GLEANINGS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 810, 9 September 1887, Page 5

GLEANINGS.

AT VICTORIA’S CORONATION. Some idea of the magnificence of the costumes may be formed from the description of the dres3 worn by Prince Paul von Schwartzenberg, the Austrian Ambassador which was composed of violet velvet, and the embroidery, instead of being in silver, was of fine pearls. The jewels with which it was covered were estimated in value at half a million of florins. The boots alone coat 16,000 florins. __ defining a jubilee. Two Scotch fishwives in London were talking about the jubilee the other day. * Eh, wumman,’ said one to the other, ‘ can ye tell me what a jubilee is, for I hear a the folk spakin’ about it 2’ ‘ Ou ay,’ replied the other, ‘I can tell ye that; ye see, when a man and a wumman has been marrit for fiveand- twenty year, that’s a siller waddin ; then when they’ve been marrit for fifty and -that’s a gouden waddin’ ; but when year man’s deed, that’s a jubilee.—Leed’s Mercury. Her Majesty, at the laying of the foundation stone of the Imperial Institute, resorted for the first time in public to the use of classes —not spectacles, but hand glasses which were of a novel form, the lenses not being larger than a shilling, and set in a dark tortoiseshell. An attempt is being mad<? to revive the Dukedom of York, and to urge that it be bestowed upon one of the Queen’s grandsons in this her jubilee year. The title expired with Frederick, second son of George 111, in 1827, and has since remained in abeyance. A mass in memory of the Prince Imperial was performed in Paris recently, on the anniversary of his death. About fifty of the faithful attended, all clad in deep monrmng, the only bits of color being bouquets of violets worn by the ladies. A single woman, 52 years of age, died suddenly as . she was leaving a chapel in Camden Town, the result of tight-lacing. For the last 50 years the Journal de Bruges has been edited by an amiable and talented lady, Mme. Popp, who is also well known as an authoress. Several of her works have been translated into English and German. To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of her editorship a banquet was given by the Belgian Press Association, at which eighty of the leading Belgian journalist! were present. Miss Lindsay, a Girton graduate, discoursed at Brotherton Hall, on ‘ Vegetarianism and the Higher Life.’ She regarded

vegetarianism as likely to make the lives of those who adopt it * better, happier, and holier,’ and that a general adoption of that mode of living would promote the welfare of the entire nation. The St. Paul Globe relates that two girls who roomed together in that city quarrelled, and during the night one of them got up while her companion slept and with a pair of scissors clipped all the hair from the head of the other girL The practical estrangement between Queen Victoria and the Princess of Wales is deepening. Her Royal Highness never disregards her Majesty's commands when there is a formal family gathering, but she avoids meeting the Queen unnecessarily, and her Majesty never drops in for a motherly call at Marlborough House. According to Le Gaulois the Princess of Wales lately got from Paris a winter costume trimmed with a fine, dark gray fur which she greatly admired. ‘ You are a sportsman,’ said she to her husband ; ‘tell me what kind of fur it is?’ ‘I don’t hunt rats and mice,’ he replied, laughing ; I leave that sport to the sewer-men.’ And now the Princess doesn’t like the costume as well as she did. Miss Braddon, the popular novelist is at work over a Jubilee novel, which will go far to outrival her other works. It may not be generally known that in her lovely home at Richmond is a cabinet of countless worth—for she is a passionate admirer of brio-a-brac—-she has all her manuscripts bound in royal red from the first to the last. Her handwriting has retained all its characteristics, mainly owing to the fact that she always writes on a blotting pad generally placed on her knee.