DAYS THAT HAVE GONE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3149, 22 July 1914, Page 72

DAYS THAT HAVE GONE.

THE WEEK’S ANNIVERSARIES. July 19. —Massacre of Protestants, Valtcllina, North Italy, 1620 ffm. Somerville died, 1742. Flinders died, 1814. Doan Stanley died, 1831. Bishop Wilberfqrce died, 1873. Sehipka Pass occupied by Russians, 1877July 20. —Petrarch born, 1304. Ireland declared independent, .. 1689. Boddoes born, 1803. t Army purchase system abolished, 1885 Mr Gladstone resigned Premiership, 1886. Sir Richard Wallace died, 1890. July 21.—Battle of Shrewsbury, 1403. Philip Neri died, 1515. Matthew Prior born, 1664. Lord Russell beheaded, 1633. . Robert Burns died, 1796. Garibaldi born, 1307. Baron Julius Reuter born, 1821. Tate Gallery ooned, 1897. July 22.—Battle of Falkirk, 1298. • Battle of Salamanca, 1812. Lord Wolse'ley took possession of Cyprus, 1878. Napoleon II died, 1832. Charles Landseer died, 1899. July 23.—Sir Robert Shcaley died, 1627. Beauhamais guillotined. 1794. Coventry Patmore born. 1823. S. T. Coleridge died, 1834. Storming of Ghuznee, 1839. General Grant died, 1885. July 24. —Gibraltar captured by the English, 1704. Rev John Newton born, 1725. Jane , Austen died, 1817. Window tax abolished, 1851. Captain Webb drowned at Niagara, 1333. Sultan - restored constitution to Turkey, 1903. July 25. —A’Kempis died, 1471. William Sharp'"died, 1824. A. J. Balfour born, 1848. Western Australia given self-go-vernment, TB9O. War between China and Japan, 1894. The origin of the disturbance in the Valtellina in 1620 was of a remote date. The people of that valley- were Catholic, while the majority of their Grisons masters had embraced the reformed communion. In 1603 Venice, . made a treaty with the Grisons leagues for the purpose of having free passage through the territory of the latter. The alliance expired in 1615, and the Venetian Senate sent an agent to renew' it, who, in order to overcome the obstacles raised by Spanish and Austrian agents found means to excite in the Protestants both religious and political suspicions of their Catholic subjects of Valtellina. The Protestant communes rose in arms; some persons were killed, and many more were fined and banished. Rusca, the head of the Catholic clergy “in Valtellina, was put to death. This exasperated the people of Valtellina and a conspiracy was formed •to shake off the sovereignty of the Grisons. The Duke of Feria, Governor of Milan, secretly encouraged the conspirators, and gave them money. ,At break of day on Jujy 19, 1620, the conspirators entered Tirano, one of the largest villages of Valtellina, and having rung the bells as a signal, they began” to massacre the Protestants, whether Grisons or their own. countrymen. At the first alarm, both the Catholic and Protestant inhabitants who were unacquainted w.th the conspiracy, arose from their beds and lushed into the streets. The conspirators, who were in waiting, fell upon the Protestants, while the Catholics, being apprised of the true cause of the tumult, joined in the massacre, and having broken open’ the place where the arms were deposited, proceeded to the well-known dwellings of the Protestants. These strove to defend themselves, but in vain; they were hunted out and barbarously killed, five alone escaping. The whole valley fell into the power of the insurgents, and the victims of the massacre have been stated to total 350; probably they exceeded that number. Thomas Lovell Beddoes, a modern English dramatist of peculiar and almost unique genius, was the son of Thomas Beddoes, a notable physician and scientific writer,, and was born at Clifton in 1803. tie received his education at the Charter House, and subsequently at Pembroke College, Oxford. While still an undergraduate ho published his “Bride’s Tragedy,’’ a piece in the taste of the Elizabethan revival. He was encouraged by his friends to devote himself to the cultivation of dramatic poetry, and ho speedily produced a number of superb fragments, ranging from “Torrismond” to short descriptive passages of a few lines each, unsurpassed for originality of conception and condensed force. His

