NEWS BY LATE MAILS.

Taranaki Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 9344, 18 March 1892, Page 3

NEWS BY LATE MAILS.

At the close o£ the year and immediately preceding Christmas two immenso congre gations assembled at the Regent Square church to listen for the last time—for some considerable period, at all events—to the familiar voice of their beloved preacher, the Rev. John M’Neill. No pastor has held such sway over the North London Presbytery as the eloquent and conscientious divine who has tendered his resignation to his London flock in order that he may enter into his new mission in Scotland. On this momentous occasion the address he delivered was necessarily of a farewell character, yet there was hardly a note of sadness and certainly none of regret in them. Mr M’Neill has no misgivings as to the future of the church and is confident that whoever may bo his successor it will flourish in the future .as. it has flourished in the past. optimism has hardly been shared by his congregation, who seemed depressed by the knowledge that the utmost difficulty will be 'experienced in getting a minister able to fill as Mr M’Neill has tilled it, Dr Dykes’ pulpit. Meanwhile, at the beginning of the year, Mr M’Neill entered upon his new Scottish mission. Whilst the greater part of his evangelistic work must necessarily be. carried out in the great towns across the border, he is very anxious to go thoroughly in the rural districts. No doubt a great future awaits this singularly impressive preachor among a people who are famous the wide world over for their religious instincts and the certainty with which they can detect anything approaching genius in preaching. Sir Frederick Leighton, in his address to the students of the Royal Academy, the other day took a very different view of Frenoh art from that expressed by Matthew Arnold—‘'France, famed in all arts, in none supreme.” In architecture, the subject with which lie chiefly dealt, he claimed for the early Gothio, and tho wonderful painted glass which grew up to match it that it was very as perfect as the art of man could make it. For the-architectural work of tho Renuissaanco was not native to France, although she knew how to take magnificent advantage from it. The address would perhaps have been more valuable and less like a shower of fireworks, if it had attempted less.” At Chatham Dockyard, a six-ton gun, while being hoisted on to H.M.S. Blake, - slipped from tho slings and fell into 30ft. of water. Divers were sent down to fix lashings to tho gun, and it is intended to make an examination of the hull of the vessel. It is stated that an outbreak among the convicts of Wormwood Scrubbs Prison took place during sorvico in tho chapel. It appoars that cortain of the convicts, estimated at about thirty, instigated by one of their number, made a rush for tho main entrance. Tho ringleader would appear to hove eluded- the vigilance of tho warders so far as to cross the yard and attempt to scalo the outer wall, but Ire was promptly secured, as wore also tho other men. Tho ordinary Btaff subdued the mutineers, who have boon removed •to other prisons, and quietude has since profiled.