MISCELLANEOUS.

Wellington Independent, Volume XXVIII, Issue 3532, 24 June 1872, Page 3

MISCELLANEOUS.

At St. Petersburg a temperance society has just been established. This is a stride. No lady's equipage in New York is considered complete without the addition of a Lilliputiun Scotch terrier on the back seat. A compliment to a Scotch pastor was thus neatly expressed by one of his flock : — " I like the sermons that bejumble the judgment and confound the sense; od, sir, I- never saw ane that could come up to yoursel 1 at that." Count Moltke's autograph, preserved in the Royal Library of Munich, and dated Berlin, November 23rd, 1871,' runs as follows: — "Free only is the people which is strong enough to maintain its freedom. Strong it becomes through union." Correspondence has taken place between several committees of London Dissenters and Mr Gladstone, in regard to the rumored intention of the Government to endow a Eoman Catholic University in Ireland. The Premier assures them that there is no foundation for this report. The Dowager Empress of Brazil has given freedom to the whole of her slaves, 140 in number. The servants in the bathing establishments of Ramsgate are spoken of as sousemaids. Under a recent Act, d 620 a day is the fine for having more than a pint of benzoin in one vessel on the premises. Chicago's fate is borne in mind. A letter-writer, describing a recent ball, says the . feature which made the deepest impression on him was the

' unusual number of very plump women foaming over the tops of their dresses." Some one has suggested a use for pretty girls — namely, that they should be empioj-d to take round the plates at churches for chai'i^hle collections. An influential meeting has been held at Wigan for the purpose of establishing oJI *)RBOciation foi' the relief of" {the families of all -colliers killed or hurt by accidents in Lancashire or Cheshire. There exists in Belgium a. society called the " Li bre-Pensee," whose avowed object it is to uproot religion from modem society. It bas just published its annual report, and from that document we learn that the members consider their cause to be making satisfactory progress. They say that the number of civil funerals — that is, funerals without religious- rites — was last year double that of the year previous and of the persons " civilly" interred ope half were women. Civil marriages, too, they say, are becoming the rule., The Free Thinkers declare that no compromise is any longer possible between the old ideas and the new j men must be for the Church or against it. A few days ago the Berlin- Stock Exchange was. filled with absurd rumors of the Emperor Napoleon having secretly left England, and being about to land on the shores- of France. The rumor, which was not supported by even the smallest scrap of telegraphic intelligence from London or Brussels, was finally traced as having come from Vienna, when at .once a general outbreak of hilarity on the Exchange put a stop to its further dissemination. " Vienna news" signifies in Berlin what " Hamburg news" signified in London during the wars against Napoleon the First, and from the latter derisive term that wonderful " humbug" is said to have sprung.