PERSONAL ITEMS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 8986, 25 February 1888, Page 4 (Supplement)

PERSONAL ITEMS.

Augusta Marquet, the French novelist and dramatist, is dead, aged seventy-live years. Count Farinole was one of the last survivors of Napolean'swars. Like the Emperor, he was a Corsican. His death is now announced from Bastia. He was 95 years old. The death has been announced of Commander Edmund H. Oldham, on the active list. He entered the navy as a cadet in September, 1860, served in the New Zealand war of 1863, and was promoted to the rank of commander in June, 1882.

Lord Tennyson has written a letter, as President of the Incorporated Society of Authors, congratulating Mr. Julus Claretie and the Council of the Societe de Gens de Lettres on the happy celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of their famous association.

William D. Howells recently remarked :— " Many imagine that writing books, and especially novels, is easy work. I tell you that it decidedly is not. It is work, and hard work." And it may be remarked further that it is " work, and hard work," to read certain novels.

Colonel Tottenham, who has just died so suddenly in America, shared with Colonel King-Harman the honour of being one of the two finest-looking men in the House of Commons. The two, says Truth, once introduced a new member whe was even taller than they were, and certainly three more splendid specimens of the human animal never before were drawn up in line. The St. James' Gazette says:—Here is a note for epitaph hunters. The wellknown Nevada stage-driver," Hank" Monk, who died some months ago, is buried under a tombstone with this extraordinary legend : —'' Sacred to the Memory of Hank Monk—The Whitest, Biggest Hearted, and Best Known Stage Driver of the West; Who was Kind to All and Thought 111 of None. He Lived in a Strange Era and was a Hero ; and the Wheels of His Coach are now Ringing on Golden Streets." The Very Rev. Dr. Scott, Dean of Rochester, died a few days ago, at the advanced age of 6. The venerable gentleman was appointed to the deanery of Rochester in 1870, and it was mainly through his exertions that the restoration of the cathedral was affected. He was, however, more widely known as the joint author with Dean Liddell, of Christ Church, Oxford, of the standard Greek Lexicon. He was also one of the revisers of the New Testament.

Mr. Philip Harwood, the late editor of the Saturday Review, whose death occurred the other day at Hastings, had, writes a London correspondent, spent the earlier years of his life fighting the battle for the repeal of the Corn Laws by editing the League, the organ of the movement. In private life his Kindly ,ajid charming personality won for him a number of attached friends, and one must have gone far to find a sunnier, sweeter nature than that of the editor of the most cynical of our weekly journals. Whittier's eightieth birthday was celebrated by the venerable poet at home in his Massachusetts house, which was filled with a profusion of flowers, and was thrown open to visitors,- who began to arrive at nine in the morning, and continued throughout the day. Whittier, erect, brisk, and smiling, received all with simple cordiality, and bore the fatigues of the day remarkably well. Mr. Lowell, Mr. Holmes, the venerable historian Bancroft, and many other distinguished men of letters sent affectionate greetings. Letters accompanied by gifts came from many schools throughout the country. Truth hears that Matthew Arnold is engaged on his autobiographical reminiscences, and that they will include many new and interesting facts concerning his distinguished father. It adds :—There was nothing which Lord Melbourne regretted more after his fall from power than his having omitted to make Dr. Arnold a bishop. The doctor was near getting Salisbury in 1837, but a southing colleague frightened the Prime Minister by assuring him that Archbishop Howley would refuse to consecrate Arnold and that a contest with " the Church" would inevitably prove fatal to the Whig Government. Dr. Arnold had excited the rabid fury of the Tories and High Churchmen by a scathing article in the Edinburgh . .eview, which was entitled Oxford Maligoants,"