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New Zealand Tablet, Volume VI, Issue 268, 21 June 1878, Page 9

Mr. W. Melville, of George-street, Dunedin, is agent for the Wheeler and Wilson sewing machine, which is universally acknowledged to be a most superior instrument.

Gentlemen desirous of purchasing clothing of good material and fashionable cut will do well to patronise the establishment of Mr. "W. M'Laren, Albert Buildings, Dunedin.

The butchery lately conducted by Mr. M'Donald in George-st., is now carried on by Messrs A. Wilson and Sons. Honsekeepers will find it to their advantage to patronise the firm. Notwithstanding the contradiction given to M. Gambetta's reported visit to Berlin, there is some mystery about his movements, and it is quite possible that the report may, after all, be well founded. M. Gambc.tta was last heard of at Nice, and that he has left that town is admitted, but his friends affect a significant ignorance as to his whereabouts. The secret, however, if there is still a secret, cannot be long kept, for M. Gambetta's countenance and figure are as familiar to the public as the features of any man in Europe, and to maintain an incognito is out of the question. He is known to be anxious to acquaint himself with other countries, and if he is really making a tour by Vienna and Berlin, his object is to satisfy a legi" timate curiosity. The penalty, however, of his celebrity is that heh c cannot pass beyond the French frontier without, a diplomatic mission being attributed to him. Such rumours easily find credence abroad, but no Frenchman can seriously believe them. M. de St. Vallier is acknowledged on all hands to be an efficient Ambassador, and would certainly be the medium of any communications between M. Waddington and Prince Bismarck. An interview between the latter and M. Gambctta would be a curious episode, but would have no immediate bearing on diplomatic relations. — Times. It is a curious fact, and one that is not generally known, that King Victor Emmanuel was, by the strict law of successions, the rightful King of England. He was descended in a direct line from Charles I. The youngest daughter of that unhappy monarch, the Princess Henrietta Maria, married Gaston d'Orleans, the brother of Louis XIV. She died leaving two daughters. The eldest became Queen, of Spain, and died childless. The younger married the heir to the House of Savoy, and was the ancestress of the late King of Italy. After the Revolution of IGBB, when the right to succession to the British throne was settled by Act of Parliament, the House of Savoy was excluded on account of the Catholic religion professed by its members. The House of Hanover, of which Queen Victoria is the representative, was several removes farther from the direct succession, deriving, as it did, its claims from James I, through Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia, and' her daughter the Electress Sophia. A striking commentary on the consequences of human actions, is afforded by this story of a royal inheritance. When Charles I espoused a Catholic princess he could scarcely have imagined that by this act he was excluding his direct descendants " from the throne of their fathers ; and still less could his Queen have foreseen that any descendant of her favourite child, so carefully trained by her in the tenets of her own religion, should ever overthrow the temporal power of the Pope, and be himself installed upon the throne.