NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 9992, 2 December 1895, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

—« The death of Count Taaffe removes from the circle of living Continental statesmen a familiar and prominentfiguro. His career was curiously paradoxical. He camo of an old Irish stock. The Taaffea once played an important part in Ireland, even to the extent of gaining a peerage. The family now is a fairly equal blend of Kiltie, Czech, and Teutonic elements. Bom in 1833, he fought his first battles for the oppressed on the playground of tho gymnasium. As student, he was a thoroughgoing Democrat. He rose rapidly in the service of the Provincial Governments. Tho Emperor and he had been as boys warm friends and constant companions, and when after twenty years' separation they chanced to meet again ab Linz tbey formed a close attachment, which continued to his death. In 1867, he was called into the Imperial Ministry for the first time. The courtiers scoffed at his ill-mado clothes and marvolled that a man of his rank could eat and drink in third-rate restaurant?, surrounded by clerks find tradesmen. He was singularly lacking in the personal gifts by which most men. win popularity. Be was no orator, no genius. But the Emperor behoved in him and made him Premier in the very i>ext year. Since then until his recent retirement he was a conspicuous figure in Austrian politics. We havo said his career was paradoxical. In politics he was a moderate Liberal yob he was hailed as chief by the Ultramontanes, high Tories, and fierce; Radicals. He was devoted to progress, yet he sanctioned tho most reactionary of measures; in keen sympathy with the poor he passed laws intensifying the sting of poverty [ a thorough-going educationalist ho still helped the priests to tho capture of the schools. Whilst leading one party he was constantly proclaiming his preference for the principles of tho other ; and when his own adhorents met with a defeat he carried on the Government by the votes of their rivals. Amidst all his tergiversations, howevor, he never forfeited for one moment the confidence of his sovereign or the enthusiastic support of the more patriotic of his countrymen. Louis Pasteur, the great bacteriologist, has a place on the list of men who forgot to be in time for thetr wedding ceremony. He confessed the lapse to the author of "An Englijhman in Paris," in these words :— " If ever a wife had to be indulgent to her husband it is mine. She had to begin making allowance fer me the very day we were married 5 nay, before we wore married. Do you know what happened! Well, I forgot that ib was my wedding day. The bride and all her friends were at the church; tho only one for whom they were waiting was the bridegroom. After an hour they went to my lodgings, 'W. Pasteur,' said my landlady, in answer to their inquiries, fU,

bad his Jjreakfasb as. usual, and t OUt 85 usual. You will probably fin fe " at lii 3 laborttory.' And that's whore .'I di find me. It had slipped my mind Zit was my vedding-day." Pasteur often lost in ireams, and fell an easy "ctim to the Pari* Jehu, who on web days Tore him from th< Rue d'Ulm to the Quiii jlalnquai*. «' llithel he went twice * week. The driver had oily to say, "Al'heure, Monsieur," and tlen to drive him round ,nd our.d. Pasteur never moved. As a Liter of course, several of them took ad»Dtage of this to cmrg9 him for an hour or '", ' °Thev nover cid it a second time, for rlsteur could be veiy pugnacious-provided 38 knew he was in foe right.

Writing of Huxle.''s habits of work, Mr. „ \V. Sirmiley, 'he London-American journalist, says:-' His life was almost 'tic. Tobacco was perhaps his one indulgence. A grca", part of the work by fbich the world know him was done after j jlincr| nnd after a hail day's work in the lecture room and laboratory. He never . p , ire d himself. Oft* and often have I '..'-.mi him leave the circle of family and frientU, of which he wis the life, very early to the evening and bttako himself to his library ; a room of which the only luxury was juijl;.', ]f remonstrated with, or appealed t0 for another half-tour, he would only shake his Head. Then was something to be done. Anil it would be midnight or one or o'clock before it was done, and then he his up at seven in the morning. I sometime? thought he had no higher happiness than work ; perhaps nobody has. He would dine on a little soup and a bit of fish ; more than that was a clog on his mind. 'The _ rea t, secret,'he said, 'is to preserve the power of work.ng continuously sixteen hours a day if nted be. If you cannot do iliat you may bo taught out any time.'"

Professor Say«'s address to ths Church Congress, on the credibility of the Bible as attested by recent archseological research, contained some very curious and interesting 'set? connected with the Babylonians. The Mosaic age, it has been often argued, was far too barbarous to produce records so literary in feeling as the early books of Scripture, and this assumed fact has been taken to prove tkatthoy had a later origin. But Professor Sayce shows that the Mosaic 0? 8 in the East was a highly literary one, "as literary, in lact, as the age of the Renaissance in Ktirtpo, and that it would have been a miracle if the Israelites, whether in Egypt or in Canaan, had not shared in the general literary culture of the time." In the century bofore the Exodus, an active correspondence was constantly going on between the Nile and the Euphrates, " and this correspondence was in the foreign language and foreign script of Babylonia, necessitating the existence all over the civilised East of schools and libraries, of teachers and pupils." The chief cities of Babylonia boasted of their libraries, some of which had beei. 1 founded six thousand years ago, "and at the very time when Abraham as born in Ur of the Chaldees, one of its poets was composing a great epic in twelve books, which formed the close of a long preceding period of epic verse." Moses, then, could have written ha Pentateuch, and those to whom it is addressed, could have read and understood it, That is Professor Sayce'3 conclusion.

The state of affairs in Turkey is most unsatisfactory. Tho Porto does not appear to have any mind of its own. The Sultan, too, is evidently at a loss how to act. He is constantly changing. The news that the British Ambassador had ordered a warship to come through the Dardanelles threw him into a condition of alarm. At midnight he sent two of his Ministers to plead for delay. The Palace clique, however, seems to have overcome his fears, and there is now a disposition to oppose additional guardships being sent to the Bosphorus. The dispute between England and France regarding the Mekong has reached a point at which negotiations have come to a deadlock. The police in Berlin have closed a number of social democratic club 3, and it is apparent that throughout Germany the authorities hive commenced a crusade against socialism. A motion in favour of the revision of the constitution has been rejected by the French Chamber of Deputies. The Cuban rebels succeeded in blowing up a train conveying Spanish troops. Thirty of the latter were killed. An outbreak of small-p.ix is reported from Rio. The mortality is said to amount to 100 daily.