ENGLISH AND FOREIGN NOTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 3249, 5 July 1872, Page 3

ENGLISH AND FOREIGN NOTES.

{Sjwclator.)

We wonder when the European delusion about; tho gentleness of the male elephant will be dissipated. He is one of the most malignant of beasts, and according to the records of the great Indian stables, almost invariably kills his keeper, watching his opportunity sometimes for months. An elephant was being shown last Saturday at Newcastle in a stableyard, and was fed by some lads with bread and nnts. One of them, it is imagined, gave him a stone—there is no evidence of this—but nfc all events the elephant lost his temper, seized him with his trunk, and crushed him against the wall, kneading him against it with the thick part of his trunk. In a gorilla this would have been called blind fury ; but in an elephant it was only, said the coroner, excitement, probably produced by teasing.

The claimant to the Tichborne estates liaa been admitted to bail, and it is quite possible may never be tried. Tito Attor-ney-General seems disposed to make an enormous business of the trial, talks of bringing witnesses over from Australia and Chile, thinks the trial may bvafc for months, and will, if he does not tako care, have Sir Lowo or the House of Commons itself upon his back. Surely he could trust to the common sense of a jury without spending a hundred thousand pounds on a single prosecxition. With the Treasury aa paymaster, half-a-dozen juniors with reputations to make, a ii:an like his opponent U> convict, and all England looking on, the prosecution will cost more than Lord Hatherley will savo by overworking every kind of judge. The trial cannot commence till November, by which time a new Attorney-General will be entitled to plead that he wants a year or two to read through the evidence. Lothair, otherwise the Marquis of Bute, was married on Tuesday to Lady Corisande, Miss Gwendoline Howard, daughter of Lord Howard of Glossop. The ceremony was performed by Cardinal Grandison, Archbishop Manning ; mass was said by Monsignor Cntesby ; and the novelist who has described, exalted, and satirized them all, Mr Disraeli, was one of the five witnesses who signed the register. The London journals give whole pages to accounts or the ceremonial, and the Western Mail actually devotes thirty columns, each longer than one of tho Standard's, to the wedding, the rejoicings in Wales and Buteshire, the history of thefaraily, the twelve titles, and tlie six great estates of the bridegroom, tho charms of the bride, and the descriptions of her jewellery. We have no objection ; the Marquis of Bute is really a personage in the State, but do not let us again laugh at the place assigned to gilded upholstery in " Lothair."

Marguerite Dixblanc, tlfo cook who murdered Madame Riel in Park Lane, has been arrested in Paris, and has confessed her crime, alleging, however, that it was committed out of revenge and not for money. She affirms that her mistress abused her, called her a prostitute, and dismissed her without her month's wages. Carried away by passion, she strangled her mistress with her hands, then dragged her along with a rope, and then by an after-thought robbed the house to find means to get away with. She appears, however, to have written to Paris the day before the murder to say she was coming, and to be under the impression that she will be tried according to the French code, and will therefore be spared if she can disprove premeditation. As she is a Belgian by birth, some formal difficulties have been raised about extradition, but there is no serious objection or resistance. As usual, a man has surrendered himself as an accomplice, but lias been ascertained to be insane.

Captain W. Dicey, well-known in Calcutta as a first-rate sailor and man of engineering resource, writes to the Times to say he can build a vessel which will make the Channel passage pleasant. It will consist of two hulls, each 400 ft by 20ft., secured together by girders, and with engines working upon the girders between the hulls, will draw only Oft. of water, and will be driven by paddles. As the flooring could be carried flush over the girders, there would be room for any amount of cabin accommodation on deck, while from the breadth of tho entire structure,, and the fact that each hull counteracts the force of the waves on tho other, sea-sickness will be reduced to a minimum. These vessels could enter Dover or Boulogne as they now are, unimproved, and would, of course, if they succeeded, pay. Engineers must decide upon the girder principle, but - every Anglo-Indian knows that Captain. Dicey has a right to be heard. No great change has occurred in the farm labourers' strike, though it is still spreading, and has reached Suffolk and Dorsetshire, but we note that commonsense exists among the Warwickshire squires. At a meeting of the Chamber of Agriculture, it was resolved that all perquisites should be abolished, and all wages paid in silver—the first step towards any important reform — and that the measurement of wages ought to be by work, and not by time—a change which, though excessively cruel in itself, is almost indispensable for a time, to force the labourers out of their half-hearted ways. They have had too little pay, and therefore have done half-hearted work. Finally, Lord Denbigh made a speech in favour of co-operation between the farmer and his men, which seems to have been laughed at, but will be remembered when all Warwickshire is cultivated so. With thou-sand-acre farms, and the labourers made j shareholders, the master may pay £1 a ; week, and yet make 10 per cent. He will have in each man a helper worth three under-paid, half-fed, lounging louta unable even to walk straight. , The German Government has struck a heavy blow at the Catholic Episcopate. | The Bishop of Ermeland recently excommunicated two Professors of Braunaberg for declining to teach the doctrine of infallibility, and the Minister of Public Worship has requested him to withdraw his sentence, on the ground that it carries civil consequences and infringes civil rights. Should the Bishop not comply with the mandate, "His Majesty's Government will be compelled to regard the

