HOME GOSSIP.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XLIV, Issue 4620, 4 December 1875, Page 3

HOME GOSSIP.

(Atlas, in the World. Bept. 22 and 29.) It was during the dull season that Mr Jack Finucane, according to Thackeray, was left in charge of the ideal Fall Hall Gazette, the columns of which he at once devoted to the glorification of Ireland. One cannot but imagine that some countryman of Mr Finnoane’s must at the present time be conducting the Globe, when one reads therein that the accident to the Dorking coach occurred on “ a steep acclivity leading down to Burford Bridge.” The Commander-in-Ohiof has been to Paris to convince himself of the real state of things with regard to the French army after the many contradictory statements about it. I hear the Duke expressed himself strongly about the untidy, unsoldierlike appearance of the French soldiers, even in the line. Of course the tag-rag garments—like Joseph’s coat of many colours—are beneath criticism. The new brass Beffye guns, however, were approved of by H.B.H. The Marquis of Bute is trying a curious experiment near Cardiff ; he has had planted some 3000 vines on a sunny slope on his estate, and means to try if wine can be made in Wales. He has, I am told, already had some wine made from grapes trained against walls, and has even contrived to drink some of it. One hopes that Lord Bute’s wine may not resemble the via de Suresnes, of which it is said that it takes three men to drink it—one to hold the victim while the other pours the wine down his throat.

The Turks are waking up. Mr Scudamore has already undertaken the reform of their post-offices; and now an engineer from Constantinople has arrived in London charged with the duty of negotiating with one of the numerous asphalte companies for thp paving of the entire Turkish capital with asphalte. The asphalte mania has also spread to Alexandria and other smaller Cities in the East, who are about to cover their streets with the tarry composition which in wet weather converts the thoroughfares into skating-rinks. The Daily Telegraph) the other day, had what, with one or two exceptional pprases (what is a “ canvas-sculler ” P), was an excellent comment on the steam-launches, which have become the terror and abomination of oarsmen and fishermen in the Upper Thames. Several of the owners of these pests have been fined for neglecting to slacken speed in passing small croft, but the law should he more frequently and more rigidly enforced. One of these launches, belonging to some old friends of ours, who combined usury,diamond selling and umbrella-making, is well known to river-men, by whom she is called the Shent< per-Shent. The Serapis must have been a pleasant ship during the terrific gale of Sept. 26-27. She took out a squad of painters and other artificers to complete the decorations and fittings en route to Malta; but landlubber handicraftsmen are hardly in their element in a gale in the Bay of Biscay. The Serapis was to have sailed on Saturday afternoon, but she experienced delay from two different causes. A clumsy tug in the morning had sprung one of the plates of the big ship, and this had to be made good. At the eleventh hour the momentous discovery was made that although upwards of £3JOO worth of wine has been put on board the Serapis, the stock did not include any champagne in pints; and of course it was necessary to remedy this oversight. After waiting for some months, the Eeme des Deux 3£ondes has at length condescended to notice Mr Tennyson’s “ Queen Mary.” The notice is short, but can hardly be said to be sweet. Here it is: “If a drama cannot do without action, an intrigue, a plot, and an ending, situations and characters, then the play which Mr Tennyson, the Poet Laureate of her Majesty Queen Victoria, has just published is not a drama. It is rather a senes of historical scenes more or less well arranged, but the majority of which are languishing, and draw their slow length along with difficulty. The delicate, but rather thin and exaggerated, talent of Mr Tennyson has come out victorious from the trial it has seen fit to court. It is said that a London theatre proposes bringing out this drama next winter. If the piece succeeds, it will owe its success to some clever tirades and the heat of conviction with which the author pleads the cause of Luther and CaMn against Mary and Cardinal Pole." What will Mr Tennyson’s, admirers say to «h 0

