NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 10406, 2 April 1897, Page 5

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

mcEST cable message informed us that duel 8 to be fought in France between prince Henry of Orleans and Baron Valot, king the outcome of a quarrel which oC cnrred between the parties in Africa. Poiiibly nothing very serious will result, for of late years French duels have generally been i ooe d upon with ridiculo rather than liria. I' " a 8 been recently pointed out tb»t> perhaps the greatest cariosity about duelling is that ib should ever have been thought of as a salve to wounded honour; bruise anything more illogical than for a m o to constitute himself a target to be hot at by a possibly superior marksman, •nth 8 cooler temperament than hie own, because that other has given him the lie, has run off with his wife or his mistreat, «as nerer heard of outside of Swift's flying blind. But the fact remains.

A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine furnishes some diverting illustrations of the absurdity of these encounters. Two frenchmen, who were in love with the same lady, agreed to fight for her hand in the air. They and their seconds wenb up in two balloons. Only one of them was perforated by a shot; it immediately collapsed and its two occupants were killed. The lady married the survivor. The father of a young girl in Aix, with whom Thiers h»d probably been too intimate, insisted upon the young student marrying (, e r or fighting a duel. "I deemed it f i M r," said tho future President, "to spend a few minutes with a weapon of which I knew nothing than a lifetime with a woman of whom I knew too much. , ' gbots were exchanged, and Thiers had received his opponent's bullet. "If he had not been so little," said a wit, " he would never have been so groat." A wellknown picture by a French artist represents idael between two ladies, stripped to the waiit. A combat with daggers actually took place between the abbess of a convent in Venice and her rival in the affections of • certain abbe. Two actresses also fought with swords upon the stage of the Hotel de Bourpoyne in the time of Louis XIV. In J361 a duel took place in Paris between a man and a dog, by order of the Court. A French gentleman named Montdidier had been murdered and bnried in a wood. Some time afterwards his faithful dog flew jt the throat of a certain Chevalier Macaire. Armed ,with a stick be was compelled to face his canine accuser, who attacked him io lavagely that the murderer confessed his crime. The latest novelty in duels is reported from Spain, where two members of the bicycle club of Granada quarrelled and fought on wheels. Each, armed with tho terrible navaja, rushed at full speed on his intagonist, and after three encounters one named Moreno plunged his knife into the breast of the other, named Perez, and in a few minutes the latter died of internal hemorrhage.

The latest reduction of some of Mr. Buskin's social theories to practice is taking place in the State of Tennessee. There, on 230 acres of good land in a high state of cultivation, with 1100 acres also ready to fence, "an ideal co-operative colony" has lately been established. Each family lives inn separate home, bub the settlers bare meals in common. All that ia required of them is that "each member should give equal hours of work to those given by all the other members of the association; to inbmit to Che regulations made in the interests of all; and to pay into the general {and the sum of £100.

A railway project for bringing London and Japan within sixteen days' journey of each other is being talked of, which, though ib may take some yoare to accomplish, seems to be within the bounds of the practicable owing to the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway. The route would be by Dovor and Ostend, the terminus of the Belgian State Railways, and thence to Wirballen, on the Russian frontier, and on to St. Petersburg by tho "Nord Express," and the construction of the Trans-Siberian line would givo this train still greater importance. The total length of the new system is 4517 miles, from Ischeljabinsk to Vladivostok on the eea of Japan. Over a ehird of the gigantic enterprise is finished, 918 miles having been constructed during 1895,

In the recently published letters of Lord Blachford, who was Permanent Under Secretary for the Colonies, from 1861) to 1871, a passage occurs, which is of considerable interest in viow of the present European situation. " What ft muff," Lord Blachford wrote to Dean Church, in 1880, " Kuropean concert is, unless one or more Powers are prepared to act as constable I The Sultan is something between »farce and a bad dream, in which the same ridiculous or disgusting dilemma is always turning up, in the midst of all your struggle! to avoid it. Tho eternal promiso and the eternal breach, and the eternal surprise »k being eternally taken in exactly tho tame way, and the eternal objections to the only one mode of breaking through the eternal dilemma, are enough to choke one."

Itappearsthatthesentenceof death passed upon Mrs, Carew for the murder of her husband at Yokohama wa9 nob commuted - in consequence of any question arising upon the evidence, as the following paragraph from the Japan Mail shows: — " Her Majesty's consul Inn received a despatch from Her Majesty's Minister at Tokio to the effect that he has had under consideration the subject of the sentence of death passed in Her Majesty's Court, Yokohama, on the Ist instant, on Edith May Hallowell Carew for the murder of her husband, and that, in view of the Imperial proclamation of His Majesty the Emperor granting to all Japanese subjects under sentence on that day a remission of punishment, it appears proper that a similar measure of grace ihould be extended to the criminal in this ewe, whose trial in a Court sitting in His Majesty's dominions had been proceeding for some days before, and wae about to be brought to a conclusion at the time of His Majesty's proclamation. Her Majesty's Minister has accordingly decided not to direct that the sentence of death be carried into execution, and in virtue of the powers conferred upon him by the Order-in-Council, Isßo, and otherwise, has dh-eoted that, in lieu of suffering capital punishment Mrs. Carew shall be imprisoned with hard Übour for life."

The only news from Crete to-day is that the wanhips of the Powers have resumed Ibe bombardment of the Greek military camp, near Fort Izzeden. The situation is c&uting great excitement in England, judging from the statement made that the Government are being overwhelmed with wqlutiona in favour of their foreign policy, pa«sed at public meetings and by public bodies throughout the country. An inei- . dent which is well calculated to inten. •ify the feeling of hostility to the Boere W reported from Pretoria. A Boer lieutenant who had ueed slanderous and insulting language against Queen Victoria hits beer) impended. The British Resident, however, has demanded his dletniese!. President Kruger has expressed his regret at the conduot of his officer, There is on* distressing feature of the naval , scandal at .Sydney. It appears that C'raddock, the %■'■■■ •

absconding assistant-paymaster, married a, member of a highly respectable family last Friday under an assumed name, and the couple were on their honeymoon when he was arrested in Melbourne. There was a painful scene when the wife learned the deception that bad been practised upon her.