CALAMO CURRENTE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9172, 29 September 1888, Page 1 (Supplement)

CALAMO CURRENTE.

A literary squabble in Imperial and Royal circles would be a novelty and a treat of the highest order, which would be appreciated by all orders and conditions of men. And this we are promised in the forthcoming issue of the diary of the late Emperor Frederick of Germany. An uneasy interest always attached to this production of His Imperial Highness's leisure hours, and as his plucky little English wife was his confidante in all his secrets, and I warrant her contributed or suggested not a few of the liveliest incidents to the narration, the eagle eye of Bismarck was metaphorically on it, as lie no doubt felt conscious that he personally figured in the story occasionally in situations not conducive to the dignity of the greatest subject in the realm. To trap the copy as quickly as was consistent with the solemnity of a palace plunged in mourning was uppermost even in a mind rilled with the mobilisation of millions of armed men ; but our good Queen —God bless her, and may she reign for ever and everwas too many tor him, and carried the thing oil in her waller. One cannot help a sense of giatuiation when one thinks of the dear old lady hurrying upstairs to her bedroom in Windsor Castle, tugging the big bag along, and then, when sue got inside her room, pulling out the stockings and skirts ami nightdresses and tilings for the washerwoman. and then lugging out the bundles 01 M.5<S. from the bottom of the wallet,

and putting on her specs, and untying the pieces of twine beside the candle, and thinking how Vicky dear would be so glad to hear that the things had passed the Customs, and were safe; and that new she could lake pot shots at old Biz/y. and have it out of his pachydermatous old hide for all the worry he had caused her. Indeed, 1 do not know a liner subject for a historical painting than this of the Queen, by the light of a tallow dip, examining the precious manuscript. while the frills on her nightcap fairly shake with glee suppressed and dignified, but struggling to be out, at the thought of how Bizzy will dance like a bear < n a hot griddle, and whoop like a red Indian when the murder is out at Berlin.

Her Gracious Majesty is not a novice in the art of publishing, and she knows the virtue of waetung the public appetite by a preliminary taste; and so, as no doubt Vicky .i;.s surrendered the conduct of the wno.e business to her greater experience, she has just let out a lew extracts from advance sheets, to see how the wind blew. And she moreeau selected shows her skill as an. editress : for, as it was a plot proposed by Napoleon the Little to the old msj to merge French and German difficulties and have a joint "go at England, the ;topic of t.ie three nations togetner at once prick lip their ears, and crave for m.-ru And then Bizzy says it's all a lie ; y lie puts it in more courtly style, as an unintentional prevarication of the truth ; und the yueen, we may be sure, will be put upon her mettle, and I venture to say we shall shortly see the feathers iiy. For the lear old lady, whom we ail revere, has a w.il of her own, and a bit. of a temper, too—and bless her for it—and she won't be sot upon m this way by any rid Bizzy, and called a retailer of the tang that isn't. And I have not th-i faintest tear that she will tire a:.»ther shot thi-t. will make the man of irj> dance a fandango to German music ; h-:{\ tie will call her a nasfv old scurrilous ttjrig. and mere v. 11l be high jinks generu'4" in high literary circles; and .1 only hpe that Vicky will run over to mamma i'iore the fun gets fast and furious at iii iin : for knowing as we do the grit that i.-in the first lady in the realm when she is in, if she gets the war paint on, and feels tijmiy seated in the editorial chair, she will EfiKe old Bizzy squirm before she has done vita mm. Of one thing i am sure, that tie Frederick Memoirs edited by Victoria 'ill be the sensational volume of the age.

