HOME GOSSIP.

Thames Star, Volume IIII, Issue 1751, 13 August 1874, Page 2

HOME GOSSIP.

London, May 20,1874. Mrs. Grundy is once, more triumphant among us. Our Museums and Picture Galleries are not to bo opened on Sundays, and all those wrong-minded persons among us who wished that they should . may go to—the gin shop. Mrs. Grundy, of course, intends that they shall go to Churah, but then we have to admit the possibility that they may not. This last decision of our legislators makes us almost wish " more power "to the Ritualists. If pictures in their legitimate place, and antiquities, and other curiosities in ditto, are to be shut away from us, then in the name of all that's pleasant and profitable let us hare the churches filled choke full of painting, sculpture, and stained glass, and lot there be exhibited therein saintly relics of the mediroval times, and saintly embroidery of the present, for- aU-wjiiho fl choose to go and look at them. The" mis- ij chief is .that a great many won't choose. I to go to church who would. choose to go I to South Kensington or Trafalgar Square; I and a great many who would otherwise . I choose to go to church wont go if the pic- i turos and relics are there. But, as I began ,' by saying, Mrs. Grundv is triumphant— never mind all the others. The Czar takes leave of us tomorrow, "very much impressed," of course, by all ho has scon : not a little tired, too, we may safely say—though, on tht whele, we did treat him more.mercifully than we did the ' Sbah last year, but -then he is, you see, more come-at-able ;• we may catch' him ' again, whereas we had to make hay while J the sun shone in the case of .the I Shah. It' ii said that there was :1 a question of precedence to be settled in ', court, which has been pending since the \ arrival of the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, to which the Czar gave the weight. of his wisdom and experience, and which has consequently.been arranged "to the satisfaction of all parties.'- Of course it / had reference to r the .precedence of the -I Duchess of Edinburgh. ' That we all know \ —as well as we know everything of this sort; but of whom she was to take precedence, or who was to take precedence of her, or when, or where, we have to admit We are rather h»zy about. At a drawing room lately the Duchess was absent; and M Princess Christian, who, it may be said, j without offence, hiring a family and not I much money often absents herself from I ceremonials .which entail expense, was ] present. Immediately wo were enlight- 1 ened, for the moment. '• It was Princess Christian who wanted to take precedence of the Duchess, and the Duchess would not allow it." "It waa the Duchess whoconsidered herself above all ihe younger princesses, and the younger princesses would not admit her claim." • "Then an ingenious gentleman of that class among which, according to the proverb; wo would rather have enemies than friends, undertook to publish his belief that the Duchess only stayed away from the drawing room I because- she is in that way " which ladies I I wish to bo who love their lords." Royalty I here stands a good deal. Our Radicals I and Republicans may abuse it, and our . M gossips and scandal mongers may traduce I it almost to their hearts'. content; but it I would be too much to expt-ct that it can I bear to- be defended by its ingenious I friends; so the Duke of Edinburgh wrote I to say that this gentleman's statement was I quite unauthorised. As to tho precedence ■ honstnse no sensible person believes that. ■ Sir William Mordauntbavingappliedfor I leave to continue his action for divorce— I although Lady Mordaunt stilbcontinues H insane, the case was argued in the house, I and sent ibrdecision to five judges, three I of whom are in favor of allowing the I action to proceed,, and two, against. The fl Divorce Court being of recent estaljtsh- I ment, there is, it seems, no former s&Aite I which can be applied either for or against, ■ and no provision ,was made for such a I case in the Divorce Act itself; neverche- I less it j would be contrary to the whole I spirit of our British law, at present, that I anyone should be put upon trial while I mentally incapable of defence. True H divorce is not a " criminal-" case, and H civil actions—in property cases—can go H on even where the real defendant or H plaintiff is a lunatic; but such cases H could not in common, sense, be considered H precedents to be acted on in divorce H actionsj so in fact, law and lawyers are ■ all abroad. As the matter stands, all tiie ■ world outside the lawyers is more moylfl by the. danger to society, than by,the ■ rights or the wrongs o£ Sir "William or ■ Lady Mordaunt. if -it be admitted that ■ a lunatic can be tried for matrimonial in* H fidelity and- divorced, then any man or H woman who has an insane wife or hus--^| band* whom it might bt convenient to get jH rid of, would find little difficulty in get-■ ting up sufficient evidence, by bribery, ■ collusion, or other means, to effect his orH her purjpne. ~ ,H , A correspondent of one of our morning^| papers has just given us a most interest-H iag account of the inauguration .of theH '" Owen Memorial" in Stockholm-.on thjH lgth instant. Samuel 'DwnHW 1M England 12th of May, 1774, vtnt *<>»**■

