CURRENT TOPICS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CVI, Issue 12570, 3 August 1901, Page 7

CURRENT TOPICS.

It seems rather late in the day for a champion of the famous Mrs Fitzherbert'

A EOTAt V EOIIAXCE.

: to demand the publication of the proof of the lady’s. marriage with George the Fourth, but this is evidently the object of an article which Mr John Fyvie ha-s contributed to the July number of the “Nineteenth Century.” About the marriage itself there is ho sort of doubt The ceremony was performed by a Protestant clergyman on December 21, 1785—af which time, of course, the bridegroom was

only Prince of Wales—in the presence of Mrs Fitzherbert’s uncle and brother arid two other witnesses. The certificate, Lord Stourton. asserts, was written out by the Prince, and is still preserved, though soirie time after the marriage, at the earnest request of the parties, Mrs Fitzherbert cut off the names of the witnesses, in order to save them from the possible penalties of the law. On the whole, the pair seem to, have lived happily enough until the Prince .was persuaded into a marriage with Caroline of Brunswick. This union was so distasteful to the Prince that he had, according to a letter written by the Duke of Bedford some years later, to fortify himself for the, ceremony with, “ several glasses of brandy,” and. everyone knows that it turned out a dismal failure. It was scarcely completed before the Prince desired to return to Mrs Fitzherbert, but she insisted .upon" the matter being referred to the Pope before she would consent to the resumption of their former relations. His Holiness, having examined the evidence,' declared that their mam riage was perfectly valid, both as a contract and as a sacrament, and the pair were reunited. Sirs Fitzherbert always said that the ensuing eight years were the happiest period of her life, but in 1811 she finally parted from her husband, and settled down at Steyne, with an annuity of £6OOO. The proofs of her marriage were deposited with Coutt’s .Bank in 1833, under the seal of the Duke of Wellington, Lord Stourton and the: Earl of Albemarle, and) there they remain until this day. Mr Fyvie thinks that the time; has now arrived when they should be given to the world.

urssu’s DEVELOP- ' MENT.

The great development of the coal mining industry in Russia, was recently mentioned in these columns, and

i , • incidentally an allusion was made to th* advancement of other enterprises in the Czar’s dominions that are dependent upon a cheap and abundant supply of fuel. But the progress of Russian industry and. manufactures is worthy of more than a mere passing notice. Since the Crimean war, the great northern nation has awakened to a sense of its own importance ip the commercial world, and has been slowly but steadily transforming its industrial features. In 1854 these were wholly agricultural; now, they'include a large number of promising manufactures. , The jjuntry has immense mineral deposits, ■V may. be judged from the figures even by the “Russian Journal of Financial Statistics.” The figures give 12,037,822 ions of coal as the Russian output for 1898. In- JBBO Russia imported British coal -for her railways to the extent of 183,265 tons ; in 1897 shq -took only 5252 tons. Her railway consumption- of her own coal in 1880 was 705,878 tons; in 1897, it was 1,923,390 tons. Of iron ore she produced in 1886, 1,071,454 tons. This bulk increased in 1897 to 4,034,551, tons. In 1888 she had at work 200 blast furnaces, which produced 656,410 tons; in 1897 she had 264 furnaces thUit produced 1,850,490 tons, and in 1899 these furnaces turned out 2,630,364 tons; A British limited liability company in Russia employs 14,500 workers, and its output of steel rails in 1880 was only 11,799 tons, but in 1898 it had grown to 120,492 tons. In 1883 the quantity of tteel produced in the country amounted to 218,385 tons; in 1897 it had increased to 1,205,218 tons. These figures show that the -great Muscovite Powerj in spite of its antiquated system of government, is beginning to realise its own destiny in the industrial world. If its people were once given the freedom which provides the incentive to intelligent work it would speedily become a formidable, competitor with •Britain and America, and might in the long run outstrip them both. The country posses enormous-resources which are practically untouched, and when it has passed through the inevitable political revolution it will be on a fair way-to a bright and prosperous future.

The intelligent foreigner who proclaimed the difficulty of mastering a language

I STREET f .... CRIES, i

I which spelled B-e-a-c-h- ---* *-m-p and pronounced it Ghumlej, miuht

have been still more horrified had he attempted the vernacular of the London streets. In defiance of the obvious necessity for intelligibility in street cries, both .the drivers of vehicles and, the busy costers seem imbued with a determination to make their announcements as foreign to their originals as possible. It takes long experience to recognise “Liverpool Street’’ or “’Hammersmith” when masquerading in the guise of “Lippulsty” or “M-smith,” or to detect that the proposed route of a ’bus is by the City and the Bank of England in terms of “ Soddy, Beng, Beng, Beng. ’ Thanks to the London County Council, however, the street cry is doomed, and the abolition of its distraction is imminent. Akin to the street cry’ abuse is the - curious transformation wrought .in the names of stations by railway porters. At their hands, or, rather, tongues, the names of England aro undergoing a complete change, for the continual reiteration of the name has a twofold result. The first, or destructive process, is accomplished by cutting off half the word to start With, and then sacrificing all the vowels but one, which is left to bear the weight of the consonants. The second, or reconstructive process, is brought to hear on names having a local pronunciation differing from the. assumed .sound of the written name. It is the railway which has done much to expel such names as “Ciceter” and “Sapstead,” which are xiofvmore ‘often called as they are written, “Cirencester” and “ Sawbridgeworth.” “It *,s,” says “ The Pilot,” “ tire necessity for continual repetition that causes the gradual changes of vowel-sounds, or the discarding of syllables that are unemphatio or a little tiresome to shout over and over again.” In a street of ordinary length, the itinerant-vendor’s call imist'bo shouted hundreds of times; the omnibus conductor is forced to sing' his monotonous song for hours together; and the railway porter has little to do but reiterate the name of his station on the arrival of every,, train for years on end. „