MISCELLANEOUS.

Inangahua Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1272, 16 May 1883, Page 2

MISCELLANEOUS.

— + The carnival at Nice is thus described by the correspondent of the « Daily News," telegraphing from Cannes on February Ist:— "The file of carriages extended from the Quai Massena almost to the end of La Promenadedes Anglais and round to the Quai dv Midi. There must have been at least 1500 vehicles, all of which were decorated with flowers and brightly colored draperies. The number of coaches and open carriages and four was considerable. Wealthy as the Eiviera is in flowers it could not supply all demanded for the carnival. A good many wore fetched from Tuscany. Each vohicld had hampers and baskets full of roses, violets,

j purple anemones and mimosas fastened I on wherever it was possible to attach j them. The btioquets were to be used as i missiles. The Vicotnte Adheniar de Gransac, a Legitimist, drove four-in-hand a break wreathed with roses a artificial lilies. Two servants in the rumble we attired as domestic servants used to be in the eighteenth century. The draperies of many of the cars and waggonettes were as elalx>rately trimmed as a fashionable lady's hall dress, and matched the dominoes worn by the fair occupants. One car done out in pink silk, muslin, and flowers, and containing a bevy of masks of the same hue, had for its motto, ' Nous voyons tout en rose. ' Two Russian ladies were in a victoria drawn by magnificent Ukraine horses, and draped in old gold satin flowered 17th century brocades, with garnitures of lace and moss roses. A chocolate and orange car, enlivened with sunflowers, was a great success. The ladies in it were in sunflower costumes exactly alike, The Prince of Wales looked ton ( at ; Ihe, ..battle v -freßrr^a^balru \ WJ*y witli -^ pagfcy.Jp? p^isM^&m' A feminine counterpart of the 1 sluggard in Dr Watts' hymn has been brought under public notice (says a I Home paper) in a very singular way. i It seems that she is the daughter of an ! elderly man, quite past work, and whose keep depends upon a son. The latter, described as a young labourer, attended at Bow street Police Court the other day and told a plaintive tale. He had no objection, he said, to keeping his sister as, well as his father, if . she would help at home ; but she did [ nothing — staying in her bed all day, . despite threats and entreaties. When t asked fpr assistance, Mr Flowers attempted to put the case in a new light , by suggesting that if the sister was » always asleep she could not eat much, |. and consequently the cost of her keep [ would by no means be great The \ complainant could not agree with this, , for, said he, " when she does happen , to wake up she goes in a regular \ buster." The magistrate frankly admitted that he did not know what to do in such a case. However, he would send an officer to see if the slumbering damsel 'could be roused; and we are left to hope that the constable's efforts will be successful. ! i From time to time we receive . telegrams from London and New York informing us of threats by Irishmen of explosions and other outrages, and occasionally 'of these threats being earned, or attempted to be carried into execution. Owing perhaps to the necessary brevity of the message and the absence of any details it is sometimes difficult to understand their full import but there will be no such difficulty with regard to the following extract from Hie Irish World which contains a moss of similar correspondence. It is part of a letter written from Peori, Illinois, by Mr P. Crowe who thus advises Irishmen inngland. After showing the utter impossibility of opposing the English Government by force of arms in regular warfare, the writer goes on as follows : — " When we begin to fight we must make war, not on Englishmen or Englishwomen, but war on English warehouses, and manufacturing establishments, on English shipping on her dockyards and ports. Now the easiest way to do anything is the best way. Mrs O'Leary's cow did more damage by kicking over a coal-oil lamp in a stable in Chicago than did the German J army, with all its artillery to Paris in four months or more while they laid siege to it. Therefore I hold that coal-oil judiciously applied is a million times more destructive of property than the villianous salpetre. Now, for this mode of warfare we ought to have 500 sober, brave men ; and we ought to have 500,000 dollars for their support and maintenance for one year in the field — 800 of these men to occupy London, fifty for Manchester, fifty Glasgow. Each of these soldiers on entering the respective battle ground to secure a room a furnished one. To that room he ought to convey a jfive-gallon jan of coal in his trunk, and a box of matches. On a stormy night, on a signal from the officer commanding, 800 tires should blaze out in different parts of London, and, fanned, by an equinoctial storm, thuy would make a blaze that would be the wonder of the world. Moscow and Chicago would not be a patch to it in grandeur and magnificence. In its light we should read the charter of our in- , dependence as a nation." A more diabolical scheme than this it is difficult to conceive. Three hundred big files ' bursting out simultaneously in Lon- ' don "on a stormy night" would naturally create a fearful panic, in which hundreds of women and children would lose their lives ; but all this is quite unworthy of consideration by the fiend \\\w could thus ijiuVtly sit down and elaborate such v terrible scliciiio. Troublous times are evidently

in store for England, and if tho result is that every Irishmen is hunted out of the country who shall wonder. A writer in the •< Sydney Echo, of April 9th, gives his opinion of New Zealand, its people, its patriots, and its Press, in the following modestly expressed paragraph :-It is peopled by an industrious, an intelligent, a lawabiding population ; and it has been governed by wise, prudent, incorruptible public men. The result of nil these eircumstanceß is not difficult to predict. Already there strikes on the tympanum of the prophetic ear the sound of the foot steps of that marching phalanx which in the near future is going to precipitate the country into a nation (to use the phrase of one of its public men). The evidences of its future greatness are becoming more conclnsive every day, and I hope I shall not be charged with speaking in the language of exaggeration, when I say that this remarkable country, peopled by thrifty, energetic, intelligent colonists^gnladU. By^-^bley^-pft^otio, bv^a^S five and MgWaSwTP^^ for its commercial position, tmri vailed in its nature beauties, rich in its varied treasures of wealth, must I become rich in all the truest and hidi- ! est elements of natioual greatness : and when the proudest dynasties rf to-day shall have crumbled to the dust; when the vigorous life and splendid refinement of this nineteenth century shall give place to a higher culture and a purer morality, the student of history poring over ils. pages will find there recorded in letters* of living fire, how that, under the peerless glory of the Southern Cross., the muse of New Zealand sprang from its circumambient seas, like Minerva full panoplied from the brain of Jove, to listen to the bursting clarion "of an exalted community,. and to gaze with rapture on the sweeping chivalry of an ennobled nation.