recognition of your lordship as Bishop of Ermeland as lapsed by the action of your lordship, and Jus Majesty's Govenunent will be unable to continue its official relations which have hitherto existed with the diocesan administration as conducted by your lordship.—Falk." The Bishop hits replied by letter, arguing that liis action is purely spiritual, but of course cannot withdraw his sentence pending orders from Borne. The Minister of Justice writes in a respectful-and indeed slightly apologetic tone, but we presume will adhere to hia decision, the effect of which will be that the Bishop will loso part of his income and his position as onto of the official hierarchy.

The servant girls of Dundee havo formed a Union, aud agreed to three resolution& They will not tako service where the regular hours are longer than from six a.nu to ten p.m. ; they will have a Sunday once a fort-night; and they will organise enquiries into the characters of employers. Everybody smiles ; but it should be remembered that eight-tenths of those girls in Scotland work in houses where there is only one servant, that they cannot be married without courtship, which, without holidays, is in such houses impracticable, and that their mistresses' tempers are of the last importance to them, because if they do not stop a year no future employer will trust their characters. In the smaller Scotch towns, and even in Edinburgh, household-disci-pline is still maintained with a stxfctncss of which Londoners have no idea, and a mistress who "follows 1' an unlucky maid all day, who has a hot tongue, or who thinks broth quite suflieient nourishment, is not a pleasant task-mistress, even for the limited time of sixteen hours a day. Tho jjirls will be beaten of course, but even if they succeed they will be worse off than London lodging-house servants, who at all events sell their health for good round profits.

An interesting correspondence between Mr Crookes, F.R.S., and some of the other Fellows of the Royal Society, on the subject of a paper by Sir Crookes on "Psychic Force," offered to the Society by Mr Crookes in February last, .and refused by the committee- of the Society—a very unusual course in relation to papers offered by a Fellow—appeared in the extra sheet of the Daily Telegraph of Monday. It does not show on what grounds Mr Crookes's paper was refused, but it does hl.ow on what grounds it was in some quarters supposed to have been reflined, and that those grounds were Imaginary. On the whole, the correspondence impresses us—less from anything it says than from what it avoids saying—with the notion that the Fellows of the Royal Society are so susceptible to a possible charge of engaging in investigations that may have ridicule attached to them, that they do not givn Mr Crookes fair play. Jt is perfectly evident, for instance, that an objection made to an old experiment of Mr Crookes's —an objection to which Mr Crookes himself maintains that even that old experiment was proved not to bo open —was spoken of and publicly announced by another F. R. S. as the reason for rejecting a paper in which no such fault as was formerly alleged could have been discovered at all. Mr Crookes certainly comes out of this correspondence better than his correspondents. Science can be as unduly Conservative as faith.

Mr Candb'sh's motion for the simple repeal of tho 25th clause of the Education Act—the clause which enables School Boards to pay the fees of pauper children at denominational elementary schools in case their parents prefer them to the Board Schools—was discussed and rejected by a majority of 201 (31<> to 115) on Tuesday night. The tone of the Opposition was very much moderated, and Mr Dixon, though ho reminded Mr Forster that Birmingham " knew how to make the most of a grievance," was not as exacting in tone as lie has often been, and even intimated that if—as we have suggested—the denominational schools were retjuired, in consideration of the annual grant, to receive pauper pupils without charge, at least until their numbers reached a certain proportion of tho whole attendance, the question might be settled pretty quietly. However, he concluded iiis speech with a sort of menace, appealing to the Prime Minister, " who was their hope," to gratify his faithful Dissenting supporters by a compromise, lest the breach should bo widened and tho irrita tion increased ; whereupon Mr Scourfield remarked that these reiterated threats reminded him of tho story of a lady who had a very stormy voyage, with her lady's maid, to Holland, which produced such an effect on the lady's maid that in describing her feelings on the occasion she said that, next to Christianity, the greatest comfort she experienced waa in giving " Missiiß" warning, which she did in every interval between the attacks of sickness.