THE BYSTANDER.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1222, 2 August 1895, Page 11

THE BYSTANDER.

" When found make a note of." —Capt. Cuttle.

CasselTs "Universal Portrait Gallery" give the following particulars concerning Lord Acton, the successor to Sir John Seeley in the Regius Professorship of Modern History at Cambridge. He is, no doubt, the most learned member of Lord Eosebery's Ministry, though he has never been to a University. He was born in 1834, and studied for a few years under Dr (afterwards Cardinal) Wiseman at Oscott, near Birmingham, and later at Munich, under the great Catholic historian, Dr Dollinger. In 1856 ho accompanied his step-father, the late Lord Granville, to Moscow, to witness the coronation of Alexander [I. From 1859 to 1865 he sat for ; Garlow. in the House of Commons; in the latter year he stood for Bridgnorth, hoping, he said, to represent "not the body, but the spirit of the Catholic Church," and, though elected, was unseated upon scrutiny. In 1869, the year of his elevation to the Peerage as Baron Acton ol.Aldenham, he was present at the CEcumenicaT'Council at Eome, and did much, both with his pen and by his power of organisation, to support the views of the "Old Catholic" party on the question of Papal Infallibility. He has long been an intimate friend of Mr Gladstone.

The little King of Spain has entered on his tenth year. It is rather an old face, that of his small Majesty, and he looks with wise eyes and an expression which one would describe as slightly cynical, were it not ridiculous to apply the word to so young a child, on those brought under his notice on such occasions. He has now learnt to hold his little tongue in public, a lesson which he at one time found difficult, and as he had a habit of inventing nicknames —often terribly appropriate —for the stately Spanish hidalgos, it, was very necessary that this habit shoiild be cured. His birthday past, the little King has gone into retirement again, for the Queen Regent very wisely insists on his leading the life of an ordinary child.

Two Chinamen, says an Australian contemporary, started a market garden : somewhere on the Clarence, N.S.W., and • one of them, on being recently asked what the prospects of the venture were, angrily exclaimed, " Oh, too much lain. Lain allee day, lain allee ni', den flood come down an' swampee evlythin'. Government * sho' killee dat man up Queenslan' —Missee Wlagge (the Government meteorologist). He make too muchee lain oltogethe'. By clipeSi spose hem lib in China, p'leeeeman knock him head off long ago and putee him up on stick fo' little boys peltee mud at!"

; An interesting article in a recent issne of The Gentlewoman deals with the origin of nursery rhymes. Thus we learn that " Three Blind Mice" is in a music book of 1609. """Little Jack Horner" is older than the seventeenth century. "A Froggie would A Wooing Go" was in 1650. "Pussy Cat, Pussy Cat, where have You Been?" dates front the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The author of "Cinderella," "Jack the Giant-killer," "Blue Beard" and "Tom Thumb" was Charles Perrault, a Frenchman, who wrote in 1697. '.' Boys and Girls Come out to Play " dates from Charles 11. "Old Mother Hubbard," "Goosey, Goosey, Gander" and "Old Mother Gooso" were first published in the sixteenth century. " Humpty-Dumpty" was a bold, bad baron, who lived in the days of King John, and was tumbled from power. This history was put into a riddle, the which is an egg. " The Babes in the Wood " was founded on an actual crime committed in the fifteenth century. An old house in Norfolk is still pointed out upon a mantelpiece in which the entire history is carved.

A South African farmer who sent his son to England to be educated does not seem to be very well satisfied with the results. He writes pathetically to a Johannesburg paper and tells how his boy, oh whose acquirements he had spent much money, took the advantage of a holiday to demonstrate to him how many years a ball fired from a cannon on the earth would be in reaching the sun. He made it 26 years, 5 months, 11 dajs, 13 hours, 51 seconds. " I then asked him," adds the parent, "to name the various towns in which St. Paul preached the Gospel, but he really did not know." The writer concludes :—" MiEditor, no wonder that God visits our country so sorely when our children can calculate the speed of cannon balls, and know -nothing whatever about St. Paul."