Jen in tli©bo'gming of the present century, with a hundred poiiuds in. his pocket, and a. great deal of engineering knowledge— ufar as that knowledge had then ad-. ranced—in his head. Iv 1816 he turned; out tho first Swedish steamer, the Witch; . t)f Stockholm, from his works, and then in rapid succession thirty more; andr when in 1843 he closed his workshop he; had well earned the title which has been engraved on this recently erected me-, xnorial of " The Father of tho Swedish? Steam Fleet and - engineering^ w s orks. ) According to the correspondent's account the enthusiasm of the Stockholmers for the memory of their British " Father of Steam was immense. All the literary, papers and many oi the others hare had something to say on, the volume of poems called " The Lep.end; of Tubal and other poems, by the lady who calls herself George Elliott, and having ha&~their say, the most that can?i be gathered from it is that George Elliott' : had better have stuck to novel writing.! She had'better have improved on MiddleMarch, which was incomparably dvl — her other books need no improvement:; what, could be wanted to Adam Bede or; Silas Marner •?—than have tried once; more to persuade tke world that she is as great a poet as a novelist. "The Spanish' Gypsy "-; was' received for the; sake of the originator of Mrs. Poyscr, Dinah, Morris, and tho Weaver of Eabelhoe, and praised by those who are supposed to lead our •pinions in literature, whether prose or poetry, just because | they are .tpo. tied to names to omit praising | anything "written-'by a popular one (Oh, for- the days of Sydney Smith and Dr. Maginn), but Tubal may return to his workshop; He has not brass enough. We are told, on the best authority of ebursey that a,'' Serene Highness" married to-one of our Koyal family is to figure as co-respondent in a divorce case, soon to come on between a popular actor and his wife, herself a popular actress, though popular more on account of her beauty than her dramatic talents. Neither the fact of the divorce case nor the Serene Highness' gallantry may be true, but Mrs. Candour, Lady Sneerwell, and Sir Benjamin Backbite have had a good deal to say onthe subject; and we, the outsiders, are not in a position to. contradict them. These high authorities, indeed, have, once at least before now, been busy with this special Serene Highness'famej but that effort all ended in a bottle of smoke— "hushed up, my dear"' they said, and we aincerely hope the present may also thus Everyone is tired of a yearly International- A few visitors creep through each day, and the very report of the "few" keeps a- good many away who could 'doubtless find plenty to amuse them* there, and for whom the place is show quite .good enough, as Lord Melbourne said'the; light shining on. the lobsters' backs was for the country cousins; In truth, however, those who '■ have only time and inclination for seeing what is-really worth looking at, and not too much at disposal even for that, won't waste their little leisure in the Exhibition, and the people who go anywhere where there is likely to be a crowd won't go where there is not. There is a very fine collection of oldlace exhibited this season, but that alone is not suflicient inducement to make people undertake the ••here we go up, up, up," and here we bo down, down, down," necessary for getting at it. In fact the building itself Is a grand mistake, as well as the notion -pf an annual show, and this year it has irone back to its primitive condition of utter bewilderment to the few strangers and pilgrims at the shrine; Last season there wm a temporary outside staircase constructed leading directly into, the conservatory of the Horticultural Gar-

dens, and thence into the Jixhibition. " Now again, as on the first yoar, the Tiaitora have to enter through the Albert Hall, and—but unless you could experience this state of affairs it would be impossible to make you comprehend it; except that the first process is the getting into a dark corridor running round the whole of the immense circular building. This corridor has innumerable doors on each side, one of which leads to an outer lobby, which leads to a flight of steps which lead to—Lord knows where. Of course they lead to the Exhibition, that ii supposing you pause/in your ascent on the right landing, and take the right turn.' The dark corridor, though, mostly settles timid strangers. s . Truly a prophet has little honor in his own country. An attempt w2s made the other day to collect money in Ireland for a memorial to the late Thomas Mahony, author of the Prout papers, the Bells o£ Shandoh, &c, and the amount subscribed^ as yet amounts to only a few pounds. By the way, that indefatigable bookmaker, Mr. Timbs, in his "Anecdote Lives ,of the late "Wits and Humorists," made the mistake of describing the late •'Francis Mahony" as parish priest of Watergrasi Hill, confounding him with the real Father Prout, whose name he assumed as a norn de plume. May I presume to say, for readers m New Zealand, .what writers in England are presumed to know—that Thomas. Mahony was never, i parish prieit of any place. He began life as a law student. I dont • know whether he was ever called to the bar. Ho devoted himself for several years to literature, arid then became a xoonk.' The veritable Father Trout, pf Watergrass Hill, must have ended his life before Mahony was known as a writer; and, by the way, although the worthy parish,, priest never wrote aline, at least never published one, he was a greater " wit and humourist" than the gentleman who assumed his name, and whose talents otherwise were undoubted. ' It was he, the real Father Prout, whq made that unrivalled rspaytee to the Erotestant lady who'objected to the Romijsh ' aoc&ine 'of Purgatory—" Take care, ma'am 1 Faith you m»y go farther and fare wowe."