PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 1912, 13 July 1888, Page 21

PASSING NOTES.

Because the public finds the proceedings of Presbytery in re Salmond entertaining, and as good as a play, this month's " Presbyterian " says some unkind things of the public. The public is " a scandal-loving public" — which perhaps is only another way of saying that it loves the reports of proceedings in Presbytery. But, also, "the public is an old wife with ears as long and as erect as those of Midas." Here we tret both a mixture of metaphors and a classical story spoiled. Old wives are avid of gossip, bat they do not for that reason wear asses' ears. King Midas wore asses' ears, but not because he was avid of gossip. Moreover, the ears of King Midas though "long" were not "erect," since, as the story goes, he managed to conceal them beneath his Phrygian cap from all the world except his wife and his barber. The " Presbyterian's " classics are surely growing somewhat rusty. Instead of inventiner this muddled metaphor about old wives, King Midas, and asses' ears, why not say at onee — The public is an ass? Then, next, we read that the. decisions of the Presbytery, " though Solonic in their wisdom, are sure to be greeted by jeers, groans, and howlings." This is a polite way of saying that they are sure to attract the notice of " Civis " and other newspaper critics. " Jeers, groans, and bowlir gs " observe ! However, I bear no malice ; what really shocks my moral sense is the description of the Presbytery's decisions as " Solonic in their wisdom." But we must remember that wise and foolish are relative terms, andP that amongst the blind the one-eyed man is king. Nevertheless, be the wisdom of the Presbytery Solonic, or even Solomonic, it shall not escape criticism. Tins being so, I echo the editor's closing recommendation — which seemingly occurs to him as an afterthought, but mierlit better have made the stnple of his article — " that members of church courts should put far •more restraint upon themselves in themattpr of speech than they have been in the habit of doing."

There was another (rrnnd field rlay over the Salmond pamphlet la*t week, but it passed off without any serious casualty. People who were expecting that on this occasion the Presbytery would out-do their former out-doings were, somewhat disnnpointed. The proceedings took the form of a sermon, or series' oF sermons, by Ihe Rev. Mr Will — edifying, but somniferous. Fortunately it was necessary that each head of Mr Will's discourse should be adopted by resolution, upon which resolution it was possible to move an amendment — n practice which mic'ht with advnntnee be introduced into our churches on Sundays. At intervals, therefore, the Presbytery woke up, and members recovered something 1 of their old form. Yet notalto£rotl-er. When Ibe Rev. Mr Ryley pointed out that Dr Salmond would offer salvation to Hie "old Gentleman " himself, instead of sensation, horror, and cries of " shame !" the statement evoked " much laughter." This fact is encourao-ins: : so is the euphemism adopted by Mr Ryley. There is fjood literary authority for the proposition that "the prince of darkness is a gentleman," and if Mr Rvley were, a mere secular person one rrn'eht suspect, him of having recently read "King Lear." As it. is, his courteous reference to the devil as the "old gentleman " must be taken as evidence of a growth in charity which may be an indirect result of Dr Salmon d's pamphlet. After the Rev. Mr Gibb and Mr Keith Ram9ay had made sensible speeches in defence of J)r Salmond, and had been overruled on a count of heads by 1G votes to 8, the Presbytery finally formulated its Solomonic wisdom as follows: —

To reraonstrato wiHi him (Dr Salmnnd) regarding the way in which lip speaks of, &c, &c. To endeavour to bring him -to a better state of mind on this most important matter . To persuade him to express deep regret for the terms in which, &c, &c. To admonish him to he more careful in the future.

A tone, it will be observed, of motherly and even grandmotherly tenderness. " Naughty child 1 Arn't you sorry ? There now — kiss, and take care you don't do it again !" We are all awaiting now with keenest interest the report of the committee appointed to carry these' tearful remonstrances and bring the culprit to his marrow-bones.

The Chinese Imperial proclamation and edict, even if true, is not so very alarming after the first shock has subsided. It is for a moment disconcerting to be told that an army of eleven million men is to be re-armed and drilled for the special purpose of castigating vs — that the master of this Celestial host, or, rather, host of Celestials, is drawing