In the recently-published Memoirs of the Count de Segur, who was at one time aide-de-camp to the great Napoleon, here and there are some striking pictures of the Napoleonic campaigns and of life around the usurper's person. The feeling in the armies which Napoleon commanded is illustrated by one incident: " On the eve of this action, the Emperor had arrived at

Lintz from Lembach, and remained there five days. This sojourn proved fertile in excitoment and movement. To begin with, about a quarter of a league from the gate of this town a terrible incident, of a rare character in our army, where discipline is rendered easier through the intelligent emulation and the fraternity of arms and origin of the soldier and the officei - , had struck him with horror, which found its manifestation in impetuous speech. He was galloping past tho left flank of a column of light artillery when, twenty paces before him, he noticed an artilleryman throw back his head with a threatening air and at tho same moment saw his captain, by a back-handed blow of his sabre, sever it almost completely, so that it inclined towards the shoulder of the unfortunate man, who fell to the ground in a torrent of blood. Napoleon turned pale at this horrible sight, and making his horse bound forwards, exclaimed, 'What have you done, captain?' 'My duty!' answered the officer, abruptly; ' and until I am killed by one of my soldiers/ he added, in a loud tone, as he looked straight at them, ' I would kill any one of them who dared to fail in respect to their captain.' The Emperor, struck by his energy, was speechless for the moment, but controlling hia emotion, he resumed, in a firm voice: 'lf this be the case, you have done well; you are a good, officer, and understand your duty. This is how I wish to be served.' He then continued his course in the midst of a mournful silence inspired by his words, and entered Lintz at a walking pace with a troubled expression of countenance."

One of the most curious collections' in the world is one upon which the Queen of Italy has been enagaged for years. It consists of old boots, shoes and slippers, to many of which an historical interest attaches. Queen Margaret is the happy possessor, for instance, of a pair of coarse heavy shoes that are said to have belonged to Joan of Arc ; she has also a dainty pair of boots supposed to have been worn by Marie Stuart at her execution, as well as some slippers of Queen Marie Antoinette and the famous beauty Ninon de l'Enclos, of whom tradition says that she had lovers after she had reached the age of four score. Somebody (a London paper says) has suggested that it is possibly the fact that the kingdom of Italy is shaped like a boot that suggested to the Queen her strange hobby.

In a new play produced in London recently, there are several of the tricks of speech which are both ridiculous and wearisome. For example, " Modesty is the pruriency which requires us to wear clothes;" " Married ? Yes and no —her first husband is alive, the second isn't;" " When the husband comes in at the door love flies out of the window;" "Nothing gives a woman so much character as the loss of it;" " She rebels against the restraints of impropriety and seems likely to lapse into virtue ;" " Everybody must have remarked how she's been carrying on v* ith her husband lately." These sallies and scores of the like appear in the dialogue, and make us sigh for the good old sentimental plays of former days.

In Paris, as in London, the number of merely ornamental barristers who have no intention of ever troubling the courts with their eloquence is very considerable. A recent Act, however, has had the effect of considerably reducing the number of these drones in the legal hive. Under that Act every barrister has to take out a "patente," or license, every year, and for so doing ho has to pay a sum of money, reckoned on the sliding system, according to the rental value of his house or apartments. To a man paying .£l2O a year rent, for instance, the yearly duty chargeable is £l4. . \

In Good Words for May there is a brief but interesting paper under the title " The Queen's Private Reporter," who is, for the time being, the leader of the House of Commons, who every night sends a private report of its proceedings to Her Majesty. Tbe following particulars as to the way in I Avhich the Prime Minister does his Avork I are given:—Most of the recent leaders of ! the House of Commons—Lord Randolph Churchill, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, Mr W. H. Smith and Sir William Harcourt—wrote the report in their private room, but Mr Gladstone (who has filled the post of "Queen's Reporter" in five Parliaments) always prepared it in the House, at intervals during the sitting; and in that example he was followed by Mr Arthur Balfour during his brief leadership of the House in the last session of the Conservative Parliament prior to the dissolution in 1892. Mr Gladstone often commenced the letter or report early in the sitting, adding to it as opportunity offered during the evening, and finally he would read it over carefully, dotting its "i's" and crossing its "t's" before dispatching it to the Queen at midnight. Seated on the Treasury Bench, with a blotting pad placed on his knee, as a desk or support, the Old Man wrote the letter on House of Commons

quarto notepaper, with any quill-pen which he might casually pick up from tho table. He invariably filled the four sides of the large sheet of notepaper.

