NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11852, 2 January 1902, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

A cablegram published yesterday announced that two of the three newly-created Anglican bishoprics in Victoria had been filled, Archdeacon Lahgley being elected Bishop of Bendigo and Archdeacon Aimstrong Bishop of Wangaratta. The Bishop oi Gippsland has yet to be appointed. The Venerable Henry Avchdall Langley, Archdeacon of Melbourne, has spent the major portion of his ecclesiastical career ip New South Wales in an atmosphere which has admirably fitted him to lead the Low Church party in Victoria. He was educated at Moore College, where he graduated in 1885. He was ordained a deacon in ,1865; and a priest in the following year by the Bishop of Sydney. His first curacy was at Bathurst in; 1865-67. :In ■; 1867; he became incumbent of Holy Trinity parish at Orange, and three years later became attached: to St.-Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney. ' From'lß7o ■, to;-1875 he had a living at Balmain, and after several other changes' of parishes came in : 1878 to Victoria to take charge of ; one of the 4 principal Low Church : * congregations in Melbourne, that of St. " Matthew's, Prahran. Ir .1887 he was elected ■a. canon of St. Paul's, snJ lit, 1890 : the bishop appointed him Ai.*;J.;;>on of Gippsland, a position exchanged four years ,' afterwards; for ; the; archdeaconry of Melbourne. A good organiser, , a powerful speaker, and ■;' a vigorous, controversialist,: the .archdeacon bar so stamped ; the Melbourne dioceie • with his- individuality > that his friends often - describe him as the '." Pope" of the Church of England in that city. Tho Venerable Thomas; Henry: Armstrong is a Victorian, and something of ; a scholar. An alumnus !of *Melbourne University and Trinity College, Dr.; Armstrong was an honorman in his arts course, taking a second-class in his first year, and winning an exhibition in his third. He took his B.A. in 1880, and M.A. three years later. ■ ■ His first priestly work, aftei ordination in 1880, was done in the parish ; of Christ Church, ; St. Kilda,' where he stayed two years. ; In 1883 the archdeacon became incumbent of - St. Columb's, :: Hawthorn, a living which he retained : till: 1894, when he •;-.;■■ became Archdeacon ;of ■';; Gippsland. Though" a big man" mentally and physically, Dr. Armstrong ; possesses a quiet, winning, and sympathetic manner, -which has much endeared him. to the lone " bush parsons," in whose interests he ; has battled long and earnestly. He is a thoughtful' rather than an eloquent preacher, and keeps well in touch with modern thought. It will be '-necessary for the Archbishop of Sydney, as Primate of Australia, ;, to ap- 1 prove of the selection of the new bishops, on behalf of .the whole Australian Church. Bishop Gee's successor in the important see of Melbourne has not yet been selected. He will be the ■ first Anglican : Archbishop i of Melbourne as at the next General Synod of the Australian Church Victoria will be an ecclesiastical province consisting* of five bishoprics. He will no doubt be selected; in England. The Australian 'Church has also to find' a bishop for the vacant Goul- j burn See, and a. successor to Dr. Montgomery, who recently resigned the Bishopric of Tasmania.

