PEN-NOTES AND PENCILLINGS

New Zealand Mail, 29 January 1902, Page 53

PEN-NOTES AND PENCILLINGS

TO EE VIEW THE WAR. Tf is said that General Butler is Polish- * - in which he reviews the his- \° e & n{ the war and criticises the. War nffice for doing what the nation lias done * hcn fatew General 8 BullerTand he first resign his appointment of Pref Sent of the War Office Reform Committee and then dismissed in the event

of refusing. It cannot be right for the ex-Cominander-in-Chief of South Africa to do in a book, under no immediate provocation, what the hero of Spion Kop did in an after dinner speech when smarting under unmerited criticism. Everyone knows that General Butler was recalled for declaring that England would never conquer the Boers with an army a man less than a hundred thousand, the idea at head-quarters at the time being that the job could be easily accomplished with even half that number. Well, it is a turned down page which the General can only refer to now in the way threatened for the purpose of gratifying the vanity of pique. The War Office was considered a dunderhead for estimating that the situation was infinitely less grave than it was, and whatever punishment was deserved it undoubtedly suffered threefold at the hands of a merciless public. If General Butler is able to say “Ah, but I said you would want 100,000 men, and you said 50,000,’' the War Office could retaliate, “Yes, we, wlio were not on the spot were misled to the extent of halving your estimate, but you, who were on the spot, were yourself misled by more than halving the number who have actually been sent.” A magnanimous man would not at the present juncture, or indeed any other, £0 out of his way to humiliate an institution which, despite a lot of ignorant talk to the contrary, is the best organised War Office in the world. A REAL INJUSTICE TO IRELAND. The ancient gold ornaments here illustrated were found in the North of Ireland and bought in the ordinary way by the trustees of the British Museum. Considerable' discussion has since arisen as to the light and wrongs of this purchase, and tnere has been much animated correspondence and arguments, the Irish Academy, backed by the Irish authorities, contending that they are treasure

trove, and that as such the Boyal Irish I ly las , th ? r, Bht of pre-emption out rn_ lUK S granted for this express purpose. ne ornaments in ciuestion consist of a collar ehams, a howl and a model boat, II dating from about the beginning of theni 1 ?' 1 5 Qn2 T 'l, t l ° Ploughman who found Whn 11 96 tlley P assed to Iris master, fro?,, 1 d t° a jeweller in Belfast, “n™ they were bought by }?l- Day, memWnf t/ a S tlql J i T es in Coi "r and a tJ™ 0f 1 t’i 0 Royal Irish Academy. In ordrJ, ary ’ exhibited them at an Sari 1 ?- n V ee | in ß, of tiro Society of Am fC « °i f Lon< 011 ' of which ho is a upon then, d a T e ? paper was read the i tho I°Rowing May, after iw» lm!lu i Y, sua ? ln . such cases > they r r 8 d try the British Museum for Acadomv ? years .subsequently tho Irish trifsiD y ? U A 111 lts claim, to which tho thatan Aof B , r . ltish Muscu »r replied from narH. n J P - a V ha ™ en t prevented them save ob l e , cts once acquired, opinions' £* "K

has yet been definitely settled, though the British Museum has the advantage, inasmuch as it lias possession of the treasure.

A WONDER. OF THE LAST CONTINENT. * The wonders of Darkest Africa have been revealing themselves steadily ever since Mr Stanley made his famous last inarch frcni to coast. It is not a very long period, yet bow P’.llCll d’SCOYCI’" and development has been crowded into it by the enterprise or cupidity of the

armed or unlisted legions of Europe. 1 Tlio present British expedition into the | Uganda Protectorate is giving the world j more and more evidence of the strange things that have been sealed from the knowledge of civilisation in this, wonderful country. A few days ago it -was announced "that a new fetish god had been discovered, but that is of far less interest than the finding by Sir Harry Johnston, a few months ago, of a number of new animals, particulars of which have not been considered of enough importance to send to Australia. One of these animals is a giraffe with five horns—a great creature of beautiful proportions, and because of his size ot incredible speed. It -is only the male that has five horns, the female of the species having to be content with three, though there is little or no difference in their development. Sir Harry Johnston was able to shoot half a dozen of these extraordinary animals, the skin of which is of exceeding richness as well as of beautiful design. THE ROYAL DIVORCE. The accompanying pictures ave late and faithful pictures of the divorced Grand Duchess of Hesse and her little daughter, and only child, Princess Elizabeth. The Grand Duchess is a granddaughter of the late Queen Victoria, and a niece of both King Edward and Queen Alexandra. Her father was the late Duke of SaxeCoburg, Prince Alfred, who came out to Australia on a visit in the Galatea warn years ago. Prince Alfred afterwards became Duke cf Edinburgh, and married a THE GRAND DUCHESS OF HESSE.

