OPINIONS.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 184, 18 August 1888, Page 3

OPINIONS.

“ Opinions may be worn on both sides like a leather jerkin.” [Contributed.] THE WEAKEST GOES TO THE WALL. Cheerful country to live in India, where one with an income of thirty-five pounds sterling per annum, has to pay a heavy tax* Although the purchasing value of twenty shillings in India is equal to about eighty shillings in England, still the tax is felt severely ; and there are unmistakeable signs of widely spread discontent. England and her treatment of the American colonies is a parallel case: it is the last straw, that breaks the camel’s back. That India is not so well governed or its people held in wholesome check may be gathered from the following ; in the neighborhood of Bombay, a fariher in the presence of his village neighbors, amid the singing of songs and beating of drums, deliberately gouged out the eyes of his young wife, who was pinioned for the purpose, because he had been told by a demon that they would be replaced by gold eyes. A WOMAN WILL NOT TELL WHAT SHE DOES NOT KNOW. The University of Oxford—England—has, we are told, taken the first step towards a change which has long been certain. Women are to be admitted to compete for honors in the final classical examination. They will also be present in the room in which male candidates assemble. They will have the question set them, and the same time allowed to answer them in. At Cambridge women have for many years been examined in the same papers as men without any remarkable consequences There is some trumpetsounding over the victory obtained in the Oxford condescension. Situated on a fertile plain at the foot of the lower slopes of the Apennine mountains, Bologna, one of the ancient cities of Italy, celebrated no less for its university, its paintings, as it is for its renowned sausages, has produced feminine luminaries from time to time. There learned women have not only been taught, but Bologna has been taught by them. Novella D’Andrea, a beauty, and a light of church law, flourished five hundred years since. Then Laura Bassi, equally at her ease in latin Literature, metaphysics, and physics, at her fair feet, when only 21, two Cardinals and seven professors of the sterner sex were pleased to sit and in rapturous meekness drink in the floods of her witching eloquence and enticing wisdom. Only a short century ago Maria Agnosia filled the sick father’s mathematical chair with credit and great

applause. There taught also Clotilda Tambroni, whom Napoleon restored to the professorship of Greek, from which her anti-Bepub* lioan opinions had ejected her. There was Madonna Manzolina, Professor of Anatomy. These women lectured to male students, nnt to women, and it is not a little bit remarkable that during the years in which these lady Professors flourished, the culture of Italian women was particularly debased, If Oxford produces like results—and it may be probable —well, then it would be better to allow women to follow the industry nature evidently intended, and that Is—to learn at hnme, and to follow humbler and more womanlike employ? ments. WOO IN HASTE AND WED AT LEI6VBE. It was a gala day in Berlin. Under these grand old trees, huge elms and chestnuts, old, so very old and venerable in their fragrant and deeply verdant glories of the young summer ; observe how nobly the great boughs overhead overlap the carriage way beneath • the trees form a lofty, Gothic-like archway. A dense array of gaily dressed spectators stand under the golden lit trees { on either side of this royal road, eager to catch even a passing glimpse of the bride and bridegroom as they passed with all their guests and attendants ; and thus for more than an hour a constant stream of carriages, gorgeous in caparisoned horses, gildings, and liveries, and uniforms of illustrious ones, rolled past to the place of meeting. Of the cheering there seems to be no end • now it is the Prince of Wales in his Blucher Hussar uniform. Next come the Russian guests in sheepskin caps. But what is that burst of cheering for ? Four little boys of the Grown Prince—now Emperor of Germany. They prattle delightedly, white-headed little fellows • they are laughing and enjoying the sight and the fun. Notice the ehlefit, Prince William, aged six ; how grandly he returns the public complimenle with a dignity that would become a funeral. Now appears the bridegroom and his brother. Handkerchiefs are fluttered at them as they sweep along in a barouche drawn by six superb black horses, preceded by outriders. Assembled in the Royal Chapel, the marriage ceremony ended, the artillery thundering a salute, the startled pigeons darting and whirling aloft in the bright, blue sky as if they were snow white fragments of an exploded shell, benediction, prayer and tuneful praise are over, and then all file out of the chapel to the strains of the “ Hallelujah ” chorus. The banquet over, the bridal garters distributed, the happy pair drove to a neighboring railway station, while thousands looked on, thence to a quiet nook amongst the Silesian mountains On the summit of one of the tallest peaks a huge bonfire lit them to their mansion, where the sailor Prince and his young bride no doubt will be perfectly happy and contented.