NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 8162, 25 January 1890, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF .

There were 93,552 paupers in London at the end of October. Of these 58,434 were in the workhouses. The French army officers are now all armed with revolvers; during the "war of 1870 they had none. The Minister of the Interior is preparing a scheme to check the increasing immigration into Russia, especially of Germans. The deatlxs in London last year numbered 78.845, or 18*5 per 1000 ; in New York, 40,175, or 2633, and in Paris, 22-6 per 1000. The Queen has contributed £25 towards - the Royal Victoria Pension Fund of the Newsvendors' Benevolent and Provident Institution. The commercial port of Sebastopol is to be transferred to Theodosia, reserving the entire harbour and port of Sebastopol for military purposes. The Citizen states that a portion of a Roman wall or aqueduct is now visible at 18, St. Swithin's Lane, where some excavations are being carried out. The Windsor corporation have purchased "The Goswells," a meadow on tho west side of the town, at a cost of several thousand pounds, for the purpose of constructing a riverside promenade. One director and the executors of another have been declared by a judge to be liable for the sum of £250,000 invested in connection with the Sheffield and South Yorkshire Building Society. ■ A great clock has just been completed at Portsmouth which strikes on bells weighing 6£ ions. The inscription on one of the bells says that it was cast on the 70th anniversary of the Queen's birthday. jgjThe Rev. Canon Symonds,RectorofJStockport, —in his teetotal enthusiasm — sacrificed £1000. The owner of the Ring o' Bell's public-house, Churchgate, he has refused to permit the tenant to apply for a renewal of the license. At Gairing, in Austro-Hungary, there is a small Jewish cemetery. A few weeks ago some reckless miscreant destroyed every memorial stone in the cemetery, and having opened a newly-made grave, threw tho corpse, that of a child, on the ground. Lady Henry Somerset, an ardent Temperance advocate, is carrying her principles to a logical conclusion. She has given notice that as the leases of her public-house property in Reigate fall in, the premises will no more be let for similar purposes. In Athens commerce was regarded as being so far from dishonourable that some of the most illustrious men whose names have descended to us as philosophers were occupied in mercantile pursuits. Aristotle kept a druggist's shop in Athens, and Plato sold oil in Egypt. The Hon. Joseph Chamberlain's American wife has had many alterations made in the interior of the fine old house at Highbury, near Birmingham, and, so the gossips say, has successfully introduced several American ideas and features identified with luxurious housekeeping. Two despatches from Chakir Pasha on the state of Crete have been received at Constantinople. In these the Ottoman commissioner deals with several charges made against the Turkish soldiery, all of which he declares to be greatly exaggerated where not absolutely untrue. The ex-King Milan left Paris on November 9, for the neighbourhood of Vienna, to visit a friend for some shooting. Tho Journal de Debats states that it has authentic information that the ex-King will return to France, and will then definitely take up his residence in Paris. The Convent of Trappists at Mont des Cats, near Lille, has been suppressed by the Government, and those of its inmates who are aliens have been ordered to leave the country within 24 hours. The motive for the suppression is solely that there were too many foreigners in the brotherhood. A London firm in the Australian trade, which pays on an average £200,000 a year in freights, has— the report goes— arranged with the Shipowners' and Shipbrokers' Combination, which controls Australian freights, to send most of their cargo from Grimsby instead of from London in future. The Rev. John Robertson, a well-known Edinburgh minister, is clearing the character of Burns. He does nob believeand he says so in his lectures — the poet was given to habitual intemperance— so much, indeed, as the men who wore the white collar and tie in the Ayr, presbytery of those days. Five men of every hundred cannot be trusted with other people's money. This is whab the English sureby companies have learned from their experience. In the United States the business of famishing bonds for fidelity is too recent to warrant such deductions. The electrification of wine is likely to be extensively pursued in Italy. Fifty different sorts of wines have already been experimented upon, and the results have been very satisfactory. The wine is clarified, acquires a " bouquet," and, it appears, stands equally well transport by land or ! long journeys by sea. [ German chemists have discovered in the ' cocoanut a fatty substitute for butter, and j now the United States Consul at Manheim, Germany, reporbs that the new product has j begun to be manufactured on a large scale in that city. A single factory produces 6000 pounds of it per day, worth in the market 15 cents a pound. Mr. Inverarity, a Bombay barrister, has returned to Calcutta, from a lion hunting excusion in the Somali country. He was ordered home on account of a severe mauling he received from a wounded lioness near Berbera. He had no fewer than 16 wounds. Two Somalis who accompanied him beat off the lioness and killed her. At tho St. John's College, Cambridge, on November 8, the elections to fellowships resulted in favour of Mr. John Parker, 8.A., seventh Wrangler in ISS2 ; Air. Humphrey Davy Rolleston, M.8., B.Sc, in first-class of Natural! Science Tripos, 18SG ; and Mr. Alfred William Flux, 8.A., bracketed Senior Wrangler in 1887. Mr. Gladstone has an iron library, which is erected close to the parish church. There are five rcoms in it, the principal one being forty-one feet long, twenty-one feet wide. Twenty tout: weight of books will be fitted into the case 3 which are being made, but, as it is intended for quiet study, only a few persons will bo allowed to use the library a one time.

All critics agree that in the review before the German Emperor at Constantinople the Turkish troops challenged comparison with any in Europe. Even the' Germans admitted that nothing bettor in the way of appearance and marching could be shown in Berlin. Kamphovener Pasha, the German Instructor-General of the Turkish army, led them. Archdeacon Farrar's son, who is studying at Lehigh TJnivorsity, is said to be a bit of a wit. During a visit to Philadelphia he received a good deal of social attention. One evening a young lady turned to him and 3aid : " Your father is one of the big guns of England, is he not, Mr. Farrar ?" He was at one time," 6aid the young man. "He was a canon, you know." Since 1882 eighty-two miles of streets have been built, paved, and drained in Rome, at a cost of £6,000,000, and 3000 houses erected in large, modern blocks, where old quarters formerly stood, and five new bridges thrown across the Tiber. In consequence of these improvements, the old city has been so changed that the visitor of twenty years ago would hardly recognise it. Captain MacFarlanej' of H.M.S. Devastation, has met with a terrible accident while shooting near Larbert. The gun of one of his companions burst, and the charge struck Captain MacFarlane on the leg and inflicted a severe wound. The captain wa* at once conveyed to the house of Mra Stirling, of Glenbervie, close by, and on surgical aid being obtained it was found necessary to amputate the injured leg above the knee.

The Temperance cause in London has sua tained a heavy loss, and a familar figur? upon Temperance platforms has disap peared, by the death of Mr. John C. John-, son, who for upwards of thirty-six years acted as secretary to the Chelsea Workingmen's Teetotal Society, and who continued for nearly the same period the work started by the late James McCurrey in the open air near Chelsea Hospital, and of late years at Battersea Park.

In Barn urn's view England will become more and more a place or resort for Americans of means, leisure, and intellectual tastes. And one reason that he alleges is very curious. He says that in consequence of enormous immigration of an undesirable class of people, America is a much less pleasant place to live in than ib was 20 of 30 years ago ; all the less pleasanb because" political power is manipulated to a da£ {J ftWW extont) by euch prnpie.