MELBOURNE.

Otago Witness, Issue 1243, 25 September 1875, Page 6

MELBOURNE.

September 4th,

The business and politics of Melbourne at the present time is amusement. Our beggarly politics have during the recess for the Ministerial elections almost passed out of remembrance, and in their place we talk music and the drama. Amusements may have at certain festive times been more numerous than at present, but they never were of so high a stamp. Mademoiselle lima de Murska continues her triumphant career of concerts at the Town Hall, which is crowded on every occasion. Tonight the last of the series is to be given, and on Tuesday the great vocalist will take a benefit, when a gathering may be anticipated such as has hardly ever been seen in Melbourne. Last Saturday night, at the conclusion of the concert, she was accompanied to her hotel hy the members of the Metropolitan LiedertafeL walking in procession and bearing torchlights, and a serenade was afterwards sung under her windows by the Lisdertafel, in the midst of an immense crowd. The lady pin-poses to go on a short Provincial tour to Ballarat and one or two other towns, and then to visit some of the other colonies, returning after a few months to give a season of Italian Opera. This, it may confidently be predicted, will be a great and brilliant success. While the De Murska still reigns in the ascendant, another star of the first magnitude has risen above the horizon. Adelaide Ristori, the greatest tragic actress of the age, is playing at the Opera House with her Italian Company. Having seen Ristori, any comparison between her and and what we have ever had before in Melbourne, is simply impertinent and meaningless. In her art she stand* alone, and her pers >nations have a force, an artistic beauty, a completeness, an intensity, a vital reality which lifts her altogether on a different level from any actress we have ever had in Melbourne before. On Thursday night I saw her as Elizabeth, and one passage of her representation I shall not readily forget. It is where she hears of the execution of Essex, the onlyman she ever reallv loved, and whereshe is tortured by the agony of bitter self -accusation. After a terrible outburst of grief and reproaches, she orders the lords and ladies present to leave her alone, and then finding herself alone with memory and remorse, she sinks into herself with bitter anguish and despair. She looks round with terror, and exclaims in low thrilling tones, " Sola, sola, in tin lago di sangue— sola, coi rimorsi, c con Dio !" As she speaks of her remorse, she shrinks inwardly with a fear and hopelessness that she knows must be endless and infinite, but suddenly she raises her awee truck eyes to heaven, she remembers that she will be attended also by the* presence of an avenging God, and the blank misery of despair changes into an intensity of awful dread, and ahe quails terrified to the earth. I have never seen anything like this on the dramatic stage. It is not so much better than the ordinary performances of our every-day mediocrities — it is something wholly different— something that is of an entirely different class, and to be spoken of as art of another order. Madame Ristori is supported by a company of admirable actors, who have been apparently playing together for a long time, and give a finish and completeness to their performances which we have never seen before on the Melbourne stage. To have seen the great Ristori is an experience to remember —it makes an epoch in one's life — and her visit ought to have a very beneficial effect on theatrical ait in Australia. Another great entertainment is the Exhibition. It was opened on Thursday by the Acting-Governor, and is now in full swing. The display is a very great and varied one, but it is useless for me to attempt to say anything about it. The newspapers found it necessary to" double their size in order to notice it. ft would be absurd for me to try and sum it up in a paragraph. People are already making afternoon appointnifflits at the Exhibition, which will be the great place of resort— the "Mall" and Regent street anl Rotten Row of Melbourne for the next three months. With its Show and its mmical performances, it has abundance of attractions, and is sure to be crowded with visitors for weeks to come. In addition to all this, we have the Sunday evening recitals at the Town Hall, which continue to hold their own well in spite of all of the opposition of the Sabbatarians. The opinions of three leading counsel have been taken on the question of the legality of these entertainments, and as to the application to them of the old Act of George 111., which wa3 lately used in England to close the Brighton Aquarium on Sundays. It is by no means surprising to find that the three barristers consulted have given three conflicting opinions on the point at issue. Mr Higinbotham holds that- the Act in question being passed, as set forth in its preamble, for a special and local ¥urpOEe, does not apply to these colonies. Mr frixon thinks that the Act does apply, and that the "recitals" of Mr Fairclough form a class of entertainments within the meaning of the Act ; and Mr Holroyd considers that the Act is in force in this Colony, but that the " i-ucred recital* " of Mr Fairclough are not an entertainment to which the Act could be applied. There is not much guidance to the delil-erations of the Sabbatarians to be extracted from these opinions, and it is doubtful whether they will venture upon the course of attempting to close the hall by force of law. In the meantime, the question of letting the hall has been before the City Council, and it has acted like alcohol on the discussions of that not very orderly body. To one or two Sabbatarians in the Council, and to one or two others who Want to pass for Sabbatarians, the question is like a red rag to a bull, and its introduction serves to plunge the Council in a wild turmoil and uproar, which, after lasting for some hourd, w, as they call it, "adjourned for a iveek."

