CURRENT TOPICS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CVI, Issue 12586, 22 August 1901, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

X RESTLESS ROVER.

Mr \’0 r . J. Stillman, who •died 1 in England the otter day, was test known to the

present generation as the Rome correspondent of the “Times.” But tie was already well known in Great Britain when.he went to Rom© in 1884. Stillman must have been , named on’ thelncus

01 non kcend'o ” principle, for hfe was ari incorrigible rover. An American by birth, he began by running away from the sombtet Puritanism of hia Schenectady home at the early age of ten, and ten years later he went off to England with limited cos'll but unbounded confidence in Providence, imbibed pre-Rapbiaclitism, and came back td America to paint. But when Kossuth came to America in 1851, painting had to give way to plotting, and Stillman was despatched with a mystic cipher, to Hungary to dig up the Crown jewels which had sqcretly buried before the suppression of the insurrection of 1848. Ha was glad to escape with a whole skin, however, and when next we hear «l him h* was waiting in Paris to part in the Milan rising. Wheja that failed, 'he sought solitude in the Adirondack forests, and there communed with nature face to face. Emerson, Lowell, Longfellow and other poets and philosophers he enrolled in his Adirondack Club, one expedition of which was commemorated by Emerson in a poem. Longfellow was to have been , one of the party, but 11 declined When he heard' Emerson was to take a gun. After some years Stillman moved again, and began to paint in London, placing implicit faith in Ruskih. His eyesight failed, but when the Civil War broke cut he hastened 'back to his motherland, only to be told that hd was riot fit for service. Appointed American Consul at Rome and then in Crete, he championed the Christian! Cretan, cause., Athens .next and then London received him, but in a. year ox two he was back dn the East, corresponding for the "Times” during the Herzegovina and Russo-Turkish troubles. Then he was appointed correspondent at Athens, and subsequently, ini 1884, at Rome. He retired in 1898, having spent severity years in wandering.

WHEN TO MAESY.

The author of that enters taining and instructive little volume, “ How to be Happy

Though parried,” has devoted a chapter in his new back, “ Concerning Marriage,” -to the consideration' of this f momentous question. He contends, very sensibly, that the age at which a man should marry must depend largely upon the man himself. Some man, he says, are more fitted for th* responsibilities of matrimony at twentyfive than others are at thirty-five. We aw inclined to think ourselves that the man ot twenty-five would, as a rule, make much ; the better husband. A man who ha* got into what the Rev B. A. Hardy call* the habit of celibacy will not find it easy to enjoy all the varied eaqperiC’acSs of th*j domestic circle. The women, too, hav« some right to be consulted in the matter,j and, speaking generally, they prefer evea’ the youth of twenty to the confirmed-old bachelor of forty. Moat of them sympathise; with the girl who/ when' asked by ‘her father! how she would 'like a husband of fifty, replied that she would! rather have two of; twenty-five. But the author, who has takes up the analysis of the matter, is nob iri. ' favour of very early marriages. haW; heard,” he says, “of people marrying wheal only twenty, or wen eighteen years of ago* Well, there is no use talking to petxpl* : of that kind, they have not come to year*| of discretion. They are infants m the eye* of the few, aind’ fools in l those of every sensible person.” Benjamin Franklin, fife, will be remembered, did not share this opinion. He strongly advocated early marriage®, anil quoted scores of instances to show that! they, were not only Tbs happiest, hut also l the bast for the race. The only condition j ha imposed . was the rather startling one ! .that no man should take a wife until hej ' had “ a house and fire to put her in.” The I man who remains singla, as Pitt did when enjoying an income of thirty thousand • year, because he cannot afford to many, is often deceiving, himEeif. Probably hie i* not prepared to give up a number of extravagant luxuries, and likes to believe thati ■his selfishness is neally prudence. Perhaps" the safest advice is that given by thb reverend author we have just quoted, to the effect that every unto should many when be sees clearly that it is the bast thing he can do. . f

collaboration.

In an age when “ccm operation” ie accepted e.s. the key to most of tits’ puzzling social and political

problems of the centuries,'it is toot astonishing to find it increasing in the form of literary collaboration. Disraeli pictured, a« far back as th© Elizabethan age “three or four poets working on one play, share and share alike, or in due proportion whenever they could peacefully adjust their mutual celebrities,” but. the pasts of to-day are much more “kittle cattle,” and it is mostly the novelists who form combines for tbe ex-' ploitation of literary by-ways. We hiave had several notable pairs, beginning, of course with Besant and Bice, and winding up with Kipling. and Baleabkr, whilst the, Trench,precedent of “Lai Croix de Berny,*’ with its quartette of authors, headed by; Theophite Gautier, has been badly beaten by those four and twenty novelists who bated a pie, which they" pitted and patted” and marked as “The Fate of Fenella,” before serving it up to a curiously uninquiflit-ive public. The suggestion) is now made; that the natural sequence of col-, lab oration.' is a specialising of literary features. This would give us a trust which would automatically group its members,, and attend to a proper sub-division of la- > hour. All the aspiring author would havei to do would be to bring along his plot, it would bs shredded out in the various departments * Mr W. W. Jacobs would supply the humour. Hr Swinburne the incidental poetry and chapter headings, Mrs ; Witid the theology, Mr H. G. Wells the inrngmMioov, Mr- Henry James the conversation, Mr Richard Lo Gallienne whatever ' suggestiveness was required, Mr Marion Crawford the love-making, and Miss Mari« Corelli the “neurotics.” With his own material thus made up in the latest fashionable style, the nervous author might face the publishing season with the utmost confidence. Our novels might lose a little in variety, but in ®to age of specialism it seems inevitable that a further isolation of individual talents (than already exists is neces- ; - . ■