PERSONAL ITEMS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 8354, 6 September 1890, Page 4 (Supplement)

PERSONAL ITEMS.

Lof.d Brassy is the owner of 10,000 acres in Australia. William Morris, the English poet, decorative artist, and socialist, is 56 years old. Swinburne is the chief unmarried literary man in England. At the same time he is a, great admirer of handsome women. The Queen of Spain speaks most excellent English. She is 30 years old and a woman of extraordinary accomplishments, in social and business ways. Mr. Bradlaugh is very fond of fishing, and intends soon to take a vacation in a quiet nook in Scotland, where excellent fishing may be had. The death is announced, at tho age of 79 years, of the Rev. Thomas Helmore, who, since 1871, had held the office of priest-in-ordinary to the Queen. Since he succeeded to the title and estates the young Earl of Dudley, who is aged '2.5, has been seen a good deal upon the turf. His ventures have nob been always remunerative. He recently won £5000 by a horse for which he paid £7000, and lost it, and more, the next day, Alma Tadema says he learnt English from two masters —one a poet, the other a footman ! From the former he acquired the use of elevated, and from the other that of ordinary lauguage. He complimented the poeb and rebuked the servant when he did not understand him.

Moore records whab Lord Ellenborou^h said to , the barrister, upon his asking, in the midst of a most boring harangue, "Is it the pleasure of the Court that I should proceed with my statement?'' " Pleasure, Mr. , has been out of the question for a long time; but you may proceed." Leander McCormick, the millionaire manufacturer of reapers and mowers, has retired from business. He is quite an old man and begins to feel that while he has been manufacturing agricultural machinery for the rest of the world the old-fashioned man with the hour-glass and scythe has been steadily hacking away at him. The King of the Hellenes is by a fortnight an older sovereign than his own father, tho King of Denmark. He inherits a large share of his mother's cleverness, and of her facility in adapting herself to circumstances. Bub for this ho probably would not have gob on so well in Greece as he has done.

Mr. Parncll usually wears a loosely-fitting cutaway coat. But on State occasions he always dresses in a frock coat, and, like Mr. Gladstone's, it is a garment so well worn that ib is often very disagreeably shiny. It was observable, however, bhab after winning his case for damages against the Times he appeared in a magnificent new suit.

It is nob generally known that Bismarck has an adopted son, now twenty years of age, and a Frenchman. It was one evening during the Franco-Prussian war that Bismarck entered his sleeping apartments, twenty-five miles from Paris, and was surpr dto find a tiny baby boy curled up asLep on his pillow. The mother had left a note saying that her husband had been killed at Sedan, and despair and want had forced her to give up her child. Bismarck scratched his head over his doubtful prize of war, but finally accepted it and sent it by special nurse to Berlin, where he had it well cared for. He has given the boy a good education and he is now a model young man and devotedly attached to the old Prince.

Mr. William Malcombe, of Easter Skene, who has just died, was one of the best representatives of the old Scotch lairds who lived at the beginning of the century. He was a man of great practical knowledge and sense, and his management of the small and valueless property to which he succeeded was one of the wonders of the country in which he lived. He was beso known as a great stock raiser, his celebrated Easter Skene herd of polled Aberdeenshire cattle being one of the best known and oldest in Scotland. But he was quite as remarkable as an agriculturist, for when he succeeded to Easter Skene the ground was an unreclaimed swamp and barren moor. At his death there was not a square yard of waste ground on the property, ail being in rotation under pasture or wood.