NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 9722, 18 January 1895, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Lord Bkassey, whose acceptance of the Governorship of Victoria has justi been notified by cable, was born at Stafford in 1836, where his father, the late Mr. Thomas Brassey, was living temporarily, while superintending some importanb railway contracts. The first school he went to was at Dieppe, during the construction of the Rouen and Dieppe railway. He was afterwards sent to Temple Grove, East Sheen, then to Rugby, and finally to University College, Oxford. He is an Hon. D.C.L. and M.A. He was successively member of Parliament for Devonporb and Hastings ; a Deputy-Lieutenant and Justice of the Peace for Sussex; from 1880 to 1884 a Civil Lord of the Admiralty, and the following year Secretary to the Admiralty ; President of the Statistical Society for the year 1879-80 ; and in 1886 he was raised to the peerage. Lord Brassey is one of the directors of the British North Borneo Company ; of the Naval Construction Armament Company ; and the Powell Duffryn Steam Coal Company. In 1893 he was appointed a Lord-in-Waiting. At present he I is chairman of the Royal Commission on Opium, which has taken up a great deal of his time; bub, notwithstanding all these multifarious and arduous offices, Lord Brassey takes a personal inberesb in philanthropic work, such as Dr. Barnardo's Homes, the British and Foreign Sailors' Society, of both of which he is president, and is a large subscriber to the funds of the Missions to Seamen, having quite recently given the munificent sum of £5000 to assist the completion of the Sailors' Institute at Poplar. He considers ib a duty to give at least a tenth part of his yearly income in charity. But Mr. J. Potter, who has been Lord Brassey'a secretary for 20 years, and was also a valued friend of the late Lady Brassey, says that this is tar too low an estimate, and that the whole amount is always greatly in excess of this.

Lord Brassey's beautiful yacht, the Sunbeam, is well known in almost every port in the world ; she is a composite, three-masted schooner of 532 tons, designed by Mr. St. Clare Byrne, of Liverpool. Under the skilful management of her owner, who is also her captain, and holds a Board of Trade certificate as such, she has gallantly weathered the fiercest storms. In her handsome saloons visitors of all ranks and nationalities have been right royally entertained, and the rippling waves have danced to the merry jests and laughter of happy groups lounging on her deck. But even over the Sunbeam dark clouds have occasionally gathered, and there were intervals of storm, danger, and deep affliction, of which the year 1887 has loft a record. For it was in this year, and during a voyage to India and Australia, after the yachb had left Port Darwin and was a thousand miles from the nearest land, that the late Lady Brassey died, and was buried at sea. In addition to the Sunbeam, Lord Brassey owns a very smart yawl, of 120 tons, called the Zariba. He is a notable exception to the old saying that a sailor makes a bad horseman, for he is difficult to beat in the hunting field.

Lord Brassey has distinguished himself also as a writer, his "Naval Annual" being a standard work of reference on all naval matters, and there has been lately issued, in two large volumes, a collection of his papers and addresses on matters naval and maritime during the last 20 years. His opinions on these subjects are of great value. It is nob too much to say that he revolutionised the naval administration of the country, and that the pre-eminence of Great Britain as a naval power to-day is largely owing to him. It was he who established the Naval Reserve, by which the flower of the mercantile marine and the fishermen are placed ab the service of the empire in case of war, and also the Nava! Artillery Volunteers, a brigade which he himself commands. He gave his attention nob only bo the navy, bub also' to merchant shipping, for the benefit of which he has done almost as much as Mr. Plimsoll, though not in such a pugnacious way. He has spent several years of his busy life ab sea, and is the first yachtsman who ever sailed his own vessel round the world. Yachting with him has never been a mere amusement, bub each of his voyages was taken with a definite object, and has resulted in some practical good to his country. The course of the Sunbeam, in fact, was watched with as much interest as if she had been a man-of-war on special service, and Lord Brassey's published letters from the various points he touched at were much more valuable than official dispatches. -;

A; few words about Lady Brassey can hardly fail to be of interest. Perhaps ib is nob generally known that Lord Brassey's wife, the second Lady Brassey, should in a

social phase prove & very pleasing succor to Lady;Hopetoun. Lady Sybil doVef Erassey, wife of Lord Brassey, is the fourth daughter of the late < Viscount Malde granddaughter of the Earl of Essex, a D ! sister to the presenb Earl. Her father v, informed a writer in the Strand Magazhj* died before succeeding to the title, a! she never lived in her beautiful ancestral home, Cassiobury Park, Hertfordshire Lord Brassey was married in 1890, and b, ' one little girl, the Hon. Helen de Ve* 3 Brassey. In th» coarse of conversatio the writer of an interview i n a.' Strand learnb that before her marria? she lived very quietly, had travelled bub very little, that -her uneventful home • life had developed a great tasu for reading, and that she was an enthusiast about sculpture, a great walker, an accomplished horsewoman, and very fond of bunting. Lady Brassey has a horror of publicity, and always finds time for works of charity. During the pressure of the London season, with all its attendant gaieties and consequent fatigue, the dinner parties balls, - and fortnightly musical reunions at which she has to enact the hostess, she still finds time and inclination for benefiting and personally visiting the poor and suffering. She has founded a convalescent home for children at Bexhill, and is a frequent and welcome visitor at the Seamen's HO3. pital near the Victoria and Albert Docks with which Lord Brassey is also at>soci. abed. The action of M. Casimir-Perier in resigning is adversely criticised both in France and elsewhere. The consensus of opinion is that he should have stuck to his post. Had M. Casimir-Perier been built of sterner stuff that is probably what he would have done. But the slanders and insults and mud-throwing to which he has been subjected ever since his election, the absence of all moral support from Parliament, whose duty it is to uphold authority, and with a discredited Ministry, the position to a man of the personal integrity and high sense of honour of M. Casimir-Perier must have been unendurable. His successor will be appointed to-day. A number of candidates are mentioned, bub it is doubtful whether any 0! them will receive the necessary number of votes. The Duke of Orleans is at Dover ready to place himself at the head of an agitation for the restoration of the monarchy should a fitting opportunity arise. In the present chaotic, condition in which France has been plunged anything may happen. In the battle at Kaiping the Chinese lost 2000 men including many officers of high rank. Severe fighting between the Italians and Abyssinians has taken place. The natives lost heavily bub the Italians on the second day had to retreat with the loss of over a hundred men. lb is hinted by the St. James's Gazette that Lord Br&ssey's appointment as Governor of Victoria may nob improbably have been du« to the desire of the Rosebery Government to get rid of a possible opponent. Be that as it may, Victoria has secured a Governor whose special knowledge on naval question! will be of great service to the colony. There is probably no more distressing 01 pathetic spectacle than that to be witnessed at the mouth of a coal pit after a great disaster in the workings below. The scene ab the Giglake colliery in Staffordshire must have been of a peculiarly sad and heartrending character. By the explosion of some gunpowder cars on an American railway seventy persons were killed and over a hundred severely injured. Lord Randolph Churchill's condition does not improve. He I is reported to be much weaker.