General News.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 375, 25 June 1880, Page 11

General News.

Four hundred noblemen and gentry of the United Kingdom have already sent in their hames to Cardinal Manning's secretary as desirous to join the pilgrimage to Lourdes, which is being organised under the direction of the Cardinal. It is expected to be the most noteworthy movement of the kind witnessed since the Reformation. Some two years ago a great commotion prevailed in consequence of many children having been poisoned by violet powdeis. The dealer in the powder was tried on a charge, of manslaughter, but was acquitted. The revelations then made and the public indignation aroused naturally led to the belief that no more poisonous violet powders would be introduced into the market. The caution has evidently not been sufficient. An inquest on the body of an infant held the other day resulted in a verdict that the child died from blood poisoning from the application to the body of an irritant powder containing sulphate of lime, and which was sold by the chemist as violet powder. The coroner felt that he could not, in the face of the decision given two years ago, direct the jury to record a verdict of manslaughter, however noxious and deadly in their notions such powders might be. The general public will hardly sec the matter in the same light. A cable from Paris, dated Saturday the 24th ult.. says: The nuncio yesterday handed President Grevy a letter from the Pope, defending the religious congregations. The Pope discountenances i violence, but counsels an appeal to the law courts and elsewhere against the action of the State. Madrid, April 18. — The Diario Espanol publishes what purports to be the confession made by Otero to the Duke de Scsto, the Grand Chamberlain, who paid a final visit to the condemned man tbe day previous to his execution. Otero is represented to have made the following statement :— '• Tell the King that I am sensible of tbe compassionate feeling of tlie whole royal family. Ido not wish to compromise anybody. I was deceived and led astray. I entered an unknown association, and wns subsequently brought to Toledo before a secret meeting of masked men, who decided that I should kill **nor Canovas del Castillo. Thence I returned to Madrid, after leceiving 130 francs and a firearm. Shortly after this the original order was revoked, and I was directed to kill the King. The day on which I attempted the life of the King was considered by two of my associates a favorable opportunity, and had I missed it I should have bean assassinated. They accompanied me to the gate of the royal palace, and remained near me. The rest you know." A most interesting book will be the '• Biography of Mpr. Dupanloup, Bishop of Orleans,' which his Mend the Abbe Lagrange is now preparing. Iv the meantime a little memoir has appearedfrom the pen of Lucien Edward Henry under the title of " The Last Days of Bishop Dupanloup." This, if course, is a mere biographical fragment, compared with the larger work that is to come, and a very pleasant foretaste it is of the full feast. Among other anecdotes told in its pages is a very characteristic one. During the good bishop's last holiday, when his health was rapidly failing, he went on a donkey led by a little boy, to call on a parish priest, who proved" to be absent from home. At the presbytery, however, he found a, messenger with a " sick call " from a dying woman. •* I also am a \ riest," said the bishop, and be set off up the mountains on a two hourb' expedition, returning to his quarters in the pitch darkness of sweet evening. His hosts and some of the clergy came out to greet him with reproaches. "Do not scold me," he meekly pleaded, " for lam very wet," and slipped off quietly to bed. — Jrhh Times. Dr. Schweinf urth, in a lecture which he recently delivered at the Berlin Geographical Society on the subject of his latest exploration in Central Africa, gave his hearers a thrilling account of tbe mode in which capital punishment is inflicted upon criminals by the AlQuadjis, a small tributary off-shoot of the great and powerful Djour people. The malefactor condemned to die is bound to a post firmly driven into the ground in some open place where no trees afford a shade, and is there slowly roasted to death— not by any artificial means involving a waste of fuel, but by the natural heat of the sun's rays as they reach our earth in it-, equatorial regions. To protract his sufferings and to avert his too speedy end by sunstroke, the ingenious Al-Quadjis cover their e.rring compatriot's head with fresh green leaves,- which effectually shield his brain from Phcebus's darts. No such protection is, however, accorded to his body, which gradually dries up, shrinks together, aud ultimately becomes carbonized. One chance of salvation is open to the roasting man, while as yet he is not completely " done to death." If a cloud pass between the sun and his place of torment he is at once cast loose from hia post and becomes the object of popular reverence, as a mighty magician in whose behalf the supernatural powers have deigned directly to intervene. But clouds seldom interfere with the administration of justice on the days chosen for public executions by the Al-Quadji authorities ; at least, that appears to be Dr. Schweinfurth's experience of African weather as far «3 it bears upon the judicial roasting of malefactors,