GENERAL EXTRACTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 12833, 5 April 1905, Page 2 (Supplement)

GENERAL EXTRACTS.

RECENT RUSSIAN . MINISTERS. SELF-MADE MEN. Is it not au astounding fact that luring the last quarter of the nineteenth centurythere have been, among several dozen Ministers in Russia, only four noblemen? Except Prince Sviatokelk-Mirski, Prince Tolstoi, Gorcmykin, and Sipiagin, all the directors of Russian policy and administration have come from'families of comparatively low standing. Witte, a, petty railway clerk : his predecessor, Vyshnegradski, son of a pope of low condition; Bogoliopoff, Minister to- 1 üblic Instruction, killed in.1900, son of ? non-com-missioned officcr; Zenger, one of his successors, son of an obscure official; Plehve himself and others, all are self-made men; and, being so, they have always foilnd a keen pleasure in keeping out men of great family or high standing; they have asked lot i personal aptitude only, and thus have formed■ a. powerful army of officials, the sole glory and the sole moral principle of whom is what the French call arrivisme, an u,wful mixture of egotism, ambition, cynicism, cupidity, and insolence. They want money and arbitrary power. At the outset of their career they. have neither. Their only wealth is their official position. This, therefore, they exploit in any way, honest oJ criminal, in order to get money, and in order to revenge themselves for what they have suffered themselves in the past, by oppressing their inferiors and the helpless mass of'the people —Contemporary Review. - THE RECORD THIRTEEN DINNER, The revival o.' Victor Hugo's "Angelo" the other night at the Theatre Sarah Bernhardt recalls the siugulai story that 'belongs to the first revival of tie piece, in 1850. That occasion was celebrated by a dinner in the author's house in the Rut- de la Tourd'Auvergne. There were present the host and hostess and two of their sons, Charles, the editor of the Evenement, and Francis, the future translator of Shakespere ; Rachel, the Tisbe; her sistei, Rebecca Felix, the Catherine; Mile. Bracy, of the Francais, who had lately become Mme. Arsene Houssaye,; Mme. Emilrs do Girardin; Jacques Pradier, the sculptor; D'Orsay, the ex-King of London ; Labrunie, otherwise Gerard de Nerval; Alfred de Musset; and a youthful personage by ths name of Perreethe most important personage of all. For he made the thirteenth. Rachel, in whom superstition was strong, made no secret of her misgivings. And, for once, they were justified.' That thirteenth dinner was to be a record. A year later the Hugos were all four in exile"worse than death,"®the poet called it, when he was out of harms way. In 1852 Pradier died of apoplexy, and D'Orsay of meningitis. In 1853 the unlucky Perree made an end. In 1854 Rebecca Felix's turn came: and, at barelv 28, Mme. Houssaye's. In 1855 Mme. Girardin was no more; and in the January of the same year Gerard de Nerval hanged himself on a grille in the Rue de la Vieille Lanterne, which grille stood exactly where the prompter's box in the Sarah Bernhardt Theatre is to be seen, now. Followed De Musset, in 1857, and, in 1858, Rachel herself. "Et riez done," she wrote, when she told these happenings, "et moquez-vous du Numero Treize W.F.W., in the Pall Mall Gazette. THE TSiiR AS HOST. A ball at the Winter Palace is much more perfect in its appointments than a ball at Buckingham Palace. When, the Empress leads off in the graceful and spirited Russian national dance, the mazurka, which has much more of motion and life than any dance we are familiar with, the great Nicholas Hall presents a scene of animation such as delights the eye nowhere else; and' when the vast assemblage sits down to a banquet of Oriental splendour beneath an improvised grove of palms, with the glow of thousands of electric lamps streaming down through the verdant foliage with the mellow effect of moonlight, it is a spectacle of beauty beyond the dreams of imagination. The atmosphere is that of cordial hospitality. The Tsar is there not merely as Emperor, but as host. He escorts the Empress to the Imperial table, but does not sit there himself, nor do any of the Grand Dukes. He moves about to see personally that his guests are properly cared for, and his brother and cousins aid him in his duty, It- is the highest grace of courtesy. There is a nobility in Russia, but no aristocracy in the sense of the English aristocracy. The law of primogeniture does not prevail. Titles and property descend to all the children. The only strictly Russian title is that of prince, and' that comes from the Tartar chieftains. Peter the Great, who brought in so many notions from Western Europe, created a few counts and barons, but they are a graft and not indigenous. The possession of a title does not necessarily imply wealth, or even position. Indeed, not a few of the titled families are utterly impoverished, and there are said to be princes among the droshky-drivcrs of St. Petersburg.Youth's Companion. GRIZZEL HUME. The recent romantic marriage or one of Lord Pol war th's son& bringr to mind the astounding adventures of the first- holder of the title. This war Sir Patrick Hume, who was submitted to relentless persecution for the part he took in opposing the unconstitutional procedure of Charles 11. and Jamesll., and compelled to seek safety in flight. . ; ' But there were soldiers out in quest of him, and to get away was impossible. His brave daughter Grizzel—-that same heroic girl from, whom the Earls of Haddington, descend—devised a means. With the aid of the one servant whom they dared trust, she got a bed and bed-clothes carricd by night, iuto the burial-place beneath Polwarth Church. In this dismal chamber the refugee lay concealed for a month. Every night the heroine Grizzel carried him food which she had surreptitiously withdrawn from her own plate at table, so as not to arouse the suspicions of others. The lonely churchyard had as grim terrors for a, young lady in those days as in these. Fear of spectres and visions of lurking soldiery terrified the faithful Grizzel as she stumbled over the graves cach midnight. The ministers dogs created a tremendous uproar as she passed. This was checked on a representation to their owner that there was a rabid animal in his kennels; whereupon the complaisant minister hanged the whole lot of them. ° At the end of a month a bed had been prepared for the fugitive in hi: own home, dug out by his wife's bare hands beneath the liooi of one of the basement rooms. Here for another spell the hunted man lav. Then r. breaking-in of water flooded the subterranean couch, and a further movingon was necessary. ' 3 After many almost incredible adventures, Si;- Patrick got by way of London to the Continent.' 1 His estates, which had been confiscated, were restored to hiia upon the accession of William of Orange, and he was granted tithr and honours in abundance. He sat, in Parliament for Berwick, was granted the- existing Pulwartb baronv, and, later ' the larldom of Marehmont. ' ' ' ' ' ■ One of the daughters married a Laird of Harden, from which house Scott descended. •