HOME GOSSIP.

Thames Star, Volume VI, Issue 1781, 17 September 1874, Page 2

HOME GOSSIP.

(fkom oub own corbesponbent.) '■ Londox, July 15. Tlie case out of which we hare all been expecting to have some fun'has been - disposed of in quite a prosaic .manner. '' The cause, shortly, was this. Mr; Herbert, iho celebrated painter, R.A., employed Mr. Welby Pugip, the celebrated architect, to build a house for him* Before the house was finished the artist and architect quarroUed, and Mr. Herbert dismissed Mr. Pugin. from the works; upon which Mr. Pugin commenced proceeding g for the debt due to him on the contract; and while these proceedings were pending, both gentjemen proceed^ tp " affectionately abooze '• each, other—Mf. Pogin being indiscreet .enough.to commit his abuse to paper. Consequently, Mr. Herbert brought an action for libel, which, after a rery short trial, the jury ffound for the defendant, on the ground that his letters, although " scurrilous '*— indeed, it was added, " filthy " —did not amount to libel; and tke only bit of fun we had out of the' business was the examination of the Hon. W. E. Gladstone as witness/or the good character of Mr. Pugin. Being asked a question as to the general indiscreet warmth of temper of the defendant, Mr. Gladstone admitted tha*

• hit, friend, Mr. Pugiri, was " considered as a person who did not caro irhat he ■ said whepi..he y got angry ;" but then, (S so was ho, tfi&t. -"ujladstone, himself;" the honouraSld, «»ntloman laughing heartily while he made this admission, as though he would. have added-—" but you see 1 I havd • th,e advantage of being able to r abuse in Parliamentary language, which , allows-a good deal of scope." Of all positions, though, in which a man can abuse to his heart's content, can scold, or even curse r up hill and down dale, what is equal to the — shall wo call it sacerdotal, or ecclesiastical, or spiritual ? We hare a certainpaper here, the organ of extreme High Church: to which every person, except the small party that upholds it, applies/ and vory justly applies, the term used by the jury to Mr. Pugin's ; letters, rlt is -scurrilous :no doubt of it; | and ycfe somehow or other, we all seem to L: have swnV sort of idea that it has a right, ' or at Jeas't, a privilege, to be scurrilous. It is riot long since, •in this' paper, a [' reverend (?) writer, speaking of ) cemeteries and the portions there- ' in' allotted to Dissenters from the Church, called them " depositing 'grounds for defunct Nonconformists;" dis- . tinguishingS^thejn by this description ' from " the sacked earth in ; which the i bodies of God's people aVaited the resurrection.* - It seemed quite clear that be--1 side denying the " sacred" burial of these '" defunct Nonconformists," this priest was inclined to deny their " glorious ■ resurrection,!' but tho Nonconformists haye not, - as far .as I can i. learn, taken much notice of hia priestlj ; impudence. In the same paper, , the I other day, a writer (possibly the same, too,) expressed a charitable opinion that ! an attack of gout, under which Mr. Spurgeon has been suffering, was a "just ■ judgment" upon that Nonconformist; " and added a pious hope that although Mr. Spurgeon had recovered that attack he might be speedily carried off by . another. ' Mr. Spurgeon, than whom no one has a keener sense of humour, without troubling, himself to controvert this writer's opinion on judgments in general (that was ■ effectually done, we need scarcely s"ay, by the founder of Mr Spurgeon's religion), replied that, on the whole he.preferred the judgment of a fit of the gout to the judgment of a broken neck.. The late High Church Bishop of Win*-, cheater was killed in that manner, you will remember; and the. point made w^s therefore txcellent. No rational person will, of course, fall into the mistake of supposing that Mr. Spurgeon really ; looked upon the prelate's death as a judgment, any more than it could be supposed that that prelate, if now alive, could regard. : Mr. Spurgeon's gout in the same, light. Whatever Bishop Wilberforce's own opinions were, he was, one of the largest hearted and most liberal minded men among us. _ ...'■; ICorthumberland House is to come , down at last. Very reverend admirers of /'" the old landmarks " are sorry, but, the \ truth is, it is not a very old landmark at X aU/Sltwa» built no farther,, JbacJt, J;ban v ' Ota 17th century, on the site of old Sion« House; and, as the period of its erection * was the very worst of domestic arebjtec- ' ture, when the Tudor style was being replaced by. the, so-called, Italian, its - olaims to' beauty were not enough to counter-balance in any degree its offence —as a street, obstruction—to utilitarianism.. Neither has it been, since its erection, always the abode of the great Percies; but has changed hands in fact, like "~+i.er houses; ani by the way, am< *the reminiscences of the Percyfan . which its intended removal is brL ;ing up to us, we have one of a triat which lasted longer than even the Tichborne case. In 1670 ene James Percy, a trunk maker of Dublin, claimed the title and estates by descent from one; Sir ; Ingelram Percy in the 15th century; and the suit lasted, it is said, for fifteen years. Lord Hales, it seems, at one period' of the trial, pronounced in open Court, on the evidence, itmay be presumed, that "the claimant-was the true heir male of the Percies." He eventually lost his suit however; but he must have conducted it with more conscience and discretion than our late ',' claimant," since he subjected himself to no further punishment than appearing before the Pour Courts with a paper on his breast bearing these words, *'. The false and impudent pretender to the earldom of Northumberland." Let us lincerely and heartily hope there is no one now living who can claim a descent from him; or our " last case," as concerns the , Percy titles and estates, may^ be many degrees " worse than the first." ' You will perceive that we are not yet - '", doing justice to women, the " female Suffrage" question being not likely to ■ come under consideration at all this ses,r «ion, although its supporters out of the ' House are increasing every day; but really . the instances of individual slight and ; \^rong to the -sex are appalling. What think you of a jury of miscreants who assessed the value of a wife the other day ] at a farthing ? or of the still greater miscreant in the shape of a lawyer, who considered such conduct as a proof of their rallantry * and chivalrous feeling towards women? The facts, as you may have guessed, were that a gentlaman brought an action against a lady for breach of projniie of marriage, and this gallant and chivalrous jury found for the plaintiff, but assessed the damages for his loss of the lady, as I have said, at a farthing. Npw this lady was young, admittedly attrao* tive, if not actually beautiful, and was in a much belter social position than her jilted swain, who was indeed only a commfrcial gent; whereas h«r father was a gentleman of independent property : yet these enlightened jurymen just gave as compensation for the loss of this hoped-for wife what Captain Jakes of Mattysqumscot Bay offered for the recovery of his absconded apprentice Bird; 0, freedom Sawin, no more. I think "we. do know" cases in which