There are few things in the world, in spite of Lord Rosebery, so intensely interesting as biography, and so long as it remains true that " the proper study of mankind is man," those who love to pursue the [ study of mankind need: not fear that" the ways of men will cease-to be sec down in books. There were never so many. . biographies in theI world as to-day, and : never, ; perhaps, ' so' j many bad ones; but it is not every, bio-' I grapher, even .when he.writes from Dalmeny, ; who can respond to Dr.; Johnson's-test of I living with the : man . of whom ;he writes. The. man whose life, told by an unsuccessful lawyer in six hundred thousand words, stands out as the best of all biographies, laid down a dictum that "they only who live with a man can write his life with any. genuine exactness and discernment." "Lord: Rosebery— would surely censor the 'Life of Johnson" out of literature !—would be the- last man in the world to accept such a restriction. Lord RoSebery saw neither Peel, Pitt, nor Napoleon, but he has written excellent lives of all three," and for the sake of such biographies most "people are probably content to encourage biography, even at the cost ox a few bad books. " The • most universally pleasant and universally pro Stable of all reading," was Carlyle's des- 1 cription of biography,'and the wcrld, it would seem, agrees with him, Mr. As- I quith, in; the speech which drew from Lord Rosebery his vision of a biographical Utopia,) remarked the fact that " the most splendid | genius of his own or any other time left I behind him outside; his writings hardly a single undisputed trace of his own personality." Yet there are extant quite . l'W) " Lives of Shakespeare," scattered in "■": a Shakespere library of more than a thousand volumes. Half of them are critical, and; there are no fewer than ninety books respecting the authenticity of Shakespere's work. Twenty authors have dealt with Shakes-;: perian forgeries, sixty, others have had their"say on works *' attributed to Shakespere," ; and a hundred and fifty more have fallen in love with "Romeo and Juliet. As though to compensate for the lack of | personal history in the 140: "Lives" of j Shakespere, twenty-six concordances and . dictionaries devoted to Shakespere have : come into existence, and there are in the British Museum quite sixty books recording posthumous celebrations of the birthday of the man of whose personality, as Mr. As--quite said, we know practically ' nothing.; Napoleon shares with Shakespeare the distinction of the highest place in biography.The two figures,:so vastly different in their; lives and in the mark they left ; on the V world, have engaged the attention of; the; writers of books more than any other two men who could be earned. Eight hundred authors have felt it their mission to give to the world a " Life" of the Great Corsican, and the fact ik at there . were 799 lives of; Napoleon; extant did not deter Lord Rose-' bery from giving us another. Nor is there any, reason why it, should have done; it is surely better that the, world should see Napoleon from a thousand standpoints than' from only one,'; and the worst of all biographies can hardly, be without ah element of good. The "Lives" of Napoleon, numerous as they, are, do not by any means complete the Napoleon library,; which embraces an other three hundred critical works, one of them addressed to the ." Infamous Wretch, it there be one, who dares to talk, of or:' even hopes to find Mercy in the breast of the; Corsican Bonaparte." The 130 Lives of Julius '!'. Ctesar seem modest enough after we have stood before the Shakespere and Napoleon shelves in the world's great library;, but it is really a remarkable list when we bear in mind the age in which Caesar lived. It is necessary to 'come down to our own J j times to find a- great Englishman who has j a library all to himself which approaches; those" of Shakespere ; to Napoleon. f There 1 are something like three hundred biographies of Oliver Cromwell—'' The "unparalleled; monarch," as one of them calls himmost of them purely personal.

The Americans, according -to" Mr. W. D. Howells in the North American Review, are still not only, quantitatively but also qualitively; behind the English in humour, and not only, in literary humour, but also

s r t • ; n , 'l\ MOawMM-MWliMiwiliiMlnnnliOTp 11 nil hit 111 ill, .ma, iii, ■ jin artistic htaiour. Du Maimer was not •■' the only* Endisb artist who abounded iin sweetness, and whoso satire was almost' a caress. There Vas Leech, there was Doyle, 1 there wis Keeie, each in'his way most lovable as' well*,as witty. Except Mr.- • ' Peter- Newoli, , wiose quaintnoss is full of gentle charm, tlie.only American like then* . ' | is Mr. Oliver Hetford, who is an English*. > .! | man ; the .rest hay* all a biting, rather than \ a caressing, wit. The American's are in- '/■ I ferior to the Germans as well 'is the English ■ ' in their want of sweetness, their want of humanity, one may. ever- call it. You cau hardly take. up a copy of Fliegende Blatter, l or Jugend, or oven Bimplicissimus, without ; coming on proof or the fact; a spirit of .kindliness pervades not only those little domestic comedies which, humorous German art ': ' is so rich in, but it tinges the sharpest political satire on which tie humorists may ven- , ture in conditions where the law. of lese- :*' majesty is over-soul. . The Americans are, the most intensely domesticated people in . the world, with the purest and most loving *„ : family life; but if you believe their- graphic humorists, they are always aiming. to. make :-. mercenary marriages, when they , are not i; trying for divorces, and their children are' "•■; of an cdiousness, for v Inch universal putting ~■'-;; tt- bf'd ,v-"«uld he gross indulgence. These ' "'. binr'-'. " 5 .'•'. t -,r. are not nasty as to their Win m :ii. French way, but they I art' nasty in tl» : tempers, apparently, 1-5 z I else they : render.a perfunct ■■/ obedience to i a supposed ideal in ;h& pt'.;pH when they make things that -are banal and brutal and ~ , cruel. There is not one 0:' them who em- ;. bodies in the graphic way anything of tho. = colossal humour, the constant generosity, "_; of Mark Twain. We might suppose thojl \ : would sometimes let themselves go in the ' direction of satire on the civilisation of their "! country, which needs it so sadly, but they. -/• nibble" conventionally round the edges of society, and give us Summer Girls When - they are not atrociously mocking the misery j that walks their laud in the Weary WUliea ..:..,''■ they delight to show in a perennial week's beard and battered hat; or else they draw „ impossibly truculent millionaires, If any ~, of the American comic artists has ever.;.; really a mind to come to the help of \ humanity with his pencil he will do .well , to read Signer Bellecza's chapter on humour ,- in art- It will give bim a perspective il , , it does not supply him a perfect philosophy, -' |