NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13192, 1 June 1906, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

THE SIMPLE LIFE.

"Plain- living and high thinking" is, an excellent ideal (says the Church - Times); but the high thinking is only possible for any length of time where there are libraries and galleries and noble edifices and inspiring sanctuaries of thought. It is true that literature has often been cultivated in Scotland on a" little oatmeal, and that medieval undergraduates slept three in a. . bed. But their intellectual interests were chiefly of the abstract kind. The glories of Florentine, or Venetian, or High Dutch genius would never have existed apart from the magnificent Lorenzos, the enlightened Doges, the rich, art-loving merchants in Italy and Germany. It is true that Wren's mighty mind was hired for £200 a year. But, a little earlier, if Charles I. had been as parsimonious as his father or as thriftless as his son, we should have had to do without Vandyck and Rubens. What is wanted in the present day is simplicity of private life combined with public splendour where.the object is worthy of it. Why, when we go to a hotel 01 our club, should we pay for immense mirrors and gorgeous- marble staircases, and the rest? Our forefathers got much more pleasure out of an inn, and were much more " clubbable"—to use Johnson's wordwith their sanded floors and pewter mugs. Yet that was the age which built Chatsworth and Blenheim. For in private life, too, there is a use for statelinese as well as for simplicity; in fact, the stately life and simple life commonly go together. It is not Timon of Athens but Sir Gorgius Midas who wants suppressing. RIGHTS OF SCHOOLMASTERS. The Paris correspondent of the Morning Advertiser writes:—"A very curious appeal case has just been disposed of by the Court of Cassation. A schoolmaster in the Ariege wrote in the copybook of one of his pupils this 'appreciation:' This boy is an ass." It did"not suit the lad's father, who summoned the schoolmaster. The case was heard at the Foix Police Court. The magistrate considered that the note given to the boy was an insult, and the schoolmaster was lined. The schoolmaster thought the fine was absurd, and unjustifiable, and appealed against the magistrate's decision. The matter came before the Court of Cassation, which has decided'that the local magistrate was wrong in imposing a fine, and that he had interfered with the impartial authority of the schoolmaster, which implies the right of reprimanding pupils. One of the papers, commenting on the finding of the Court of Cassation, points out that it did not say what was the limit ot the school master's right. Are all the animals ' authorised' as points of comparison with the pupil reprimanded? asks the journal. Can all the inhabitants of the stable figure in the margin of copybooks as lazy children. Leaving the animal kingdom out of the question, can a schoolmaster say what he likes to his scholars? The 'paper is of opinion that an official regulation on this subject is necessary."