CLIPPINGS OF THE MONTH.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XXIII, Issue 1354, 2 February 1865, Page 2

CLIPPINGS OF THE MONTH.

(From the Spectator for November.) Mr. Bernal Osborne addressed his constituents at Liskard, at the end of October,and strove to keep up that reputation of Jester-in-Chief to Parliament which he is rapidly acquiring! It is a dangerous sort of character to oe obliged to live up to, and if Mr. Bernal Osborne is open at all to the sense of intellectual shame, he must read in the reports of his speech, with many uncomfortable emotions such forced jocularity as this: —" Letting in the Tories! Poor innocent individuals; I want to know where they are. If that great Pagan philosopher Diogenes, where to descend intotheimpure,and inflammable atmosphere of the House of Commons, provided with a patent, Sir Humphrey Davy's lamp, he might find three poor Tories, all excellent, honest, energetic men. Diogenes would say, ' I think the member for North Warwickshire, Mr. Newdegate, is one.'—He would say, 'How are you, Newdegate?' &c," at which imbecility, of course the Liskard people laughed, as they would have done, —with equal reason, —if Mr. Osborne had made faces or stood on his head. His only real hit was the resuscitation of some lines written in 1742, by Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, the famous Whig squibber, who addressed an ode to the first Viscount Palmerston, then Chief Remembrancer for Ireland, and likely to remain so : —

One stanza more, and I have done. May Heaven preserve Lord Palmerston .' And since for life he's in, We must like others stay Till death—or his or ours—shall pay The wages of our sin. We need scarcely add that Mr. Osborne assailed Lord Palmerston bitterly and applauded Mr. Gladstone. The latter is certainly worthy of all admiration, but we doubt whether the adhesion of Mr. Osborne, with his cap and bells to his grave, and earnest party will be found to add materially to his strength. Tet Wamba once rendered material assistance to the Black Knight.

It is said that M. Bismark's newest idea is to allow the election of the Prince of Augustenbnrg as Duke of Sehleswig-Hol-steiu, on condition that the construction aud control of the Eider Canal are left to Prussia. This arrangement will, he thinks, leave Prussia master of the German fleet of the future, and give her besides the control of trade between the German Ocean and the Baltic. The plan will be unacceptable to Russia, who finds herself thus with only one outlet from the Baltic, while her enemies have two inlets into it. The canal, however, is not yet cut, nor is it by any means clear that it can be cut so as to carry an iron-clad from sea to sea. It will not either be south of the line of the ice which chokes the Elbe for two months in every year. Mr. Cobden has replied to the Scotsman in a letter explaining his speech at Holinfirth upon which the Scotsman had relied to prove his original charge, viz., that Mr. Cobden wished for newspapers without comments. He shows that he spoke to a mechanics' institute, of the Press as it then was, aud not with reference to what it might become, that his remark was in fact a mere description of the comparative popularity of the two departments of a newspaper. The Scotsman admits that the passage will bear interpretation, but asks why, as the charge had been so often made, particularly by himself in the Edinburgh Review, it had not been answered before.. That is not the question at issuer but this, — la it fair to give a mere deduction from the drift of a public man's speech as something which he actually said ? We think it is not, even when an accurate deduction, if only because the practice deprives the speaker of the whole benefit of purposed caution in weighing words. The Poor-Law Board has odd duties to perform. It has constituted itself just now an Ecclesiastical Court, and is inquiring through Sir John Walsham into the orthodoxy of the liev. E. Hillyard, Chaplain of the Norwich Workhouse. That gentleman is accused by the Board of Guardians of neglecting his duties and "identifying" himself with Mr. Lyne, alias Brother Ignatius. A great mass of evidence has been taken, the drift of which seems to be that Mr. Hillyard administered the communion daily to the " Benedictines," that the Bishop ordered him to cease, that he " respectfully " "declined to comply with his Lordship's request," that he neglected the workhouse a good deal, and that he sent as a substitute one Mr. Ouseley, whose " name is not in the 'Clergy List,'" and who appears to be a "monk." A further quantity of evidence was taken to show that Mr. Hillyard indulged in " high " practices at his own parish church, and in particular had had the Ten Commandments hung up printed on a bit of paper " like a newspaper," a statement which created " great laughter." What on earth the Poor-Law Board had to do with all that nobody attempted to explain. If this sort of thing goes on we shall have the Trinity Board trying pilots accused of Sabellianism. The Emperor Napoleon so far from " crowning the edifice" appears to be plunging deeper into absolutism, and what is worse, to be degrading his autocracy from its scientific French form into a mere Russian tyranny. The Nain Jaune is a cheap journal, and the Government instead of subjeetiijg it to the Press Law, severe as that is, 'has chosen to apply to it the law applicable lo colportage, which require that the book or tract circulated should be previously submitted to Government. This is simply the Russian censorship, and destroys literature instead of controlling it. On Sunday some political article thus submitted for revision was omitted by decree, but the proprietors instead of filling their columns with more acceptable matter left them blank—a truly French sarcasm. A joke of the same kind was played during the brief reign of terror over the press established in India by Lord Cuming. The law forbade any attack 011 the religion or customs of the natives, whereupon one editor republished the Ten Commandments with the second left out as directly insulting to idolaters, the fourth as iniurious to people with 110 Sabbath, and the llventli and ninth as actually prohibiting the ,nost valued of the native customs. The Italian Parliament met on the 25H) f October and the tone of the Deputies I SLpihed ok all hands as calm and moderate, Tho Convention has been carefully explained. ,1 it is expected that it will be accepted by Tho ..Lrs is the more remarkable, as it seems K that the Convention haa cost the Kh,« 1 • nniilaritv in Turin. He has been even liw'd a'"* "' Wi S ed for 0 j' 10r f ''T 40 ""ILnipd bv a guard. In the rest of n ( T however, there is no dissent, and the .titans will.it is believed, vote unaniP lv for the transfer of the capital. Part o n f°S Rainess ari.es from a dislike of !