Russian Princess, who, it is alleged, brought him a considerable fortune. The issue of the marriage are Princess Marie (wife of the Crown Princo of Roumania and the handsomest living female Royalty in Europe), the late Prince Alfred, Princess Alexandra (wife of one of the Princes of the houso of Hohenlolie), Princess Victoria (divorced Grand Duchess of Hesse), and Princess Beatrice, a girl in her early teens. The cause of this unhappy divorce is incompatibility of temper, the Duchess being high-spirited ancl tho Duke, it is said, a gentleman who would in the matter of temperament pass for a twin of Duke Henry, tho consort of Queen Wilhelinina. l'or a long time their relations have been indeed strained, and the quarrels between them so had that a separation was considered the only way of avoiding something which may not bo named because of its ugliness. It hasn’t been so openly reported here, but it was common print in the American papers as far back as six months ago, that a certain young Queen had been treated with violence by her young husband because of liei refusal to pay his gambling debts, while files to hand state that tho real cause of her recent illness was an actual thrashing. Also, tho reason of that recent affair at the Royal dinner table, given here as an insult to the Queen, which one of her attendants resented, is improved upon by American advices from tho city most interested to the extent that the Queen was first insulted and then struck, and that on one of the genlemen in waiting stepping forward ho was kicked and permanently injured. No 6no says the relations of the Grand Duke nnd'Ducliess of Hesse had become so bad as that, but that they were bad and were rapidly verging on something more scandalous is an open secret. Though it is unpleasant for the niece

of King Edward to bo divorced, it would nave been infinitely worse bad the divorce been delayed till something happened to rival that affair in another and more exalted quarter. NAVIGATING ABOVE THE CLOUDS. A remarkable shipbuilding feat is reported as standing to the credit of a young Scotchman named John Wilson. Frcin the Port of Mollendo, on the Pacific coast of South America, to the interior country of Bolivia runs & l'llll'yAy which is interrupted at Puno by Lake Titicaca. This lake, which is a sheet of water 120 miles m length by 40 in width, is 13.00 C feet above sea level, and the engineers " THE COY A.”

who had successfully bridged the ravine of the Andes were unable to span it owing to many unfathomable depths. To overcome the difficulty an order was sent to Denny Bros., of Dumbarton, to provide a steamer of about 500 tons which would play across the lake and connect the broken line. Ik was an easy enough task to build such a vessel, but a stupendous one to hoist it 13,000 feet above sea level. All the same, it was precisely this thing that was done. The "Coya”—such was ner name—was bum in very small sections in Scotland ana transported to tioiKUiiO, me nearest port to .bake Titicaca, m cases, ' iitr machinery was sent in the usual way, hut ner boilers had to be lauded intact. By dmt cf much perseverance the material was got to the shores of the lake, but here the alarming discovery was made that there were no implements to enable the workmen to go on with tho work of reconstruction. it is evidence of the skill of the young engineer that he did without them, his only mechanical help in this operation being two hammers which he beat into shape from a few pieces cf scrap iron. The people of Titicaca are a kind .-of Indian, and they have never before seen a steamer and thought the present one a fearful creature, the presence of which would do quite as much harm fo them as -n " 011 good to the railway company. Perhaps this is why the few whom Mr. Wilson had to employ charged him such phenomenal wages, and why the family show r n in the sketch accommodated him and his countrymen with immediate ass stauce at rates that would have put the Hotel Cecil io shame. The “Coya” was eventually reconstructed within six months, and was launched with her engines inside her since there were no shear legs to hoist the boilers into position. Since then she lias been finished, and now from the account to hand is carrying passengers and cargo at the dizzy height mentioned—l3,ooo feet above the sea, where the air is so rarified that until you are acclimatised it brings on a malady known as “sorotclie,” and where the people are as primitive as so many Arcadian peasants without their honesty. THE COINAGE OF THE KING.

