NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVI, Issue 11199, 20 October 1899, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Every age is probably a victim to its own leading phrases and ideas. For ourselves we labour under the nightmare of all that is included in the word " modernity." Our novels are nothing if not modern j our plays, our dramatic situations, our characters, above all, our women, are afflicted with the same bacillus, the same poisonous and malevolent germ of the modern, the up-to-date, the smartiy fin-de-siecle. An extremely modern play has just been produced at the London Haymarket, which, naturally enough, forms the inevitable third to two predecessors at the Globe and Court Theatres respectively. Mr. Pinero, tired with the fantastic romance of " The Princess and the Butterfly," and the rococo sentiinentalism of "Trelawny of the Wells," wrote a play, stuffed through and through with cleverness, which is neither sentimental nor romantic, but purely and simply cynical, called "The Gay Lord Quex." Mr. ton, a dramatist, who once seemed to be under the influence of Albery and Robertson, followed the Globe Theatre play with something infinitely less clever but equally sordid satirical, and bitter, to which he gave the title of "Wheels Within Wheels." Mr Sydney Grundy, not to be outdone, has just produced a piece called "The Degenerates "-a happily ingenious title, which serves at once as an explanation and an apology for introducing his audience to a society of libertines, demimondaines, and financiers, concerning whom the only thing to be said is that whatever is new about them is not true, and whatever true is not new. Verily it is a wonderful thing to live in an atmos' phere of modernity ! The contemporary man, according to the novelist and dramatist, trades on the wits of unscrupulous company promoters, has had two or three immoral pasts, and invariably covets his neighbours wife. The contemporary woman is worse, for she excuses her laches by pretending that she is "a- good sort," breaks the Commandments on the plea that, at all events, she is 'neve, vulgar, and glories in being not only barefaced but barebacked. Poetic fate, as manipulated by the modern playwright, consists in uniting the aforesaid conscienceless male to the reckless and well-dressed female with abundance of whitewash and much mutual forgetfulness, the curtain descending in a blaze of epigraip and. mordant cynicism. And society, which has at least the virtue of an easy and remorseless tolerance, goes home with a selfsatisfied and fatuous smile, remarking on the cleverness, the smartness, the contemporary noint and acility 1 : of - tie satire, , delighted

• Y.tllf • ■ ' . , . to see tluit' some of its tendencies can bo agreeably painted, and not caring to art v whether the picture be true. It is all sc ;|§ charmingly vivid and up-to-date andlfl "actual;" modernity, like the old-f liioned and now defunct charity, apparentjyj|| being able to cover and excuse a multitude ofS

An interesting account of the Kaiser's summer home at Willielmshohe is given in® a recent number of the Edinburgh- DeSi.*® patch. About three miles west of K aßse | .| runs from north to south a richly-wooded height some five miles long, called thafll Habichtswald, or Hawk's Forest, and mid. I way between its ends a convent was built'' § about the year 1125. It was called Weisvfi senstein (whitestone), and was inhabited probably from the thirteenth or fourteenth • century onwards, by monks of the Order ofs St. Augustin. In 1527 it was secularised<§& i.e., appropriated to his own use, by Phjlip ,3 |! the Magnanimous, Landgiave of Hesse, and'f? served for nearly 80 years as a place of rest ;-: and refreshment for him anil his descen. dants when they went hunting. In 1605 the Landgrave Moritz pulled it down, and • built » palace in its stead, to which the : name of Moritzhain was given, and which shared the fate of almost utter ruin which'!® blighted Germany during the Thirty Years'Wwar. In 1701 Landgrave Charles, with an"-*'• Italian named Guernieri as architect, began to build a huge palace on the top of the® Habichtswald. It was finished in 1714 .i® Eight hundred and forty-two steps lead up to the plateau on which it stands about' 1360 ft above the level of the river Euldj ® The grounds of. the palace are very fine, with 11; their high-towering woods and great cai'-$ cades about 820 ft high and 36ft broad 4 Charles' grandson, Landgrave Frederick H-'sl bitterly surnamed the Soul-seller, enriched himself by placing 22,000 men at' the dis.'Si posal of the British Government. Ho re. , built the mined Moritzhain. His son, Lanj/'S grave William IX., afterwards called Elec«. tor William 1., pulled down the Mortizhainand built the palace of Wilhelmsholio (Wfl. Ham's Height), which still commemorates his'®' name. It was begun in 1787, and ended in 1798, and was subsequently largely added to. In 1866 William ll.'s son, the Elector Frederick William, sided against Prussia and was sent as a prisoner to Stettin, where® he had to sign a treaty making over his elec. torate to Prussia. ';'§s-

A serious battle seems to be imminent in 1 Natal. British cavalry patrols engaged the enemy's advance forces near Bester's station %• about 20 miles from Ladysmith. Some casualties are reported, but full particulars are not yet to hand. General White is"® sending out supports to assist .the patrols. General Joubert is also sending troops t<K Bester's and Gelenco, so that a battle is cefc J tain to eventuate. The Boer commando at Vryheid are approaching Rorke's Drift. A'"'' report is to hand from a private source that fighting has taken place on the Cape Colony border, and 100 Boers been killed, but it is 1 not confirmed. A bombardment of Mafe.. king is believed to be proceeding, but on ao-'l-count of the telegraph wires being cut particulars cannot be obtained. The Boers have 4captured Taungs, a small town with a i fortress, on the railway between Kimberlev and Vryburg. |§