One of the cases in which Catholic priests oave been implicated in the kidnapping of children for the purposes of proselytism, came before the Court the other day in the form of ru application on haJbeus, made in the name of their father— a man named Bates— to obtain the custody of his children. As Bates, however, bad not been married to their deceased mother, the Court held that he had no right in law to take the children from their actual custodian ; that, in fact, he had no standing in the Court at all if the children were left in the bands of the priests. Of course, it is far better that the children should be brought up as decent Catholics than that they should be left to grow up ~a» it seemed probable enough that they might— a» rowdies and reprobates. But still it is not very soothing to know that these primates of the "Black International" hre practicing their evil machinations in every household to which they can gain access, and that they view any orphansor helpless children, "especially such has have expectations .of fortunes, as fair booty wherever they mm. be founa.

The "Spelling ßee" roania has passed over us like a wave, but, happily, is already receding. Of all forms of popular entertainment which I have ever heard of these aro certainly jt&e umt ftl'Mu-d and chilcfob. Tito iioyftpwstt

have been reporting them in detail, and giving the blunders made by the various spelling competitors. To the astonished reader it seems like reporting the misspellings of a class of children in a State school. The people who act as examiners, spend their time hunting up difficult words to propose to the competitors, and are delighted to disinter from some old dictionary an obsolete or exotic word which it is likely that none of the competitors have ever seen before. At any rate, the thing has pretty well had its clay, and is rapidly passing away into the limbo of forgetfulness, with last yeax-'s novels and last month's fashions.

It is useless saying anything about politics. For the time being we have no politics. We have only a lot of political adventurers, who. by a strange chance, were allowed to " jump their positions, and were as much astonished as society at large to find themselves as Ministers of the Crown. For some time, the public; looked upon it as a joke, but is now getting to view it as a ver3 r humiliating passage in our annals. Whether they will be able to hang on to office till the end of the session, and perhaps to the end of the Parliament, or whether they will be summarily dealt with on the meeting of Parliament, a few clays will now deciiie, as Parliament meets to resume business on Tuesday next.

I don't know whether an incident that happened the other dayto a member of Parliament in an omnibus, is to be looked upon as an item of political news. The member in question, a shallow pated young man named Mason, who we can never forget was returned by the electors of South Gipps Land in preference to Mr Michie, was riding in a 'bus, when he managed to get into an altercation with Miss Lucy Chambers, the very stout contralto of Mr Lyster's Opera Company, of some four years ago. In the course of the compliments that passer!, the lady called Mr Mason a liar, to which that gentleman, in a similar strain of polished badinage, retorted that her language was " only fit for a strumpet of the town." On this she slapped his face, and the whole public has since cried "bravo," and would gladly have the performance encored. The wrathful member, however, smarted under the insult to his dignity, and on alighting from the vehicle, called a policeman, and insisted on giving the lady in charge, although the constable tried to prevail on him to be content with a summons. The next day the case came before Mr Sturt, the Police Magistrate, who, after hearing the shabby story of the M.L.A., said that the lady had broken the law and must be fined, but bearing in mind the infamous terms applied to her by the prosecutor, he thought a fine of Is would be adequate to the offence. So Mr Mason was snubbed, and slapped, and laughed at, and an unfeeling Court only awards him a single shilling in the way of redress. Surely he will appeal to the privileges of Parliament when the House meets, and move that the stout-armed cantatrice be brought to the bar of the Chamber, there to apologise on her knees for the act of high treason she hsd committed.

The recent loss of L2IOO in Bank notes by two clerks of the Bank of Victoria while going out making the ordinary round of the Banks to exchange notes, has puzzled the detectives and exercised the mind of the public for some days. Now it seems that some light may be thrown upon it from a source that was not at first suspected. The inquiries made did not elicit any trace of the money, but they ascertained that a teller of the Bank of Victoria was short in his accounts, and brought to light some circumstances tending to make it probable that he abstracted the missing notes to make up his deficiency. He has been arrested, and we are told the old tale — he has a wife and five children. The evidence in the case will doubtless bring to light some curious facts, but in the mean time it is very curious to see, as we have sometimes seen before, that the inconvenient part of instituting inquiries into the affairs of even the best managed Banks is, that nobody knows where they will end, or what awkward discoveries will be made in their course.