Piedmontese influence, but more from a conviction that Rome without French bayonets will be more easily taken than Rome with them. One evening an association called the National Reform Union held a meeting at Manchester, the President of the old AntiCorn Law League, Mr. George Wilson, presiding over its violent and rather foolish deliberations. We fear the great case of the working-classes will be sadly injured by such advocacy as it received at Manchester. One speaker, Mr. Robert Cooper, talked of extorting reform " from an arrogant and selfish aristocracy." "All talk of the apathy of the people was only a cloak under which a treacherous Prime Minister and a truculent House of Commons wished.to conceal their own indifference and bad faith." The conduct of the Cabinet or Parliament had been one of " unparalleled mendacity." Mr. 8. Pope said the wish of the people for a share in the suffrage had no connection whatever with the question of the duty of giving it them; and Mr. Alderman Goadsby said that "the taxes that were now complained of" would all be removed if the people would not flatter men in high places " by adoring them too much when they came here,"—intended, we suppose, for a backstroke at Mr. Gladstone. No .principle for a Reform Bill was proposed, or even discussed. One speaker advocated "manhood suffrage," but the business of the meeting appeared to be a feeble attempt to excite the strong passions of the first Reform-period by the use of in- | flated and exaggerated invective against the present Parliament and Ministry. The Lord Mayor, who is a Unitarian, gave a rather special and extra-routine dinner to the Archbishops and Bishops at? the Mansion House, as the ordinary entertainment in June had been postponed pwing to the sudden illness and death of the Lord Mayor's brother. Only the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishops of Oxford and Peterborough were able to be present. The dinner was as usual gorgeous, but the speaking afterwards was perhaps a little embarrassed by the evident consciousness of the great dignitaries that they were, in the eyes of their host, rather useful .national institutions than spiritual guides. In proposing the health of the Bishops the Lord Mayor dilated on the j grave responsibilities of an office to which j all the doubts and difficulties brought by the laity to the clergy, swelled by the special doubts and difficulties of the clergy themselves, came ultimately for confession and solution,—and the Bishop of Oxford in complimentary reply remarked, his face twinkling all over with humour, that the Lord Mayor divined the anxieties of episcopal duties with a sympathy so delicate and perfect, that he could not but suspect him of having at some time in his own career partly prepared himself for episcopal offices and duties!

