CURRENT GOSSIP.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVII, Issue 6273, 24 December 1881, Page 3

CURRENT GOSSIP.

Carlylk was not a good speller. A ldennan Ellis, the Lord Mayor of London, is an auctioneer.

Queen Victoria's maids of honour average about fifty years of age. Dean Stanley used to say that until his marriage he had never really lived. In consequence of the desire of the Emperor, Bismarck will remain in office.

The Shah has sent to the Princess Stephanie the Order of the Sun set in diamonds.

One of the porters at Trinity College, Dublin, is the son of a peer, fallen and disin-» hented.

Although considerably past seventy, Mr. Gladstone has just now, for the first time, put on spectacles.

The Duke of Norfolk's ehi'd being incurably blind, his f.ith'jr taken it to Lourdes to try supernatural means.

The ex-K:nprcss is writing her memoirs, in what they call seclusion, at the Schlois Arenen erj, assisted ; y a half-dozen journalists.

It is reported in London leiral cirelcs that it Lord Sclborne is not s >■-.?! able to assume the performance of his nuties as Lord High Chancellor, the Great >i.al will be placed in commission.

Major Griffiths, wh-"> < emptied the "Memorials of Millbank," is for publication chronicles of Newgate, lie proposes to give its history from the earliest times to the present day.

The grotesque fJuiira;: !n« written letters to President Arthur it : i .lames Gordon Bennett, asking tht-m t" subscribe toward paying the expenses <-f hi- trial. Rc asks .Mr. Bennett for a clv.pe < f C*JfHX). The Colonel, which l-:;rV: ; qued the aesthetes before Patience, and fv-r which Du M&uricc himself designed the costumes, was the first theatrical performance witnessed by Queen Victoria for more than twenty vcars.

It is said that Mr. Vande:*l»ilt*s phv*:. has told him that he should ho prepared the 44 last moment'' at all time*; that apoplexy promises to terminate his da\ s, and that comparative rest is absolutely necessary.

All the Napoleonic factions have agreed to make Prince Napoleon Victor, sou of Pr'nc© Jerome Napoleon, the heir of that dynasty. The Empress Eugenie has made a will in his favour, lie is a well-trained youth of nineteen.

Poor Miss Braddon ! .All the critics are at her for her treatment of Sir Walter Scott; and the Echo goes so far as to show that her abridgement of "Rob Roy" is taken, from the novel, but from an operatic drama of that name.

Gounod seems to have astonished everybody at St. Etienne a few Sundays since, when he went up to the choir, and sang with the choir boys during mass, and afterward sat at the organ, and began the Seventh Symphony, with chorus by himself.

The Russiau novelist Tschernischewsky, whose novel, printed in 1801, is supposed to have given the first impulse to Nihilism, has been chaincd to his wheelbarrow by day, anil to the wall of his cell iiy night, for twelve years, and resembles a very old man, although only fifty.

Another of the sons of Guinness, the great stout brewer, has married into the peerage. Captain Guinness having married a daughter of the late Earl of Howth. They were joined at Howth, where her family have resided 700 yours without intermission, and in direct succession. Her brother is the thirtieth baron.

Four English soldiers and two Sepoys were recently carried off and sold into slavery in Afghanistan, and the English papers are eager for some one to imitate tfie exploit of Colonel Stewart, who, disguised as an Armenian horse-dealer, penetrated the enemy's country, and afterward resided on the frontier for a month, meeting the special correspondent of a London paper every day, without beiii" suspected of beimi an Englishman.

The deposed Zulu King is about to receive a remarkable present. It is not—as the first guess might be—a cask of rum, for it is the Blue Ribbon army who are the donors. It is nothing less than a concertina, and the instrument has been intrusted to the care of a missionary about to sail from London for the Cape. Cetewayo is gradually becoming more civilised, and he is said to have donned asilk hat and part of a many-eolourcd bathing suit. There arc troublous times to bo cxpectcd on the Cape, as the instrument in such unskillful hands as the King's may incite riot, bloodshed, and, perhaps, assassination of the unfortunate eaptive.