LONDON GOSSIP.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 4818, 5 December 1893, Page 2

LONDON GOSSIP.

I [¥EOM OTJB LONDON COBBESPONDENT.] \ - London, Oct. 20. i With Charles Gounod, who succumbed to an apoplectic fit early in the week, a j heaven born genius and a very great I musician has passed away. He was one :of the maßtera of the century, and his | name will have a place amongst the i highest. Most of us, I fear, knew him chiefly as the composer of Faust, of Romeo et Juliette, ani of Philemon et Baucis. The sacred music, which was his chief pride, and contained his grandest efforts, has j never been appreciated as it ought to have been. For that kind of work he was not, perhaps, fortunate in his age or at any rate in his place in it. French audiences were not always disposed to find his highest to their liking; The Redemption and Mors et Vita really made their most serious impression at this s : .de o£ the Channel. Faust is the East Lynne of Italian and English opera. When in doubt the enterprising impresario invariably plays it and can generally ba sure of a full house. As mounted now-a-days at Covent Garden it has become a superb spectacle. Borneo et Julieth owes its popularity in London mainly to the Prince and Princess of Wales with whom the opera is a favourite, and who ordered it for the State performance { this summer. Philemon et Baucis Gounod himself preferred to either <bt - his more popular operas, but (though played frequently latterly before Cayalleriaßustkana) its music was " caviare to the many/ MABBHALI. MACMAHON. Marshal MacMahon, who passed quietly away on Tuesday morning last after a long illne3B, borne with characteristic heroism, was a great soldier anji a poor politician. He had no gift for diplomacy, and very wisely, directly he found France was opposed to the course which the inttiguers of the Ely6ea had committed him to, he threw up public life and his great position and retired. Time has vindicated all his motives and his final act as President of the Republic. Whenever he did ill it was because he was purposely confused by his intimate advisera and did not Bee the drift of their advice. But once he understood their purpesa he stopped, pleaded engagements and stood upon his Bense of honour and of patriotic duty. MacMahon's family were Legitimists, and though he served the Empire as a member of the Senate he waß favourable to the elder branch. Yet it was he who Baid when the Comte de Chambord stood by the white flag, "If we restore the monarchy the guns will go off of themselves." Ho refueed to be a party then to a restoration. Mrs Crawford relates that on the day on which the eeptennate whb voted by the Versailles AEsembly the Prince de Joinville Biid to General Changarnier, " We have secured a sword." "Yes," answered the General, "but a wooden sword that will never draw a drop of blood or cut'a gordian knot." THE NEW VICBBOT OF INDIA. Like a great many of Mr Gladstone's appointments, that of Lord Elgin to be Governor-General of India excites severe criticism. The administrative experience of the noble Earl is certainly inconsiderable. He has been Chairman of the Fife County Council and of the Dunfermline Parish School Board. As a rule the holder of the third greatest appointment our Empire provides is required to possess at leaat a brilliant record. The .Radical Prime Minister (ory the Tories) can give no better no reason for promoting this — to put it mildly— inexperienced young man to a moßt responsible position, than that he is a peer in want of a place. It is the kind of blunder no Conservative, and not many Liberal statesmen dare have made. Even the mo3t I thick and thin Gladstonians cannot contain j their eupriae. " The Earl of Elgin has arrived in London from Broome Hall, Dunfirmline," read out a man at the National Liberal Club last night. "In view of recent events," he went on, "it Butely should be new Broome Hall." " What will they say in India," asked another. " What won't they say," retorted the first speaker bitterly. "Fancy all the civil and military big wigs and native princes having to ' koo-too ' to a raw know-nothing of a Scottie, with nothing but a handle to his name to commend him to them. Eeally some one ought to prescribe a strong coureo of Kipling for the G.0.M." I THE COAL STBIKE. Though the coal famine is at an end, and pricea are falling as rapidly as they rose, ; the strike still continues in many parts of the country. In Staffordshire (for example) affairs seem simply desperate. Women who will go out and beg manage somehow to 6tave off starvation, but the self-respecting poor (prouder far than their richer brethren would be in similar straits) suffer silently at home. Shocking scenes are described by relief visitors at Wolverhampton. In one house, bare of ; furniture, a child was found sleeping | uneasily, and when asked if it was ill the : mother burst into teara, and revealed that hunger had done its worst, and her darling was dying of slow starvation. In another case a twelve-months' old baby was found greatly emaciated in ita mother's arms, and the skin seemed to hang on its bones. "The doctor ordered brandy ; and milk, because he's wasting away," i said the mother, but he might i as well have told me to give it sovereigns to play with. He can't eat bread, and I can't get an y thing to feed myself, let alone | feeding the child." Numberless children I have been found who only get one meal ia , twenty-four hours, and any tallow candles i left in the schoolrooms are at once surreptitiously seized on and devoured by the hungry little ones. Many of the houses have nothing in them, not even a chair, and the children, sometimes nine in number, are almost naked. Women have pawned their weddibg rings in hundreds, I and throughout the whole district a great i cry goeß up that the strike may come to an end. j stead's paper, Mr W. T. Stead has long meditated a. morning paper. For years he has been in search of "The Ideal Editor" who "had the faith in him and the energy to attempt the foundation of a paper which would be in its eßEeace much more of an attempt to help, to serve, to instruct, to amuse, and to guide its readers than a mere quilting together of more or leso well-written accounts of yesterday's happenings." But those editors who have "faith" have inadequate energy ; those with energy have no more faith than a grain of mustardseed. So Mr Stead has looked in vain. At length an idea came to him to consult the "spooks." Julia was requisitioned, and ordered to write the name of the "Ideal Editor." Now Julia is a discreet ghost; if she sniggered she did so spirit-fashion and inaudibly. All Mr Stead knew was that the lady guiding his hand wrote firmly, " The only living editor who can conduct the Ideal Newspaper is— in the words of the Grand Old Man — that good man Stead." Mr St«ad was immensely surprised. This solution of the problem had, curiously enough, never occurred to him. Now, however, the Spooks mentioned it, he at once perceived he was made to conduct this journal of journals and resolved to start the same. It will be a Steadite paper, of course; belonging to no party, and doing that only which seems right in the eyes of Mr Stead. It will support religion: all religions, for lBnoVMr Stead "tb.© only English journalist who has been on terms of personal and more or less confidential communication with the Cardinal Seoratary of State at the Vatican, with the Prccura-

