GENERAL NEWS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 150, 17 March 1876, Page 9

GENERAL NEWS.

The Chinese in California ship the remains of their dead to the Flowery Kingdom as " preserved meats," and reckon up the value of the cold corpses at §1.09 each ; which facts were brought out by an investigation of the San Francisco Custom-House officials, who were at a loss to account for the frequent large consignments of preserved meats to Hong Kong. The Russian Ministry of Justice has given instructions to its sub-departments that henceforth corporal punishment shall be discontinued in its application to females sentenced to deportation. Hitherto women have been punished the same as men with knouts and rods. Henceforth ten days of isolated confinement are to count as the equivalent of a lash with the knout, and two days a lash with the rod. The Cardinal Archbishop of Paris has received a very valuabl e contribution toward the Church of the Sacred Heart, now in process of construction on the heights of Montmartre. It is well-known that the wood used by Solomon in the building of the Temple of Jerusalem was the cedar of Lebanon. A number of venerable cedars of incredible age, and enormous size, still exist on the sides of Mount Lebanon. They are treated with religious awe by the Druses, who consider them as almost sacred. A few months since, one of these trees was overthrown by a violent wind, and the Maronite Archbishop of Bayrouth purchased it and sent it to Cardinal Guibert as a present for the Church of the Sacred Heart. The 'Irish Times 3 has the following remarks: "In a few months, the United States will be in the midst of the celebration of the Centennial of the Declaration of Independence. The population of the great Republic will, according to official estimates, then amount to 45,627,000 souls, while at the next decennial census, in 1880, it will reach 50,853,000. In 1776, the victorious young- Republicans could not muster three millions of people, while more than fifteen times that number will celebrate the Centennial of Liberty. In the history of the human race no such marvellous expansion has ever been approached, nor will likely again be repeated. The United States forro, in territorial extent, the fourth largest sovereignty in the world, being exceeded by only R'j=?ia, the British Empire and China ; while in point of population the •Republic is exceeded by these throe empires only. It is almost times the extent of the three Kingdoms, with their neighboring islands ; while its public lands, for sale in allotments for settlers, amount to about half the entire area of the vast Republic, which already has a population nearly one-half more than that of Great Britain and Ireland." The following specimen of toleration is furnished by tli3 ' Gazetta Narodowna :—": — " Count Alexandrowicz, of Constantynowo, had been repeatedly warned by the Russian officials that he was bound to conform to the Orthodox confession, because, in the absence of the Roman Catholic priest, he had been baptised by an Orthodox clergyaian. In order to free himself from the importunities of those pseudo-apostles, and to find protection for his religious convictions, he journeyed to St. Petersburg, and addressed a remonstrance to the Czar himself. He received an answer worthy of a Czar : ' Since I follow the Orthodox faith, why should it not be acceptable to the Count ?' What rejoinder is possible to such