The Augustinian nuns of Loretto, near Ancona, have brought down upon themselves the interference of the secular power by a shocking act of falsehood and torture. A daughter of an Italian Liberal had been confided to the care of the twelve French and four Italian nuns who constitute the nunnery aforesaid. This girl left the convent in April of the present year. A rumour was then circulated that a girl three years older had been bewitched by her. The accused, with two of her relatives, went to the convent one afternoon, in answer to a summons. taken _ a[one Jntothe parlour, the door closed, and she was confronted with the chaplain, physician, and lady superior, who declared that a girl in the convent was in danger of losing her life in consequence of ! this lady's spells, and thereupon they all set upon her to make her render up her contract with the demon. The priest sprinkled her with holy water, twisted his stole round her neck, exorcized her, made signs of the cross on her mouth and forehead ; the physician and chaplain stripped her to her shift, and felt under the armpits for her contract with the devil, till at last the girl fainted. When she recovered, they renewed the attack, threatening her even with death, and the lady superior exhibited a box full of pins and needles which had issued, she said, from the body of the enchanted girl, and showed an indecent note found upon the same girl, with the words " Death to the Pope ! " At last the mother found her way to the persecuted child, and got her away from the convent. It appears that the whole affair was a plot, not a superstition. The girl said to be " charmed " was in excellent health, —and the nunnery has for a time been very properly closed 4)y order of the Government, and the chaplain and physician arrested. Mr. Anderson, the great Wizard of the North, gave a seance, to prove that the rope trick practised by the Brothers Davenport can be done " without the aid of spiritualism." He gave it, as he said, in broad daylight ; but after all, the gaslight was much stronger than the daylight, and much' more important to the audience. He had a cupboard, which, in reference to the Davenport structure, he called repeatedly a stricture, — i.e., criticism, —a joke which told well on the audience. A gentleman of the name of Sutton, who looked rather oppressed by his responsibilities, was bound first, and put into the cupboard; but Mr. Wakley and Mr. Friswell had bound him so effectually that he could not get on with his trick at all, and had to explain that the cord interfered with his circulation. So he was let out for that time, and, Mr. Anderson's daughter Lizzie, a clever child of about thirteen, who had said to the conjuror in the morning, " Pa! I'll be tied up," was substituted. The cord was more tenderly put on m this case, and she came out of the cupboard triumphantly, in about three minutes, and then tied herself up again. Then Mr. Sutton did the trick effectually enough, taking care, however, to he bound "by a sailor," and not by Mr. Wakley. It seems to be a verv simple question of the greater or less tightness of the cord which determines the possibility of the trick. The audience cheered Miss Lizzie Anderson vehemently; the conjuror placed his hand on her head, fell into a pose, and called her "my darling;" and the spectators, who had taken a great aversion to the chairman of the Investigating Committee, Mr. Holiingshead, who appeared to have Davenport proclivities, proposed clamorously that " Holiingshead should be tied up ntxt."

A clergyman travelling by express from Loudon to Gloucester met with an unpleasant adventure. He had taken his seat along with two ladies in a second-class carriage, when a half-drunken sailor was put in by the guard, and the train started for Swindon. The man at once proclaimed himself a " Southern privateer, and an enemy to the English," threatened to " smash the clergyman's skylights if he did not tell his opinion," tried to make the ladieß drink gin, called them " old Jinnies" for refusing, spat three times in the clergyman's face, and

suddenly tried to jump out of the window. The clergyman ana the ladies being uufortunately Christians endeavoured to prevent him, and succeeded, " when he adopted a line of retaliation so indecent that," says the writer, " I dare not describe it." The ladies huddled into a corner, the clergyman stood before them with a stout umbrella, and in this attitude the party remained till the engine stopped to take water at Wantage Road, when the man was secured. We trust that the Southern Association will at once forward the funds to defend this unfortunate victim of English prejudice. The poor man only thought himself among negroes!

The Treaty of Peace between Denmark and the two leading German Powers was signed on the BOth Oct. Its mainpiovisionfi are, as expected, that Holstein, Lauenburg, Schleswig, and the "enclaves" of Jutland shall be ceded to Austria and Prussia; that the northern, boundary line shall be drawn from Chrintiansend to Stenderup; that the Duchies shall pay to Denmark the interext on £3,500,000 of her debt; that the Duchies receive in return some portion not yet stated of Danish property; that Denmark restore all ships and cargoes captured by her in the war or their equivalents, and that three weeks shall be allowed for tne exchange of ratifications, and three more for the withdrawal of the Prussians from Jutland. We have denounced this treaty in fitting tarm6 elsewhere, but we may add here that it has still to be accepted by the Rigsraad, or General Assembly of the Danish Monarchy, and that General Falkenstein, to coerce the vote of that body, has threatened by proj clamation that if in three weeks the ratiiieations are not exchanged he will commence his system of eviscerating Jutland with additional severity.