tor-General of the Holy Synod, with the Archbishop of Canterbury, and with the leading Nonconformity "? Alao it will support the English-speaking race, with that fine, healthy belief in the destiny and the greatness of the Anglo-Saxon for which we may pardon Mr Stead many political errors. And it will support— of course the Woman's Movement. In fact, if the paper is ever Btarted, it will be a fine, rouaing publication, conducted with all Mr Stead's well known energy, enthusiasm and ingenuity. But newspapers cost money. You want a good deal of capital j and Mr Stead proposes to get his in a novel manner. We cannot do better than transcribe his own account of the scheme as given in the October Review of Reviews :— " Ac a beginning I form and register, merely in order to facilitate the isuuo of debentures, a Company to be called 'The Daily Paper Company, Limited;' the articles of association wiil set forth that it is formed for the purpose of printing and publishing a daily paper which I am to be free to edit and control as I please. Having brought this Company into existence, I offer to the readers of the Review of Reviews the opportunity of co-operating with me in producing the new paper on the following terms : — ' With this copy of the Review ie enclosed a form of order for the Daily Paper for the first twelve months after it ia Btarted. (1) If 100,000 of these forms are Bent to the National Provincial Bank of England (Limited) at the head office, or any of its branches, accompanied by 26a for one year's subscription, I will undertake to bring out the paper, and each subscriber will receive the Daily Paper every day for one y»>ar through hia newsagent, if he is in a town receiving daily parcels of papers from London. Where they only can be delivered by post, 13a must be added for postage. (2) To the first 100,000 subscribers I will give by way of bonus a debenture bond for £1 in The Daily Paper Company, Limited, redeemable at par at my option. These debenture bonds will have coupons attached entitling the holder to receive interest annually at the rate of 5 per cent, so long as the circulation of the paper iB between 100,000 and 150,000 ; 7i per cent between 150,000 and 200,000 ; and 10 per cent when the circulation exceeds 200,000. By this means any subscriber of 26s for the first year will receive not only 312 penny papers, but a debenture bond of the value of JBI, bearing interest from 5 to 10 per cent, for whioh he will receive £1 when I redeem it.' " My object," adds Mr Stead, "in thus giving away the capital on which the paper will be started is not philanthropic or generous. It is good business. I want to establish a tie between my readers and the paper which I propose to publish, so I make them debenture-holders, and undertake to pay them a minimum of .£SOOO per annum aa long as the circulation ig 100,000 per day. I want to interest them pecuniarily in the success of the paper to make it a co-operative enterprise, co I promise to raise the interest' to JBIO,OOO a year if the circulation rises to 200,000." Mr Stead rather oddly calls thiß scheme an offer to give £100,000 to his readers. It will strike most people that it is the other way about ; the readers are to give JEIOO.OOO to Mr Stead, or rather to lend it to him on his personal security. However, we hope Mr Stead will get his money. Hia paper will probably say and do many things we shall not like j but it is certain to be good reading. SPADZS OB EAZOBB. " The number of young men now obtaining a University education has riten far above the number of professional careerß open to them, and nothing ought to be done to stimulate further the supply of Buch Beoondary education as is preparatory for professional life." Such was the opinion Canon Bell, headmaster of Marlborough, expressed before the gentlemen recently assembled in conference at Oxford upon secondary education. The Saturday Review countenances the pronouncement in an able article in its current issue. If ever, it bbjb, Meae Tekel was written on the wall, these words of Dr Bell wrote it there and then. The crime, the blunder, and the danger of the present system lie in tbe fact that the number of young men now turned out under secondary school and TJniveraity education ia enoimcusly above the number of careers of any kind, professional or other, which are open to them, and for which they are fitted. They have rebounded from the choked professions into the " vocations and employments," to use the language of those Income far papers, which few of them are over likely to receive, or to receive without groane. ("Even from the point of view of those who think that ' the career open to talents * settles everything, we believe that the thing is an utter mistake— that a really clever boy, in even very low classes, had a better chance of rising under the old system of limitation and patronage, than under the new system of competition and crowd. There is an entirely different side to the question, and one of not lees real importance — the lowered value and virtue of learning, even in those who are not exposed to these dangers as a result of its vulgarisation. But that is not, perhaps, likely to appeal very much to the kind of public opinion prevalent at this or at any time. What the people of England may possibly be brought to see is that it is no use multiplying costly machinery to turn out razors when you want spadeß, and that blunted razors make the very worst spades in the world; that there is only a limited quantity of human steel that will make good human razors, and only a limited quantity of human razors wanted at all, and that when you turn out more, the process is horribly cruel ethically, recklessly wasteful economically, and from the point of view of all rational politic?, supremely unwise.") -