In the New Review, Mr Hannay, in the second of his papers on tho " Manning of the Navy," suggests that we should endeavour to recruit more in the colonies. He says:—"Let us try the effect of sending other Northamptons round, here and in Canada, not, or at least not only, to recruit boys, but also to practise men in the intervals between the fishing seasons. Two thousand men from Canada might make all the difference between insufficient and full crews for twenty ships. Whatever the worth of what I have written, this will not, I venture to think, be disputed : that a Eeservo which is just sufficient to enable us to man our ships on tho outbreak of war is not large enough ; that the best way of keeping up the quality of our crews is to have a surplus of men on hand soon enough to train them to a higher level before they are actually wanted; and that, since more are needed, it is a very gross mistake to fix the maximum of our Eoserve at a figure which is confessedly too low."

It was hinted in recent cablegrams that there was some political significance in the recent attempt on the life of M. Stambouloff. Prince Ferdinand's Government is by some persons held responsible for the occurrence. This prince, whose title is Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg, is de facto ruler of the Principality of Bulgaria, which is under the suzerainty of Turkey, and was created by the treaty of Berlin in 1878, the arrangement being that it was to be governed by a prince elected by the National Assembly or Sobranje, with a popular Legislature and constitutional government. Prince Ferdinand was elected to the position in July, 1887, and the Ministry now in office consists of Dr Stoiloff, Premier and Minister of the Interior; M. Gueschoff, Minister of Finance and Public Works; M. Natchovits, Minister of Foreign Affairs; Colonel Petroff, Minister of War • M. Eadoslavoff, Minister of Justice ; and Dr Tontscheff, Minister of Commerce and Agriculture. The British Agent and Consul-General is Sir Arthur Nicolson.

A writer in a monthly review, discussing Mr Balfour's "Foundations of Belief," takes occasion to say that solid books, dealing with the great problems of mind and morals, are no longer read, except by a few specialists. That an exclusive diet of novel-reading is extremely- debilitating is proved by one series of facts which are observable in every part of the civilised world. Men and women among the reading classes no longer marry in anything like such numbers as they formerly did, and the reason is that thoy have no pluck in them to face lives of Spartan simplicity on limited incomes. The result is disastrous to women, inasmuch as it prevents many of them ever marrying at all. For if a woman does not marry when she is ! young, very few men care to marry her when she is middle-aged. Men marry in middle life, but they do not marry women of their own age; they marry young women. The physiological moral is that it would be vastly better for both men and women to read novels for recreation only; and when at work to read solid books, which really exercise and develop the brain. In practice, the result of this would be that both men and women would have better and stronger brains. They would marry earlier and with more courage; they would face the world more hopefully and successfully, and they would become the parents of wholesomer, healthier, happier and more capable children. The Hospital.

In the Neiv, Ireland Review for April, a ! writer signing himself " C." declares that many thoughtful minds are forced to consider whether in a Conservative and temperate clericalism, Ireland might not find satisfaction, dignity and repose. A Catholic contingent of fifty or sixty Irish members, says the writer, could give a Conservative Government the power to settle the two great questions of Irish county government and the land. A bold scheme of land purchase as regards tenants under £2O valuation might be passed into law, and by alliance with the Conservative landlords even a compulsory principle might be introduced. What he says is, that Irish Catholicity to gain Radical sympathy with Home Rule, will not long continue to pay for it by alliance with an English party which may not unfairly be described as its natural enemy. Sooner or later, a country of Catholic peasant farmers, secure in their tenure, and many of them proprietors, must; become Conservative.

Oscar Wilde did treadmill duty for a month, and for the remainder of his term bagmaking or ruling forms for the prison department will be his lot.