] ogic ? After this nothing remained for the Count but to sell his estates, which he had been carefully managing, and go abroad It is a fact (so a correspondent in the 'Germania' declares) that all officials belonging to the United Greek denomination are required under pain of dismissal, <to return voluntarily to the Orthodox Church. It is, further, a fact that Catholic priests are prohibited most stringently to administer the Sacraments to any United Greeks. Finally, it is a fact that the Polish newspapers circulating in Russian Poland do not venture to refer in any way to occu£ rences connected with the United Church. A man was found alive in the bush near Maryborough, who had subsisted eleven days on grass tree. ° Blue Earth County, Minn., paid last year, as bounty on «-rasshoppers, §31,255, the amount destroyed being 15,766 bushels and 18 quarts. The 'New York World' only expresses the opinion of all sincere, honest, and truth-loving- Protestants, in regard to the Pope an 1 his dignity under his afflictions, when it says : "And it must undoubtedly have been a grievous blow to the Roman Pontiff simply as a man, to find himself forcibly deprived of the princely sway which he had exercised over the temporal affairs of a state not inconsiderable in mere extent and population, and peerless among the realms of the earth for the glory and dignity of its traditions and its history. If we consider, in addition, that the blow fell upon him in old age, and that he undoubtedly and conscientiously regarded it as a blow at religion, and an act of monstrous sacrilege, the firmness and determination with which he has stood up under it, must command, even from those of us who are furthest from direct sympathy with him as a Churchman, the admiration which true men always yield to manhood, no matter in what cause displayed." A lecture on Queensland was delivered on Monday last in the Assembly Rooms, Black's Hotel, Galway, by the Hon. Mr. M'Devitt, the late Attorney-General of that colony. Mr. M'Devitt is brother of the revered Bishop of Raphoe, and of the Rev. Dr. M'Devitt, Professor at All Hallows' College, Dublin. He distinguished himself at the bar and in the Legislature of Queensland, and belonged to the popular party in that rising colony. After the delivery of his lecture, pointing out, from experience, the advantages of the country as a field for intending emigrants, a vote of thanks was proposed to the lecturer, when a party rose and objected, describing " Queensland as " a hell upon earth," which led to such a scene of turbulence that the chairman, lecturer, and the mass of the meeting had to retire, and leave the minority of rowdy malcontents in undisputed possession of the room, There has, imfortunately, been a strong tendency lately in this direction in Ireland, a tendency discreditable to the country. — ' Tablet.' "We should abandon the irreverent farce and desecration— l had almost said, for it is little better — of tho perfunctory readinoof the Bible in our public schools. Thousands of- our citizens feel that this would be a right thing to do, who are yet unwilling to yield the point, because it would seem like a surrender to Romish dictation. Like Falstaff, they do not choose to be virtuous on compulsion. But if it be our conviction, however it may have been reached, it will be true dignity to act upon it. No good cause loses by just concessions. Then, and then only, can we place our public school system on an impregnable foundation. Then only will all plausibility be taken away from the claim for the dotation of Roman and other sectarian schools. Then also would the Churches ba made to feel, we may hope, anew and more deeply the duty of the religious education of the children of the Republic." — Dr. Wharton at Episcopal Church Congress. The progress of monasticism in England during the present decade has been very remarkable. Almost all the principal Orders are now represented in London city. It is curious to notice the Capuchin Order, unknown at the time of the Reformation, is rapidly assuming that popularity which it always enjoys among-st the poorer classes in all lands. These friars have" a large convent at Peckham, and another house is to he opened for their accommodation in a very populous part of London. Meanwhile the Cipuchin friars from Cork have established a permanent mission for those spiritually forlorn districts on the banks of the Thames, famous, or rather infamous, as NorthQeet, Dartford, and Greenhithe. Those districts are principally inhabited by sea-faring men, and the most boisterous class of people connected with the shipping and coaling interests. Before leaving Cork the Fathers were presented with an address from the Mayor of that city in the name of the entire population. The friars who have just left Cork for London have been eight years in that city, and are in fact returning to their former labors, for they were in the same places before, and their return will be heartily welcomed by the poor people, who still remember their single-hearted efforts to do them good. — ' Brooklyn Catholic Review.' An interesting discovery is reported from the territory of the Atrek, where the Russians, in reconnoitring some of the newlyoccupied districts, came upon the ruins of a long-buried and unknown city. The remains of several minarets, showing well-pre-served traces of their Saracenic architecture, afforded conclusive evidence of the Mohammedan character of the city, which must have been of great extent, and had evidently been occupied by a large and stationary population. The ruins are on the steppe east of the Caspian Sea, where, according to the tradition current among the Turkomans of these regions, the country was once noted for its extreme fruitf ulness, and was irrigated by a canal connected with the Atrek. The remains of large tanks, and the traces — found by the Russians — of a very extensive system of pipes, from which excellent drinking-water can still be obtained, show the care with which abundant water-supplies had been secured for this mysterlou 3 city cf a long-past age of civilisation. — • Tablet. 1