MISCELLANEOUS EXTRACTS.

Wellington Independent, Volume XVII, Issue 1745, 26 July 1862, Page 5

MISCELLANEOUS EXTRACTS.

The awards of the Royal Geographical Society "for the encouragement of geographical science and discovery" will .he presented this day, the 26th of May, by the President, Lord Ashburton, at Burlington-house. The Duke of Newcastle will receive the founder's gold medal, on behalf of the late Eicbard O'Hara Burke, for his expedition across Australia ; and also a gold watch for Mr. John King, the only survivor of Burk's expedition. Captain Thomas Blakiston, R.A., will receive the patron's gold medal, for his survey of the Yang-tsse kiang. The president will then deliver his annual address on the progress of geography. •A Tipperary journal says :—" Every week the tide of emigration seems to acquire a new stimulus, and from this part of the country numbers are leaving to accuire a permauent home in a foreign land. The new land bill introduced by Mr. Duffy in the Australian Parliament, and carried into law by the Legislature offers inducements which are being availed of by intending settlers in that colony. At the same time the number of persons proceeding to America is very large — a singular fact, when the unsettled position of affairs in the Slates is taken into consideration."

Dr. Bernard, the proscrit concerned in the Orsini plot, having displayed an aberration of mind, had been lodged in the Doiking policestation, and was a few days ago taken before Mr. H. T. Hope and Mr. I. A. Gordou. two justices of the Dorking division, and by them consigned to Wands worth Lunatic Asylum.

REiaitx oi? our Cbick^steus prom Australia. — Under ihe abo^e heading the 'Era' of April 18, contains the following. —

"On Monday evening last our plucky band [ of Cricketers who, since October last, have sailed, steamed, rode, and drove orer some 40,000 miles, arrived all souud and hearty back again to the shores of Old England. Eight of them arrived at Dover a trifle after noon on Monday, and were met by Frederick Lillywhite and others who forthwith bundled them into the train for London-bridge, where they arrived a little after 6 o'clock. There they mounted an omnibus, attached to which were four spanking greys, and with a loud hurrah and a triumphant blow of the cornopean, off they started for the Oval at Kennington, around the outside of which they were driven at a rare bat ; and tlun, with a skill quite charming to witness, and at a fine pace, amid the loud cheers of the assembled company, they were safely landed on their muchloved ' Oval. ' They all appeared good in health, and as they successively alighted from the top of the 'bus, and once more trod the renowned Kennington turf, they each and all looked as happy and as jolly as ' Mark Tapley. ' Need we say how they were greeted — not a word beyond this : it was stunning — hands were shaken, cheers were roared at them, and answered with a will by them ; and when Capt. H. H. Stephen* son, Caffyn, Iddison, Mortlock, Griffith, Tom Hcarne, and little Tom Sewell had all felt their feet a bit, they had to appear, first, iv tbe^avillion, which was forthwith stormed and filled by the outsiders on the ground ; and then to the loud and imperative demands of the vox populi, they bad all to show themselves from the top of the Pavillion steps, when they weie cheered to the very echo, repeatedly bowed their thanks for their reception, and then retired. _ c Mudie, E. Stephenson and Old Kent Becnett arrived in London the following day. On Thursday evening they were all nobly welcomed home by the Surrey Club, who entertained the 10 (Laurence stops in Sydney, and Well's is on his homeward voyage in a sailing vessel) at their Annual Dinnei at the Bridge-house Hotel, at which 150 guests sat down, presided over by H. Marshall, Esq. In replying to ' The Health of the 11 Cricketers who have returned from Aus- , trylia,' Captain Stephenson sajd: — 'From the time they set foot on Australian ground, their path was strewn with flowers. They were imj mensely indebted to the two gentlemen who had, at the conclusion of their engagement, voluntarily placed at their disposal a sum of £550 to enable them to return to England. They had enjuyed every luxury, and people seemed to vie with each other in offering them civilities.' On Friday evening the cricketers took a benefit at Westou's Music hall, Holborn, and when the varied programme was brought to a close Mr Weston met them at the suppertable, and during the interchange of well-won compliments, stated that he should have the pleasure of placing 50 guineas at the disposal of their fund."

The ' Times' comments as follows upon the smart cariuctures of England and the English which have recently beeu appearing in the Paris papers, iv letters from special correspondents who have come over to visit the Exhibition:—"Our French contemporaries cannot conceive the pleasure they are now affording to a large cluss among us, and how, gratefully they

