NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 10127, 9 May 1896, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

BAiJitabtift* in his hew book dn "fingiisii Literature in the Nineteenth Oetitury," has discoursed not urtWleely on the connection between journalism arid literature. He says that the distinction is like most such things, a fallacy* or at least Capable of being made fallacious. Some of Hie belt work of Ella, SbutHey, Carlyie, Thackeray, and others has appeared as journalism, while certainly much which has been published in' a daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly publication is not literature. It is very true that in a sense, which need Hot be a bad dense, journalism is opposed to literature. Many articles touch the emits of the passing day ; they are- necessarily of ephemeral interest, even when they are of the highest merit, and often their merit lies' largely in this, thit they are different from books. As a rule, the articles which have been most successful in periodicals hare failed when collected in volume form. Of this the most striking example is Albany Fonblanque. For many years his articles were the main attraction of the Examiner. They kept that periodical in a comparatively flourishing state, and they were" so much admired that many of them were pat together in a bbok still prized by the curious, In that form they fell absolutely dead. Even the greatest journalists of the day, men like K. H. Hutton and Fitzjimea . Stephen, have obtained a very limited audience for the articles they have chosen to give to the world in permanent form.

No doubt, says an English contemporary, something is lost by this. After all, a book is a book, and a newspaper is a newspaper. Books hare 8 strauge vitality; dace dressed in cloth* they may drift down to the street barrow and be sold at the easy rate of a penny or two, but somehow thoy are rarely destroyed, and there is always the Chance of one" copy being discovered by a sympathetic mind. Newspapers on the other band are remorselessly destroyed. Of a newspaper of which 40,000 copies are printed, perhaps at the end of ten years not fifty will be left. Print a thousand copies of a book, and the chances are that a hundred years after this, two hundred and fifty of them will be found somewhere* Besides, the journalist loses that immortality which is the gift Of hit. Sidney Lee. However well he writes, if he is $'■ nymous, and does not court the pub u "b(,-, his memory soon pusses out of sight. .est him write a few books arid fill a little space in the Museum catalogue, and for as long a period as we need count upon he will figure in the Dictionary of National Biography and in toe supplements of Allibone.

Most people are under the impression, and persist, despite proof to the contrary, that the Boers have always been absolutely united, and presented a solid front to the British power. Nothing is further from the troth than this, as there has always been an inherent tendency amongst South African Boers to trek away, and split up into small add rival communities. Nob long ago there were no less than three separate Republics in the territory known as the Transvaal; one at Magaliesberg, under Preterms, a second at Lydenburg, and a third at ZoUbpaosberg. Within very recent times such mock Republics as Goshen and Stellaknd Were erected on the western borders of the Tr&nsva&l, whilst in Zululand the formation of the New Republic, now incorporated in the Transvaal, formed a separate and instructive chapter in South African history, and the records of Boer land-grabbing, It may be added also that Boers have gone far afield in the Kalahari Desert, and to the distant Portuguese possessions in Mossamedes, to found separate communities. Before the Chartered Company took Mashonaland there was a desire on the part of the Boers to trek there also. This tendency to split asunder, and to range themselves under separate loaders, has always been a difficulty to Paul Kruger. In 1864 there was ciril war in the Transvaal, and Kruger had to fight a large body of Secessionists. Indeed, the whole history of the first Transvaal Republic was one of plot and counterplot, destined to end in the complete bankruptcy of the State.

One of the questions sometimes asked in the newspapers and at public meetings (says the English Church Review) is the reason it that extraordinary phenomenon of our great cities, " Why do not working men go to church!" For months, for years, they have not been to church. Bub why ? Many are the reasons that may be given, Lots of excuses suggest themselves, us for sins of omission generally. But we fear we shall have in some places a new excuse soon, " Because some of the parsons do not go to church themselves." This sounds a paradox. Some would suppose that only the sick clergy, who are forbidden to go to church by their doctors, and expose themselves I/O chills, etc., by their medical attendants, would abstain from going to church on the Lord's Day. But it Beams on high authority that this duty of attendance of the clergy at their parish churches as an example to the laity, and for building up their own souls, is quite out of date. Even go-ahead bishops think the rule is now obsolete. -M isstonary clergy are told that, except for special emergency, they ought nob "to take part in the ordinary services of the parish church." The old rule by which the mission' clergy took an occasional share in parochial administrations seems getting out of date, and now some of our clergy may, go on for months or even years and never enter their parish church, never share with the mass of the faithful in the Holy Eucharist, never hear the organ peal or the Signified service of the Church of England. No; they are to be exiles to tin taberhAoles and cheap adapted schoolrooms.