CLIPPINGS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 2930, 31 May 1870, Page 3

CLIPPINGS.

{From the Spectator .) How high feeling is rising in Home between the Galiean parly of Monseigneur Dupanloup and the Boman party of Monseigneur Manning, may best be judged by the language used by “ the venerable and saintly Bishop of Laval,” as our Boman Catholic contemporary the Vatican calls him, in writing home to his diocese. These are his words as quoted by the Vatican of yesterday: —“ The minds of men are still occupied with the question of Mgr. Dupanloup. Well, it is time that this should have an end. I protest here before God, and as one about to appear before his Judgment Seat, that I would rather cease to live, fall dead at this moment, than imitate the Bishop of Orleans in the course which he is now taking. You do not know what he is doing here, you do not know what he is saying, nor what his adepts,” [who are they, by the way ?] “ are doing and saying. I know it, I hear it with my ears, see it with my eyes. No ! it would be better to die and to die at once than to lend a hand to plots and manoeuvres which no language can describe. May this writing of mine be propagated to the utmost possible extent throughout my diocese. As to places outside it, lam not concerned with them, and need not occupy myself about them.” Laval (in Mayenne) is very near the borders of Bretagne, and the Boman Catholicism'there is probably of a more vehemently loyal type than in most other parts of France; but after language like this, our Boman Catholic contemporaries can hardly assert that the bishops do not share the violent and heated feelings of the extra-conciliar divines. The history of (Ecumenical Councils has almost always been a history of stormy passions. Did not some Catholic once found thereon an argument for the obviously divine character of the presiding influence which could alone bring dogmatic order out of the chaos of Conciliar wrath ?

The Land Bill has, on the whole, been well received in Ireland. The Nationalist newspapers call it illusory, but all the moderate liberal newspapers praise it bigbly. Lord Granard, tbe leader of the extreme Catholics, says that tbe Bill will, “ most undoubtedly, be the means of founding a new era of peace and prosperity in Ireland. To indulge in factious opposition to it would be to incur a most serious responsibility,” words suppressed by the correspondent of the Fimes and Fall Mall Gazette , who make Lord Granard appear discontented with the Bill. So also they misrepresent the verdict of the Cork Farmers’ Club, in which eight out of nine speakers praised the Bill, while the chairman of the Fermoy Club, though adhering to the demand for fixity, still allowed that the Bill was a good one. A conference of clubs is to be held on March l,and we may then hear of practical amendments. Apropos of Lord Granard, he has been much abused for recalling with pleasure Vinegar Hill and ’9B. If he had been a Scotchman and had recalled ’45, he would have been considered a patriot with a pedigree. Shall we never be decently jus* ? The North Germans seem to think that with a Constitutional Government in France there is nothing more to fear, and are eager to go on eating the artichoke. On the 24th inst. a resolution was introduced into the Beichstag inviting Baden into the Federation, which might be a declaration of war with France. Count Von Bisraark opposed the resolution, but only on the ground of inopportuneness, and of the powerful position already acquired by the King in South Germany. The whole discussion showed that the Chancellor and the popular party are in accord as to the future, and are only waiting to complete the edifice of German Union. The atmosphere of America reduces all the most romantic things to matter of fact. We have long known that ghosts get themselves photographed (gratis, by the way), and take great delight in flinging about furniture and committing practical jokes of the commonest kind; but it is new to find them haunting railways, and actually using false signals in order to teaze the guards of trains. The engineer of a night train on the Boston and Lowell Eailway—so the Boston papers assert —has recently been stopped several times from entering the Woburn station by seeing a red light swung furiously. On sending on to learn why he is stopped, he gets for answer that no light has been exhibited, and the light certainly vanishes as the messenger approaches. Another time the ghost imitated the approach of an imaginary train, to frighten some workmen on the line, who fled accordingly. The theory is, that a man killed there two years ago is now revenging himself on society by these false alarms. It is really an alarming prospect. If these disembodied malcontents have got as far as exhibiting red lights and imitating express trains, they will surely work the telegraphs next, and not to the advantage of Government. We hope the movement won’t extend to Ireland! We should indeed be helpless then. We couldn’t even suspend the Habeas Corpus for Fenian ghosts. For them it has been already suspended. It is asserted that the death-rate is higher by 4 per thousand (.4 per cent.) in districts where the water is “ soft,” than it is in districts where it is hard (i e., usually water impregnated with lime.) Glasgow and Manchester are supplied with soft water and have high death-rates. Birmingham, Bristol, Newcastle, and Warwick have hard waters and low death-rates. The French savans found more conscripts rejected as physically below the requisite mark in soft - water districts than in the hard, and they inferred that the lime of hard water was needed for the tissues; but surely the inference was not very scientific. Even granting the data, calcareous water must imply special qualities of soil, and others,—perhaps of climate; and who is to know that it is not some

one of the many concomitants of hard water, and not bard water itself, which is beneficial to health P No class of men seem to us to draw rasher and hastier inferences than the men of science.