o back for a spring. But we breathe more freely on learning that it will take three years' preparation before he does spring. Anything and any number of things may happen in three years. Sir Henry Parkes, whose frantic desire to play a lone hand on the Chinese question, and shake his coat tails in the van of nations, is responsible for much of the irritation existing, may have been courteously bowed out of office by the polished members of the New South Wales Assembly. In that case Parkes might be offered sacrificially to appease the resentment of the Elder Brother of the Sun. Failing this, there are countless ways in which delay may help the British Empire, and it is anyhow opposed to the temperament of Britons to attach very great value to a post-dated threat which is only to mature three years hence. We should feel an irresistible inclination to laugh at a marr who remarked, " You have pulled my nose ; I am not precisely up to your form at* the moment, but I shall take a tiree months' course at the gloves with Professor , and then proceed to punch your head, and punch it hard, mind you." Whether his celestial majesty can flog his anger so industriously as to keep a nice fresh flush upon it for three whole years, may be doubted, but it is just possible he can; and, if so, he has eleven million soldiers. Phew! I remember an old schoolboy ditty beginning, "The Emperor of China has a hundred thousand men," and ending, " As we go marching along," but the Chinese army has evidently been recruited since my school days. If the Emperor perseveres it may be as well for us to inquire before the eleven millions receive their finishing touches from the drill sergeant, whether an apology and the body of Parkes wouW be accepted.

The fact is, in spite of the large number of Chinese dwelling within our gates, we know comparatively little of the national character. We should always be ready to give them credit as a nation for persistency and a capability for sustained effort, if only on account of the building of the great wall o£ China. But, unhappily, the gravest suspicion has been cast upon the great wall itself of late. Here in the colonies the matter has attracted little, if any, attention, but it was the subject of considerable newspaper discussion in England a short time back. The great, wall of China we have all believed in implicitly from childhood — as implicitly as we have believed in the Pyramids and the Colossus of Khodes. Our precise impressions of it have no doubt differed widely. To the mind's eye of some, the great wall may have presented itself as a line of bricks and mortar 1400 miles long, crowned with the broken bottles of Guinness and Bass ; to others it has assumed a less fanciful shape; but to all it has had an assured existence— although why a wall, high or low, should keep out any Tartars intelligent enough to conceive the idea of climbing over it has been more or less a difficulty. Eecently, however, it appears that some traveller who had journeyed the length and breadth of the Chinese Empire was asked casually concerning this great wall, and confessed promptly that he had never run against it in hi 3 wanderings, although he had travelled in several localities where, according to all accounts, it ought to be. Hereupon men began to raise their eyebrows, letters were written to the papers, and other Chinese travellers were questioned upon the subject. Dreadful to relate, they too had never seen the wall, and some even pooh-poohed the idea of its existence. We arc getting used nowadays, of course, to the uprooting of cherished traditions, but here is a deed of violence which surely will not be allowed to pass unchallenged. We would as soon lose a tooth from our jaw (a first tooth, of course) as permit the great wall of China, constructed 200 years before the Christian era, &c, &c., to be wrenched from the atlases and geographies we have studied in infancy.

If the great wall were to go by the board we might, indeed tremblingly stand and ask, what next? Donnelley's proposed dethrone ment of Shakespeare is not much more startling. Consider the details we have been furnished with concerning this venerable structure. From one standard authority I find that

The main substance of the wall is earth or rubbish, retainer! on each side by a thick casing of stone and brick, and terraced by a platform of square tiles. It bounds the whole north of China, attending along the frontiers of three provinces, a distance of nearly 19 degrees of longitude. From its eastern extremity there is an extensive stockade of wooden piles enclosing the country of Mougden. The total height of the wall varies from 15 to 30 feet on a basis of stone projecting two feet under the brickwork and about the same in height. The thickness of the whole wall at the base is2sffe, diminishing to 20 andir. places to 15ft at the platform. The towers are 40ft square at the base, diminishing to 30f fc at the top and about 30ft in height. The thinness of the parapet of the wall, which is only 18in, justifies the conclusion that it was not intended to resist cannon. > Quite so, especially considering the date of its erection. But what I want to know is are these all lies 1 Perish the thought that our confiding youth for generations past can have so been played upon. Still the question should be settled beyond a doubt, and the great wall of China set once more firmly upon its foundations in English estimation. Before the 11,000,000 men complete their drill, and there is any definite outbreak of hostilities, a deputation might wait upon Mr Sew Hoy and any other prominent Chinese citizens, and beg earnestly in the interests of primary education for a frank and outspoken utterance on the subject of. the great wall.

Ignatius Donnelley and his " Great Cryptogram," as mauled and mangled bj the Spectator, the Pall Mall Gazette, and the St. James' Gazette' present a pitiable spectacle. Other criticisms have not yet come to hand, but if those that follow are on the same lines aotum est de Donnelley — it is all up with Ignatius; the Great Cryptogram, as long as it is remembered at all, will be known as the Mammoth Mare's-nest. The net result left in my own mind after a cursory examination of Donnelley's two big volumes may be given in a sentence or twc. To discover in any play any given proper name written in cypher, say the name "Shakespeare": — Find the word shake or shakes; then count forward 505 words till you find spear, or sjtare, or spur, or peer, or 2>arc : if you don't find it counting forward, count backward ; if you don't find it either way, "modify " your " root number " 505 by some other number and count again till you do find it ; when found connect it with slialte or shakes, and you haye — "Shakespeare." After such fashion, more or less— l don't pledge myself to strict accuracy — Donnelley digs out. from the play of "Henry IV" a confession of the Baconian authorship. Obviously his method is capable of being applied in all branches of literature with equally startling and valuable results. Take, for example, the " Lyceum Guide." By the Donnelley method it would be easy to prove that the real author of that celebrated manual of Freethought was Mr Alfred Brunton. Similarly it might be shown that Dr Macgregcr, of Oamaru, wrote the " Reign of Grace," — with the design of subsequently refuting it.

