially reduced. Verestchagin. repeatedly prepares his wife for news of a Russian retreat, affirming that true strategy would dictate such a course; though, if possible, it must be a masterly retreat, lest the Japanese should claim to have conquered, "and so raise up Manchuria." A letter written from Laioyang, after a short visit to Port Arthur, shows tho writer installed in a railway carriage, assigned to him for his own use, as living room and studio, and which he could have coupled on to any "train that suited his purpose* When at Port Arthur, noticing t)!te brave commander of the Rctvifan without his Cross of St. George, which had been awarded, hut had not yet arrived, he took hia own—won in the siege of Samar* cand in 1867—from his breast encT pinned it on the commander, to tho great delight of the sailors. The last extract is from a. letter written on March 28th (Easter Day). Verestdhagin had met Admiral," Makaroff the previous day. "Where are you lunching to-day?" "Nowhere in particular." "Then come along with mc, and afterwards we will go and sink a vessel in tho roadstead, to block the way for the Japanese." Two vesselo were sunk. During the operations with the first, tho Admiral got very excited, fearing that it was not going to be successful. He spaced "liko a tiger in a cage, three steps forward and three back, and growling like a tiger or a white bear." The customary Easter midnight •service, Tolstoi's description of which readers of "Hesurrection" wdil remember, was held two hours earlier than usual, as the Japanese were expected. Iri spite of the hitter circumstance, the Admiral attended, but left uojin sfter the service began. When it was over, Verestchagin went on board the watch boat Giliak, where he found Makaroff asleep. Falling a«leep on a sofa, Verestchagin dreamt that be was "at Leo Tolstoi's, whose rooms were exactly like ours, and they had for some reason or other to 'be destroyed. I cried quietly, but I think no one heard mc," Roused up suddenly soon afterwards, he went on deck, where he found the Admiral, who would not allow him to go "home" to his railway car. "They will stop you everywhere for the password—which was 'tesah'—better sleep with us on tho battleship." And together they went on board the Petropavlosk. A fortnight later that battleship was blown up with the well-known results. In reference to a recent dia* .Some cussion, a correspondent for-Long-Ago wards a small volume, conViews, raining some remarks on t ball-rooms addressed §b the "young female" of allmost a century ago. Mies Maria Benson, who pub* lished in 1806 this treatise, entitled "Thoughts on Education," has irr her list of subscribers the name of Lindley Murray. It is not surprising, then, to find that the essential part of education is English grammar, and "the best grammar now extant ia Mr Murray's." With a becoming modesty, the fair authoress does not presume "to dictate on the subject of male education with respect to pursuits of science," but having mentioned the "«tudie3 and duties particularly attached to the female character," she proceeds to the interesting subject of accomplishments. There is much debate as £o the moral risks of music. "It was when hurried into forgetfulness by the light sound of tho viol, that the daughter of Herodias, urged by unfeeling levity, demanded the head of the virtuous Baptist." There would certain be some social strain if a piano solo often ended with a request for the head of a Bishop or some other virtuous dignitary I Still, as a domestic art, music need not bo quite forbidden to young performers, provided always that they do not attempt to play too well, "A young woman may convey pleasure by her powers, when there are not capable of exciting astonishment; and the former sensation it is more the province of a female to dispense." Upon her marriage, of course, even such gentle endeavours must be suppressed at once. "When she becomes a wife, her husband seeks in her a companion for himself, a mother for his children, nor will he think these relations best supplied by an amateur or an artist." Only upon dancing, whether for the tingle or married female, the stern educator sets her unmitigated ban. "It destroys a taste for the pleasures of nature, by leading the individual who pursura it to 'midnight revels and tho public show.' It enervates the powers of the mind by inducing conversation, and introducing society, vain, empty, and frivolous." Young persons, she complains, will not realise how much more rational dancing might be if practiced in solitude, merely for exercise and improvement of the carriage. We can quite believe they answered in the style of "Pride and Prejudice"—"Much more rational, my dear madam, I dare fov; but it would not be near so much like a ball." And the ballroom, we are told, is full of evils ranging from rivalry, envy, and mortification, to hasty matrimony or disappointment of mind. As for the male manners of the day, if we are to trust her strictures upon dancers usually "heated with the effects of intemperance," and excused any bad behaviour on the plea of "not b?ing quite themselves," it must have been a wholesome reaction which led to the later midcentury hall-rooms becoming "priyi."