are titilating our national vanity by the descrip* tions of London which they are providing for. the amusement of their readers, and wnich ' are translated for ihe amusement of ours. While the serious writers of France are the most earnest, laborious, and learned in Europe, the small literateurs of France are perhaps the least taught aud the most Cockneyfied of any in the world ; and our general public who do not trouble themselves to read the great writers, find infinite food for their conceit in the small ones. When the correspondent of the ' Debats ' ingeniously confesses that he cannot enjoy the Hogarths, the Gainsborougbs, the Reynoldses, and the Turners of our English gallery, but feels a relief ou entering rhe French gallery, the confession is accepted with a soothing pleasure by the great majority of English readers. » When the correspondent of the 'SiecJe' discovers in London the Crimean beards, and claims them as borrowed from the French, the English reader does but look with an eye, pf pity upon the shaven cheeks of the Frenchmen among us, and the moustache cut to a pattern set in the Tuilieries. When some one says there are no people in England, and that the •' English workmen are but a miserable class compared with the French labourers, 'whose - fathers have beeu victors in foreign capitals and have seen the backs of kings,' there is a twinkle in the English workman's eye as he ieraembers the amount of his weekly wage aud : thinks how and where his soldier father stqod a victor. But the delight of our mindle-class multitude is in the strange discoveries made by the gentleman now among us taking bur portraits. They tell us of things which our res- . pectable classes never knew ; of cafe- chantants "' and tableoux vivants, and of other things of a disreputable kind, the very names oi which show them to have been invented by foreigners, ; for foreigners, and to be confined to that foreign . ; diftiict about Leicester-square which is muck; . more French than Boulogne, The conceited islandet grows ihore hardened in his convictions as he reads these things. He pictures to himself the unhappy critic, with a bad cigar in bis mouth and his bends in his trouser-pockets, walking round and rouud Leceister-square and comparing it disadvantageous^ with the Palais .Royal. If the sun shines, he strolls a little way, and probably finds li m in Regentstreet. He looks up and down for the Cafe Riche, and proposes to take a chair upon the pavement and drink his absinthe and talk with his acquaintance and smoke his cigar. But there is no Gafe Riche, no acquaintances, no out-of-door chairs. Then, lie says, in the ■ bitterness of his heart, • Surely these people are savages.' Moreover, as one of these gentlemen/ : feelingly complains ' people speak English all day long.' It is a miserable condition to be in, and it is very wicked of the British public to enjoy the poor man's account of it. The correspondent of the'Gourrier dv Dimanche' is the best of all the tribe. Whether his hescriptions are popular in Paris we cannot tell, but they are very popular in their translated state in London. He has some inventive faculty.... He saw a mountebank kicking o poor weeping woman who passed near his show, and he saw also ' an English crowd applauding — at laast, lie says so. No one else ever saw such a fact, nor would" he if he walked London for a thousand years. He forgets to add, that at the same time a procession of English husbands came, down the street, each leading his wife by a halter, on. their way to Smitbfield ; while an Englishman, in a fit of the ' spleen.' put his head out of a second-floor window and cut his throat over the dassers by, who all cried ' Godam' and walked: jt on. M. Assolant his charming- -He is •so miserable, and tells his woes with so much ingenuous sourness of spirit. But any one would be mise.table in his position. He seems to be living da7is la crapule without konwing it. What would be an Englishman's state of mind, alone in Paris, lodging in the neighbourhood of the Odeon, ignoront.of the people ond the language, and dining every day at a forty sous dinner after being eccustomed to dine all his life at an English cook-shop? Would 'he -not make] Paris laugh, if Paris could understand his. free opinions upon men and manners there? Yet we venture to say there are some thousand French people who are very comfortable, even here, who bave never been to a cafe chaiitaut, and bave never seen a tableau vivant. Foriegners are interspersed very freely just now throughout our society. There is hardly a dinner party in London without a sprinkling of French aod German guests. Our clubs bear them upon, their honorary and supernumery lists ; and we will venture to say, in vindication of our national hospitality, that no Frenchman with the usualcredentials of a gentleman need walk about Leicester-square and fancy it is England. If these critical gentleman would leave their foriegn haunts, and wash their hands and put 1 out their cigars, and come among us, they would fiud that time can be profitably employed even in London, and that as they see us closer they would be able to write criticisms upon us which might really scratch the enamel off our conceit and make us wince. They would find,, then, that though London is not so fine a city as Paris has recently became, Us society offers enjoyments of the highest character both gastronomic and intellectual. They would find, also, that their notions of the oppression of classes one of the other are entirely "fallacious ; that people live with the people they like best, and that there ia no country in the world where the aristocracy have less influence upon soaial matters, or where they less desire or pretend to any such influence. . . , .- A writer in ' Macmillan's Magazine' gives the following photograph of Mr. Lincoln : " To say that he is ugly, is nothing ; to iidd that his > figure is grotesque, is to convey no adequate impression. Fancy a man six feet high, aud thin out of proportion ; with long bony arms and legs, which somehow seem to be always in the way ; with great furrowed bands, which grasp you like a vice when shaking yours; with a long scraggy neck, and a chest too narrow for the great at nib at its side. Add to this figure a head cocoannt-shaped and somewhat tod small for such a stature, covered with rough uncombed and unconabable hair, that stands out in every direction at once ; a face furrowed, wrinkled, and indented as though it' Had been scarred by vicrol ; a high narrow forehead, *tat{ sunk deep beneath bushy eyebrows, too bright somewhat dreamy eyes that seem to gaze through you without looking at you ; a few iriegular blotches of black bristly hair, in the :"" place where beard and whiskers ought to growj a close-set, thin-lipped, stern mouth, with two rows of large white teeth, and a nose and ears which have been taken by mistake from a head of twice the size. Clothe >this figure, then, in - a long, tight, btdly-fitting suit of black, creased, soiled, and puckered up at every saliant point of ; the figure (and every point' of this figure is salieut); put on large 1 ill-fitting boots, gloves too J: long for the long bony fingers, and a fluffy haV : { covered to the top with dusty puffy crape ; :and then add to all this an air, of strength, Vp&£sfcsl ■' as well moral, and a strange look; of! dignity^- ; coupled with all this grotesqueness.; and^yau.;;;? will have the impression left upon me by ; Abja-y ham Lincoln. ... ,' -J&^&M