-—.. ... . :-.-.■ •■■■ ■ . '.- -„..... .-%.,, .^l' ■ ladies forsakeu have, got some hundreds 'sterling for the loss of lovers whoso highest personal attractions were bandy |logs or a squint. ; Such is the difference :between the relative value of a wife or a husband. i - We have commenced the startling paragraph .business. We have already had a story" of—not a cock and a bull— but a bull-dog,and', a dwarf; how th» i dwarf, a hideous creature of course, was in the habit of fighting; bull-dogs for wagers; one famous fight in which the dwarf was victorious being given in detail by tho paragraphist. It was stated to hava taken place in Hanley, but Hanley has been searched in vain for the immediate locality, also for the combatants. Bull-dogsrhave been,found; but fthe only dwarfs were a quiet elderly gentleman of the Methodi3tj| persuasion, ([addicted to -mild scientific studies, and a young lady— daughter of a'charwoman —who, being j unfitted for her mother's profession, had ! been promoted from match selling to wheeling a perambulator. ; We have also had an account of the loss ■of a vessel on the high seas, by means of &n octopus which caught the vessel in its arms and pulled it to the bottom,; no one on board being saved but the-teller of the tale. 'Tis to be hoped the octopus will remain quiet for some timo after such a meal as this. Some suspicious people doubt the octbpus, and others doubt both the octopus, the ship, and most of all the sailors ;' but that class of persons clever at the finding of, mare's nests, have discovered that the supposed whale which swallowed Jonah • was*- no doubt, an octopus. The Bishop of Lincoln has flung a firebrand, literally a firebrand, among-us all on the subject of cremation. In a sermon which he preached lately in Westminster Abbey he stated that cremation, if practised, would, certainly destroy belief in the resurrection. But how about the bodies of those people who have been unfortunately burnt alive P Have we not canonized a good many of them ; and are our saints to remain bodiless ghosts, while so many sinners will be provided with bodies merely because they are worthy of being burnt ? The Bishop did not give his ideas on this; ! and the ideas he did give, I need scarcely say, will not affect the question of crema- . tion versus burial materially. There may be and are many objections, and many objectors to the former, but not on the grounds the bishop takes his stand on.