one of the points of etiquette in coining which ever way his immediate predecessor faces tho new monarch must look in an opposite direction. The little diagrams herewith illustrate the average British coinage for a year. As is generally known there is only one Royal Mint, those in Sydney and Melbourne and elsewhere being branches of the English institution,

to which alone they are res . column to the left shows the ... proportions of gold, silver ana i>.. in a year's operations— no lex., first, 470 tons of the ■second a.m of the third. More interesting r’s sketch which illustrates the pi„, «......... of coins struck from these ■.,! gold, for every =BIOO struck seven .y cent, is in sovereigns and twenty-uve in half-sovereigns. Of silver, the humble "Robert'’ has the pride of place in sixdenominations, and the cumbersome Crown piece the least important position. It is instructive to note that florins are tltOfS lit f“T?r.r til"" half-crowns, showing the greater worth, of the decimal system, and that church money "threepenny bits” cut a very insignificant figure indeed. In copper the penny is wnero it always was, on top of the tree, with 73 per cent, of each <£loo of bronze coin struck, while the lia’iienny just holds a place and the farthing is nowhere. \Y e are so constantly told of the circulating value of a farthing in England that it is quite pleasing to learn that it only accounts for five per cent, of the "colour,” and that this, too, is a steadily diminishing quantity. The four circles are intended to illustrate the world's coinage yearly in gold, silver; copper and nickel. Of the total gold coined the British Empire lias but a slice after all, but we scoro heavily in silver, of which rve coin a fourth, and in bronze, of which we coin slightly over that percentage. England has no nickel coinage. A GREAT ARTIST DIES. The death of Mr. Onslow Ford, R.A., at the unripe age of forty-nine, removes one of the ablest portrait artists of the age, and certainly one of the greatest sculptors, iiis career has been, such a bright one that it is worth referring to somewhat fully. As a boy he evinced a great desire to become an artist; and, more fortunate than many of bis fellows ho recived every encourgement from bia family. When lie was eighteen years of age he went to Antwerp and entered the school there, where lie studied under styeral famous masters. Iu the following year he went to Munich and joined the

Academy, still studying painting; but fell only ec-fore leaving he gave up painting and took to sculpture. In 1874 he returned to England where he has resided foi the most part. He soon won for a !! established position, and ia x 7 110 attracted great attention by hie statue of Sir Rowland Hill. Then followed a fine statue of Mr. Gladstone, and m the same year lie exhibited a supero T 6 xoQ- Sl i' flei V7 frying as “Hamlet.” in loaj he exhibited a relief “In Memoriani,” and his delightful statuette *1.1,” , T . ilo , lattei ' was purchased by the Royal Academy. Besides much work of similar kind Mr. Ford has executed a number of busts of famous people. One of the finest works is his statue of Gcr(l°n at Chatham. It represents the hero oi Khartoum on a hansomely caparissoned camel, and is ft fine and striking piece of work. In 1883 ne was made A.R.A., and in 1835 became a full Academician. Some time tgo lie was engaged upon a portrait of Queen Victoria, and in this connection ne fold an intciesting story. It seems that at the first sitting that Her Majesty gave the sculptor at Osborne tho artist was seriously nonplussed at the outset by discovering that certain instruments, used by sculptors for measuring their sitter’s features, had been carelessly omitted from his artistic paraphernalia. Hesitating, and at a loss, Mr. Ford’s work seemed to remain at a standstill, when the source and kindly tact of the Queen put matters straight. “Why do you not measure my face with a piece of paper,” suggested Her Majesty. “I believe I havr seen it done;” and with the Queen, as w< know, a suggestion is the next thing to a Royal command. The portrait thus happily begun, and which is an absolute realistic representation of the late Queen as she appeared in her ripe old age, gave Her Majesty so much satisfaction that she ordered a copy of it in marble. It was this portrait that gave us the latest accepted profile on the Victorian coinage.