genius, however, though highly poetical, was in no respect dramatic, and his endeavours to achieve a complete work proved abortive until 1829, when the strangely fascinating “Death’s Jest Book” was laboriously put together. By this time Beddoes had become a resident in Germany, and a zealous student of physiology. Dissatisfaction with his tragedy and the gradual disuse of his native language, conspired to reduce him to silence. He led for several years an unsettled life on the Continent, devoted to anomatical research, and actively participating in Liberal and Democratic movements in Germany and Switzerland until his death in 1849, from the effects of an accident. Beddoes is a poet for poets, and few other readers will enjoy „him. He is, perhaps the most concrete poet of his day; the most disposed to express sentiment by imagery and material symbolism. The want of constructive power, which mars his dramas, is even more prejudicial to his lyrics, but some few songs where the right key note has been struck from the first, rank among the most perfect in our language. Baron de Paul Julius Reuter, the founder of Reuter’s News Agency, was born at Cassell, in Germany. In 1849, on the completion of the first telegraph lines in Germany and France, there was a gap between the German line at Aix-la-Ohapelle, and the French and Belgian lines at Vervicrs. Reuter organised a news-collecting agency at each of the three places, and bridged the gap by pigeon- poet. Later he endeavoured unsuccessfully to start a news agency in Paris, and in 1851 he removed to England, and became a naturalised British subject. He built up a largo busi- . nees in forwarding private commercial messages through his agents at the various telegraph termini. He did not succeed in getting the newspapers to receive hie information until 1858, when the Times published the report of an important speech by Napoleon 111, forwarded by Reuter’s Paris agent. Reuter then proceeded to extend bis sphere of operations all over the world, and had several special cables laid to facilitate his business. Baron Reuter died at Nice in February, 1899. By a treaty' contracted in 1878 between England and Turkey, the Porte pledged itself to < arry out reforms in Asia Minor, and England, on her part, guaranteed the integrity of the Sultan’s Asiatic possessions. To put England in a position to fulfil her part of the treaty, and as a pledge for the execution of the promised reforms, the Porte surrendered Cyprus to England as a naval and military station, the latter agreeing to regard the island as an integral part of the Turkish Empire, and to make over the surplus revenue to the Sultan. This treaty, which had received the consent of Germany and Russia at the time of its execution, aroused great indignation in France and Italy. To pacify the former State, an arrangements was entered into, in accordance with which England was to put no obstacle in the way of a French occupation of Tunis —-an arrangement of which the French Government finally took advatage in the year 1881. The Earl of Northumberland and his son Henry Percy, called “ Hotspur,” had performed ..great services for Henry IV in establishing and maintaining him upon the throne. Both father and eon were high spirited, passionate, suspicious men, who could- not endure the shadow of a slight. Up to 1403 no doubt had been cast on their fidelity. It has been thought that Hotspur’s grudge against the King began with a notion that the release of his brother-in-law, Edmund Mortimer—taken juisoner the year before by the Welsh—had been neglected by the King. Yet Henry seems to have conceived no suspicion. On July 10 the King reached Northamptonshire on his way to Scotland; on the 17th he heard that Hotspur, with his uncle, the Earl of Worcester, ■ was in arms in Shropshire. They raised no cry of private wrongs, but proclaimed themselves vindicators of national right: their object was to correct the evils of the Administration and to enforce the proper expenditure of public money.. The report ran like wildfire through the West that Richard was alive and at Chester. Hotspur’s army rose to 14,000 men, and not suspecting the strength and promptness of the King, he sat down before Shrewsbury. Henry showed himself equal to the need. From Burton-on-Tront, whore, on July 17, he summoned the forces of the shires to join him, he marched into Shropshire and offered to parley with the insurgents. The Earl of Worcester went between the two camps, but he was either an impolitic or a tfeacherous envoy, and the negotiations ended in mutual exasperation. On the 21st the battle of Shrewsbury was fought; Hotspur was slain; Worcester was taken and beheaded two days afterwards. The old earl, who may or may not have been cognisant of his son’s intentions from the first, was now marching to his succour. He was driven back to Warkworth and, on August 11, he met the King at York, and submitted to him. Jane Austen was born in 1775 at Steventon, in Hampshire, a parish of which her father was rector. Her life was singularly tranquil and void of incident. At a very early age she seems to have begun to exercise her faculty for composition, and wrote several short tales and fragments. In 1795 her first large work, “ Pride and Prejudice,” was begun, and completed in 10 months. “Sense and Sensibility,” and “ Northanger Abbey ” were written during 1797 and 1793, but it was not until 1813 that the first two works were published, and “ Northanger Abbey ” only appeared in 1818, after her death, the reason for the delay being that the first attempts to duce the works to the public- were badly received. “ Mansfield Park, and “Emma” were published in 1814 and 1816 respectively. Early in the latter year Miss Austen’s health had begun to give way; her strength gradually declined, and she died at Winchester, whither she had been removed for change of air. Her works are now strongly admired for the truth, absolute fidelity, and careful skill of the portrait painting in them. She works out the picture of a character by an infinite series of minute touches, and “ her works, like well-proportioned rooms, are rendered less apparently grand and imposing by the very excellence of their adjustment.”