General Falkenstein, commanding the Prussian troops in Jutland, has issued an order to the Commissioners of Forests iu the Peninsula ordering them to cut down tiinner sufficient to make up the " deficiency in the revenue," —i. e., the difference between the taxation of Jutland and the amount required to feed and pay his army. The order cannot be executed until after the siguature of the final Treaty of Peace, but it will be none the less carried out, the theory of General Falkenstein being that a province honoured bj the presence of Prussian invaders is bound to pay for their keep. It is fortunate for those invaders that Jutland is not like Holland —below the sea-level.

The, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Mr. Roger B. Taney, died last month in the eighty-eighth year of his age. The correspondent of the Timeiu lamenting over his death, gives a letter written on the last anniversary of his birthday, lamenting that he had fallen on evil times. No one had contributed more to darken them than himself. He was au able lawyer, but so violent a |>artizan of Slavery and the Democratic party that he was guilty of the famous Dred-Seott decision, in which he held in the teeth of the Constitution, that free negroes could not be citizens of the United States, but only with the jurisdiction of particular States; secondly, that the provision of the Missouri Compromise Act prohibiting slavery north of 36 deg. 30 min. was unconstitutional; lastly, that slaves taken by their owners into a State prohibiting slavery remained slaves still. An unjust judge, he probably did more than any man of his time.to precipitate the conflict which he bewailed.

Signor Boggio, member of the Italian Parliament, asserts in a pamphlet recently published that Jules Favre is no friend to the unity ot Italy. That eminent Liberal told him in June that if Napoleon abandoned Rome he would lose his throne, and that the " Italians had reason to rejoice he (Jules Favre) was not Minister if they were going to insist on the surrender of Rome to Italy." Many of the French Liberals are known to be so utterly " national" on this question of Rome—which, be it remembered, was occupied by Lamartine —that this statement obtained full credence; but M. Jules Favre give it a formal and peremptory denial. The statements of Signor Boggio are, he declares, " apocryphal," and he himself earnestly desires to see the day when Rome shall complete, by the surrender of herself, the unity of Italy. We presume the truth is, thai M. Jules Favre, talking to the Italian, only referred to the courae it would., as Minister, be his interest to pursue, not to the course he should follow.

The Times published a singular article calling the Court to account for the niggardliness with which Royal visitors to Great Britain are always entertained. They are usually suffered to find quarters in a hotel, and the heir of Italy was recently left to the hospitality of the Italian Ambassador. It it suggested that one of the duties of Royalty is to represent the nation when receiving illustrious guests, and that if the Sovereign is determined to remain in retirement, this duty, like that of holding levees, should be delegated into other hands. The hint, which after the treatment of Prince Humbert was really required, will probably not be lost on the Prince of Wales, who has so recently seen in other Courts what Royal hospitality should mean.

At the annual soiree of the Huddersfield Church Institute the Archbishop of York gave a useful sort of address censuring the sensational literature of the day for iti cynicism and fatalism. The only defect ot his speech was that he a little confounded all literature which delineates a yi-eat passion—as Shakespeare does in all his tragedies—with sensational literature. The difference we take to be that sensational literature subordinates art to excitement, while all healthy literature holds visibly the thin and delicate veil of art between the spectator and the interest of the piece. Whenever the picture of a passion comes so close to us as to rouse passiou (either similar or dissimilar) the artistic work is bad. The transparent film which separates artistic sympathy from real sympathy, and which renders all true delineation of passion delicate, is the true test of an artist.

Lord Stanley took the chair at a dinner m aid of the Manchester Warehousemen and Clerks' Schools. He said nothing ot any political moment, except that he objected to Parliamentary fights unless wheu they were absolutely necessary. " Moderate men, sensible men, men of business," on both sides of the House, would, easily come to an agreement as to what ought to be done, aud he conceived the true policy was to strengt hen the hands of those moderate, sensible, business men who agree on action, and do not much care who acts so long as the riijht thing is done. We take it that Lord Stanley's recent able manifesto of general policy was expressly directed to these moderate, sensible, business men, and that he would not object to lead them in default ot aflj older statesman whenever Lord Palmewtoii retires.