PERSONAL ITEMS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIII, Issue 7644, 22 May 1886, Page 4 (Supplement)

PERSONAL ITEMS.

Gladstone's name in a Canadian ' audience usually evokes ringing cheers. Lady Wilde has been engaged for some time in a work on Irish legends, especially those dealing with the invisible world, Mr. Ruskin advises the rich to teach themselves the church catechism on Sun-days,-and on week nights to teach the poor how to dance.

The Prince of Wales, restricted by this physician to a lean mutton chop and stale bread for dinner, is said to be a very melancholy dyspeptic indeed. It ia said that M. Pasteur hopes to be able to treat diptberia and other diseases successfully by a method similar to that used in his treatment of rabies.

The Bishop of Lincoln, England, officiated a few days ago at a country wedding, arrayed in full episcopal canonicals, including a purple cassock, a sumptuous cope, and a most imposing mitre. The officials of the Popo and those of tho King of Italy met for the first time amicably on the occasion of tho recent marriage of the Pope's nephew, Count Pecci, to the Countess Marie Viucenti Cenci.

A strong committee is at work preparing the records of the State trials for publication. The first volume will contain the chief trials from IS2O, at which the series of Howell's State Trials ends, to 18-3. The announcement that Mark Twain has contributed £5 to the fund for Mrs. Hancock comes along simultaneously with the statement that be has made £12,000 out of his thrilling romance of " Huckleberry Finn." It is known that tho King of Bavaria, who ruined himself financially by undertaking to build a magnificent and useless palace, reveres the memories of only two men Louis XIV. of France and Richard Waguer. Mdme. Albaui has lately celebrated her sixtieth, birthday (biographers mostly make her two years older) by a musical party at her house in the Cours la Heine, Paris, where she is living in retirement with her husband M. Zieger. The editor of the World (American paper), Mr. Joseph Pulitzer, has generously given the amount of his salary for his first year in Congress to the Governors of tho New York Hospital. The money will endow a permanent bed in the hospital for sick and disabled journalists. In the forthcoming volume of the " Dictionary of National Biography," which extends from Bottomley to Browell, Mr. James Gardiner writes ou "Cardinal Bourchier" and the "Rev. J. S. Brewer;" Mr. Edmon 1 Gosse on " Richard Braithwaite Professor A. W. Ward on " Richard Brome, the dramatist Mr. Leslie Stephen on " The Brontes and the Rev. W. Hunt on "Lord Brougham." The only persons with whom Queen \ ictoris discusses personal affairs with much candour are Sir Henry Ponsonby, her aged secretary, and her favourite ladies, particularly the Dowager Duchess of Ely. _ It is said that the Queen seldom sees Princess Beatrice and Prince Henry of Battenberg, although there is a popular impression that she regards their company as indispensible to her comfort.

Somebody has spoken of Victorien Sardou's celebrity as "still in its youth." As matter of fact, M. Sardou, though he is vigorous and industrious, is well forward in years, and has probably expressed in a remarkable series of dramas the best that is in him. His "Theodora" — which is to be adopted as an Italian opera—and his " Georgette" shows a decided falling off in tho quality of his work. The fact that a woman. Miss Edgerton, a graduate of Wellesley College, was permitted by the president and trustees of Columbia College to follow a special line of study there on the same footing with men graduates, and was also encouraged to apply for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, is regarded by many persons as an important precedent which the well-known conservatism of the college can hardly resist. Nevertheless, President Barnard, who voices this conservatism, has declared : " Possibly if another woman like Miss Edgerton, with such brilliant merits, should apply for the same privileges, they might be granted ; but the matter would be one for special legislation, as in her case. It is not probable, though, that another woman of such rare scholarship will present herself in many years."