When the Grammar School undertook to t, t-: the girls in charge, its conductors eviumly did not count the cost. Woman was tie first cause of trouble to us in man's jrimeval slate, and someway the girls have lien a bother ever since. There is a sort of iitatuar.ion wit a us that makes us like them, j. 1 we can't let ourselves get on without i:e:u, and yet tney are the plagues i: our lives wnerever they go. They are .ike a mass o: iron to trie needle 01 the mariner's com ;kiss, setting it a quivenngand a shivering and a wiiirUng about, so that it cannot Keep pointing steadily to the pole : and many a poor fellow Detore now L<.~ sun" distractedly, "On love ! love 1 lov- : iove what a dizziness ; won't let a poor man go about his business." That is wnat they feel at the Grammar School, though it is not exactly love that does it. out it is the girls all the same that are causing the distraction ; and preventing the boys from getting on with their studies. It is because of tae pianos. Pianos iii front or em, pianos in hank of them, pianos behind them, volleyed and triun ieted ; and " the noise of the pianos," -.;v the principal, "is highly detrimental ci'wurk, and occasions great discomfort to '.he teacher.-." Omy to think of it' Why, what did they expect? Did tney think the girls were coming without, bringing their pianos with them '.' Why, they might as well have thought that their mammas would travel without a bandbox. And tiien to think ot it, the principal fortifies his dreadful opinion by quotations from other horrid principals elsewhere. The Tiinaru one telegraphs, " No music in school hours ; pianos perfect nuisance"; and the Christchurch one telegraphs, ** Piano 111 schoo. hours intolerable nuisance. ; abolished four years ago." Why, these' men must have no music in their souls. It is easy to see that these principals have not had their musical taste cultivated, or they would be capable of appreciating the delightful tempest of sweet sounds in a schoolgirl practising her scales. It is entirely a matter of education, just as is the appreciation of Schubert, with thirty or forty instrumentalists and an indefinite number of vocalists, with all the energy of their natures, all simultaneuslv interpreting his divine and classical lions. Careful training of the musical ar can appreciate both ; and there are no loubt those who by dint of perseverance lave attuned their ears into sympathy vith what a journalistic critic graphically iescribed as the "crash of harmony" vhieh took place on last Tuesday evenjig a*, the Choral Hall when the Choral society was doing Schubert. I am oerfectly sure that there are quite as jiany people who appreciate and enjoy .lie "smash of harmony" of a school • ill at her scales, as there are who honestly ;njov the "crash of harmony " of a hundred .maieurs at Schubert; and that gentlemen should condemn the one as an " intolerable nuisance," while hundreds of people who vat out the concert refrained from expressing themselves in similar terms respecting the other, shows either the different effect which musical culture has on different minds, or the extraordinary slavery of conventional fashion under which we are bound.

The people of New Zealand are at the present hour something like a hive of bees, with the queen bee lost. It is said that when such a catastrophe occurs, the little insects lose their heads, set up a bewildered buzz, neglect- their industrial duties, feel that they are utterly lost, and that they can gather neither wax nor honey till the queen fit-" comes again to restore order out ot con-hi-ion, and help them 011 the way to prosit: ity. We have not exactly lost our queen bee, but the beneficent control from which all our blessings are thought to flow has beer: paralysed by inanition ; the Government's right hand has lost its cunning, and because we have so long looked to the Government to do everything for us, the paralysis of Government is the death of enterprise, and we think that the colony is ruined. Now in the case of men. as well as bees, this is an instance of heredity of instinctive belief. In the mother land, ironi which most of us have come, the people have from generations past been taught to regard the. Government as something from above, not of them nor created by them, but a superior creature, invested with supernal gifts and powers, tlib beneficence ot which is to be thankfully out submissively accepted. And so when come to a land iu which Government springs from ourselves, we caunot divest

ourselves of the instinctive idea that it is still clothed with superior powers, of a wonder-working kind; and having with our own hands moulded and set up our golden image, we n™est it, as it were, with divine attributes, and never can get over the idea that by reason of some inherent and mysterious powers which we do not attempt to fathom, it is capable, and it alone, of working out our salvation. And so when trouble comes to us, we perhaps take out our idol and wallop it vigorously, as some of the heathen do to their fetish, when it does not bring them lain or sunshine or success in war; but whether we abuse and censure, or coax and wheedle the Government, we seem to labour under the irrepressible conviction that prosperity can only come to us of the grace of our own graven imago which we have set up.

How different the experience of our Yankee cousins. A hundred years ago and more, a violent wrench was given to the hereditary instinct of putting their trust in rulers; and whether it was that the instinct then died, or that they have more narrowly scanned the weak points in the linage that their hands .set up ; and the lapse of four or live generations lias worn away every link in the chain of hereditary confidence in Government as the giver of all good, the citizens of the great Republic,, wherever scattered over the wilds of their vast territory, appear to rely on their own stalwart arms and their own indomitable will, for the. overcoming of their difficulties ; and if they have a bridge to build they put their heads and hands together and build it; and if hey get in a slough they put their own shoulders to the wheel and "lift it out, instead of crying like us to Jupiter to do it for them ; and so if the Government were dead, it would, in so far as the onward progress of these pioneers of the backwoods goes, make no difference whatever. But with us the paralysis of Government is the death of hope ; and not only has a succession of misgovernment dragged the whole people on with it apparently to the verge of ruin, but we feel that the Government, and nothing but the Government, can bring us back to safety and prosperity. This absolute dependence on the Government, is just as blind and just as senseless as the conduct of the bees who can neither gather honey nor build their cells, nor do anything but buzz, bewildered and despairing, till they find their queen. Trust in Government as the source oi all good has been the will-o'-the-wisp that has led us into this slough ; and surely it is time that the spell was broken. Pollux.