Where Donnelley comes worst to grief is in making Bacon talk nineteenth century English, newspaper English, and even American English. Poor Donnelley ! it never dawned on him that part of the job he had set himself was to write as Bacon would have written, and how hard a thing that would be. The Boston Spiritists who are just now continuing Shakespeare's plays— through an eminent lady medium — have a vastly easier task. In the course of two centuries and a half the genius of Shakespeare may have degenerated, and judging from the specimens of his present workmanship given below, degenerated it has, most vilely. This is from Shakespeare's new drama "The Babylonians " — dictated from spirit land : The expanse of heaven to me is as a face, E'er mantling with high fraught, emotions. Anon there is the whirl of tempest, Then perchance one blush of red suffusion, Cast from the city on the drifting clouds. Sheet lightning plays gambolling by the hour together,

Now here, now there, in sympathetic quivers. Such are the thoughts of the magician while viewing the clouds at night from his turret top. And here is the soliloquy of King Nimrod at the same hour in his palace gardens: Palaces and gardens light best up With company. In their desolation I cannot find a spot to call my soul my own. I'm never less alone than when alone : Hpre 'midst th' exuberance of trained nature,

The fair Ixora, Magnolia, and the pinks,

My mind is spread o'er with a heavenly calm. Two other new plays by Shakespeare are announced — "Robespierre" and the "East End of London." In the latter occurs the funeral of Tom Savers, a procession of donkeys and costermongers' carts which is to cross the stage amid one prolonged roar from pit and galleries. The great London Saturday night scene in "The Lights o London "is nothing to it. But enough. It is almost a desecration to report such things. Shakespeare's epitaph, "Cursed be he that moves my bones," may certainly be applied to the knaves and clowns who are taking these unholy liberties with his name and reputation.

Sympathy for the escaped prisoner Jonathan Roberts continues to break out in new and unexpected places. A Christchurch paper reports that on a recent Sunday night one of the local ministers devoted a sermon to the life and adventures of this highly popular criminal, taking as his text, " I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan." This must be a preacher of the type described by a Manchester clergyman who declares that some of his brethren put it this way: " Brethren, you must repent, as it were ; and be converted, in a measure ; or you will be lost, to some extent." Verily the pulpit tone is changing fast. Even the Devil is now referred to euphemistically as " that person," and " the old gentleman," and tint in the Dunedin Presbytery! But the oddities of the pulpit are kept in countenance by the oddities of the pew. Just now the Dunedin evangelicals are double-banking their Sunday evening duties by listening to a sermon on the Evidences in the Choral Hall at 8 o'clock. The first of the series was given by the Rev. Dr Dunlop, the Presbyterian theological professor. Next day his preaching was described in a local paper as dull, pedantic, wearisome, unsuited to the audience and the occasion. But by good luck another local paper reported the sermon in full ; whereupon I read it, moved to that act of heroism by the adverse critique. Perhaps I am no judge in such matters, but to me this condemned discourse seemed a particularly good one— sensible, vigorous, and scholarly. Such is the kind of thing it seems that the Choral Hall multitude yawn over. So much the worse for their taste. "What they like as " evidencas "is Moody and Sankey, death-bed anecdotes, and frothy rant. Civis.

A selector near Burrowa, New South Wales, named James Murray, died on the Ist insfc. from the effects of drinking carbolic acid in mistake for rum. Murray had been drinking heavily. His brother reached his place on the previous evening, bringing with him some rum in a bottle, similar to the one containing carbolic acid, used for foot rot. The latter bottle was generally kept in an onthouse, bnt it was inadvertently placed behind a box in the room where deceased slept. On waking up, he saw the bottle, and thought it contained rum, and he drank^ more than a glass full, dying before medical aid could reach him

Messrs Kowden and Moncrieff (late with Messrs Nimmo and Blafr) have commenced business as sepdsmen and florists on their own account. Visitor* from the country and town buyers should not fail to pay a- visit to Mollison, Mills, and Co, First great clearing sale of winter stock commencing on Saturday, July 14. The value offered cannot fail to pleaso the hpenesfc buyer. Call or send for prices to Mollison, Mills, and Co., 195 and 197 George i street, Dunedin (oppoaite Knox Church),