LITERARY AND PERSONAL NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 1848, 22 April 1887, Page 28

LITERARY AND PERSONAL NOTES.

Rev. Dr Henry J. Morton has resigned the rectorship of the Protestant Episcopalian Church of St. James at Philadelphia, after 56 years of continuous duty, He, unprompted, and without other cotinsel than, his own selfcommnning as to his dnty,' placed his resignation in the hands of the lay authorities of his church. He has given more force in his letter of resignation, says the Ledger, to what he speaks of as the " infirmities of age" than the .actual case warrants, for it is a satisfaction to say tbat,-with. the exception of , some impairment of his eyesight, his health his good, and, indeed, robust for a man in his 801 h year. , . The Princess Louis Ruspoli, last surviving daughter of the ill-fated Murat (King of Naples from 1808 to 1814), has telegraphed thanking the King of Italy for placing her father's' statue among those of bis, fellowsovereigns in the palace of Maples. "It was reserved to the son of Victor Eraanuel," says the princess, " to perpetuate in the heart o£ all Italians the memory of him who first dared to raise the standard of Italian inda* pendence." The words of Pouchkine, the national poet of Russia, was issued on the Ist of January by .the Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, The daughter of Pouchkine, Countess Natha* lie de Ursember, morganatic wife of the Prince oi Nassau, recently asked the Gzar for the prolongation of her hereditary rights. His Majesty wrote on the margin of the paper, "Refused; the demand after half a century is inopportune." Pouchkine, the Bryon of Russia, as will be remembered, wa.B killed in a duel in 1836. , A Madrid scholar, Senor Oarulia, who has been for many years at work on a rhymed version of the Bible, has just completed his task.. The work contains 260,000 verses. Some of Goethe's verses, hitherto unknown, have been found among the recently opened family papers and issued to members of the Goethe Society. It is rumoured toat President Dwight, of Yale, has nearly completed an important new book, the publication of which is expected to prove an event in the religious world.