INDIVIDUALITIES

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8367, 1 March 1913, Page 9

INDIVIDUALITIES

"All tho world's a stage. And all tho men and women merely players."

Tho Marquis of Lansdowne, who was sixty-eight years old on J anuary llfh, shares with Earl Minto the great distinction of having been Viceroy of India and Governor-General of Canada. Besides these high Imperial offices. Lord Lansdowne has been Secretary of State, for War and Foreign, Secretary in the Ministries of Lord Salisbury and Mr Balfour. Lord Lansdowne started in public life as a Whig, and jomed Mr Gladstone’s Government m bat resigned on account of his chiefs Irish policy in the following year. A curious feature of .Lord Lansdowne s political career iff that ho served in each of the four great offices which ho held for a term of five years: he was in Canada from 1883 to 1888, in India from 1888 to 1893, at the War Office from 1895 to 1900, and at the Foreign Office from 1900 to 1905.

Lord Lansdowne’s family have often taken prominent parts in politics, and the third Marquis was asked by Queen Victoria to try to form a Government in 1855, when Lord Aberdeen’s Coalition Ministry had resigned; but the attempt was a failure. Air Gladstone was among those who declined to join ; but he afterwards regretted this decision. At the end of his life he wrote: “I have always looked back upon it with pain as a senons and oven gross error of judgment.” He contrasted Lord Lansdowne favourably with Lord Palmerston as “a personage of greater dignity, and, I think, a Mgher level of political principle.” Bat even then he thought that he would not have been “a strong or very active Prime Minister.”

Pew men who have been Cabinet Ministers have dropped more completely out of the general public recollection +.hg.Ti Viscount LlandafE, who was born in the Island of. Ceylon jnst eighty-seven years ago (says the “Westminster Gazette”). He is the youngest of four ex-Cabinet Ministers who were bom when George IV. was still reigning. The oldest of the quartet is Viscount Cross, who will enter on the nineties in May next- The other two. Viscount Knutsford and the Earl of Xlalsbury, were bom in 1825, the former being the elder by exactly a month. Viscount Llandaff, who has never been married, is the only one of tho four who has no heir to his- peer-. age.

Lord Blandaff, when in the 1:1 on so of Commons, was onco the victim of a practical joke which caused much amusement at the time. O’Donovan Bossa, the notorious, lonian leader, 'had sent in his card with the request that it might be given to any Irish member, and it was accordingly handed about the Nationalist benches until at length some wag, mindful of Mr Matthew’s associations in his Dungarvan days, scribbled his name on it in pencil and passed it along to the Treasury Bench. To the huge of chose in the secret, Mr Matthews immediately went out int* the Lobtoj and there renewed his acquaintance with the revolutionary Head Centre, who was doubtless not less surprised than the Home Secretary at a meeting so "wholly unexpected.

Apropos of Yorkshire Prime Ministers, there are at least two other occupants of the position to whom the county might make good a claim. Charles \Vatsan Wentworth, Marquis of Rockaigham, was a scion of the great Yorkshire family of Wentworth, and was twice Prim© Minister. He was brought up in Yorkshire at Wentworth Woodhouse, whence, at the age of fifteen, he ran away to join the Duke or Cumberland's standard at Carlisle, in the '45. He was Lord-Lieutenant of the North and West Hidings, and is buried in the choir of York Minster, lus funeral procession having been swelled by members of the Rookingham Club, founded in York to voice his political ideals.

The other Yorkshire Prime Minister, a man of greater genius but less principle than Rockingham, was Thomas Osborne, first Duke of Deeds, Son of a Yorkshire man and a Yorkshire woman, Osborne was brought up at Xivoton, in the county. He was High Sheriff of York and member for the city, and was Dord-Dieutenant of the three Ridings, He was twice what we should now call Prime Minister, once as Dord High Treasurer from 1073 till 1679, and again as Dord President in 1690.

It may not be generally known that Buskin’s father and mother rest in the Surrey churchyard close to Oroyddn, where as a boy much of John It us kin’s holiday time was spent. A contributor to last month’s “ Young Woman ” supplies the wording on the memorial: “ Here rests, from day’s well-sustained burden, John James Rus kin. Born in Edinburgh, May 10, 1786, he died in his homo in London, March 3, 1864. He was an entirely honest merchant, and bis memory is, to all who keep it, dear and helpfuL His son, whom he loved to the uttermost, and taught to speak truth, says this of him.” Upon the east sine, on the marble, are the words: 1 ' Here, hesido niy father’s body, I have laid my mother’s: nor was dearer earth returned to earth nor purer life recorded in heaven. She died December 5, 1871, aged 90 years.”

Herr Von Jagow, tho new German Foreign Secretary, is a co-member with the Emperor of the famous “ Borussia ” Corps, the most select student fellowship of Bonn University. He is “ Member 582.”

Dr Russel Wallace, in celebrating his ninetieth birthday a few weeks ago, announced tho beginning of a book with suggestions for tho campaign against poverty. It may be recalled that it was whilst he was ill in bed the greatest truth in biological science of tho last century flashed upon Dr Wallace—the survival of the fittest.

On his way to the Home Office, it is said, Air McKenna occasionally indulges in a short sprint. He is the athlete of the British Cabinet, and as oarsman, sculler, and runner takes no mean rank-