tbig The ascent of Mont Blanc has been found exceptionally easy this season, and in consequence a greater number of ascents hare been accomplished than in any previous year. On one day alone a caravan of twenty-three persons reached the summit of this ‘ monarch of European mountainsone of these was a gentleman of seventy yearn of age. It was said that, this veteran had recently been refusedP% a young lady on account of his advanced years, and he * did Mont Blanc’ in order to prove that there was life in the old doe yet Two ladies have likewise made the ascent j "but the younger, who is still in her teens on her return to Chamouni.at once succumbed to a violent attack of typhoid fever superinduced by the over-exertion, and she still remains there in a critical state. There is little doubt that in the course of a year or two Ohamouni will be connected with Geneva by a railway; the project is already freely discussed; and who will venture to assert that in time a railroad won’t be constructed up the side of Mont Blanc itself, after the model of that which now carries hundreds daily up to the Rigi-Kulm P It is a curious sign of how very badly the papers are often informed, that so much sensation should have been created by Colonel Gheeney's article in Macmillan pointing out Russia as the next enemy to be “settled” by Germany. Those who are even a little behind the scenes are aware that so far back as the '7O war all the rising German officers employed their spare time during the siege of Paris in studying Russian, pouncing on Russo-French dictionaries in French villas with marvellous alacrity. It is also a well-known, or ought to be a well-known, fact, that soon after the peace of Frankfort Colonel Terdy du Vernois, Yon Moltke’s right-hand man, was sent to KiJnigsborg as chief of the staff to the First Army Corps, with a secret mission to watch the operation of the new Russian military law, and study from that advanced point the best way of advancing on St Petersburg; and there ore officers in our own Intelligence Department who hardly conceal their belief - that Russia would prove to be by no means so formidable a foe as many seem now to think her. To-day Louden has one paper the less. The little tinted fly-sheet; calling itself the Church StraU, has written its own epitaph, sung its

own requiem, and now mingles with the perturbed spirits of other journalistic failures. It was said to be the exponent and advocate of “ Stuart Toryism,” whatever that may be, but it shone most brightly in its character of a general denouncer. I have heard a great variety of reasons given for the stoppage of newspapers at one time and another, but never until now have I read such an excuse for the non-appearance of a journal as that given by the Church Herald, which ascribes its fall to the' impending demolition of • its printing-office f The discontinuance of the paper is, however, really due to another cause. The proprietor of the defunct journal is a Conservative of Conservatives, and a very pronounced High Churchman ; and from hie political relations with the governing powers, he could no longer find it in his conscience to sanction the publication of a newspaper—perfectly harmless though it was—whioh, from the ultra-Eitualistio point of view, saw in the Disraelian Ministry anything but the saviours of society and protectors of the Church, More it were unnecessary to say, except that the Church Times has embraced the opportunity of giving its hated rival a parting kick. Ten thousand five hundred and seventy-six immigrants left Cornwall for the Australian Colonies during the first six months of the present year. This is official j but there is no certain record of the number who have emigrated to Canada and to North and South America. It must be very large. No wonder the Cornwall railways’ receipts have sadly fallen off; it would take a great rush of tourists to make up such a diminution in the “ regular customers.” Emigration is still going ohj and would go on faster were it not that so many of those who are left have no money to pay their passage. With tin at not much over £BO a ton, no wonder nearly a quarter of the Cornish mines have ceased working, and the rest are only just doing enough to “keep going,” Of course everything suffers for want of repairs, and the iron and timber trades are suffering. Altogether, Cornwall has never looked so bad since the distress of eight years ago, when the Belief Fund was raised “to keep the miners from starving.” Then, in 1866, the price was £BB a ton; , the next year it rose to £9&, and went on rising, till in 1872 it reached the excessive priee of £153 a ton. Of course plenty of bubble companies were started,. and during the last three years a great deal of money " from upwards ” has been sunk in Cornish soil. John Bull always vows in times of depression that he’ll never take a mine share again; but when the rise comes he is always caught just in the old way. Will the rise ever come again for tin ? That depends dn whether Australia and Van Dieman’s Land can go on supplying the world at present prices. It might be as well to telegraph to Mr Anthony Trollope on the subject. Meanwhile the miner suffers; already there is a good deal of distress; and some in West Cornwall are talking of a short waste-lands Bill to enable (or compel) “ lords” to “ improve ” the numerous commons. They could not have better workmen than the. miners ; for a man must be used to blasting and getting out stone, or he’ll make but a poor hand of a West Cornish common.