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New Zealand Tablet, Volume XX, Issue 38, 8 July 1892, Page 31

The Dublin Freeman's Journal joins the iconoclasts and asserts that the famous Bastile was by no means so black a prison-house as it has been painted, but a rather comfortable place of detention whose inmates were allowed liberty of common association and recreation, servants, visitors, books, newspapers, and even parole to go out and attend to their private affairs— in short, an earthly para disc in comparison with Mr Balfour's dungeons of Tollamore. Bat the fiery eloquence of Camille Desmoulini instigated the populace of Paris to its destruction and, " When the Bastile fell, that instinct felt bound to justify itself, and so the blood-curdling legends grew and the seven prisoners became an uncounted host, who have furnished emaciated heroes to romancers and tragedians ever since, from M Alexander Dumas to Mr Henry Irving. It is as a symbol and not as a fact that the taking of the Bastile must find its justification from history." This last sentence is undeniably true, whatever may hare been the real character of the famous prison. Lafayette gave the key of the Bastile to Washington, and it hangs to-day on the wall of his old home at Mount Vernon, one of the most conspicuous relics in that historic spot. Mrs Mary A, Livermore lectured at Music Hall, Boston, on Sunday, April 24, under the patronage of the W.0.T.U., on " Queen Elizabeth from a Protestant Standpoint." If her audience had come expecting an unqualified laudation of Elizabeth, they must hare been sadly disappointed ; for Mrs Livermore began by showiog that according to the consensus of biographers she was " a woman of the boldest, bravest, and meanest character ; in fact, some one has said she was infinitely mean." Further on Mrs Livermore touched on the part of Henry VIII. in introducing the new religion into Enrland and denitd him the title of " reformer." Bhe said : " This title is not righteously given, because he was unprincipled, and his appeal to the Pope was not for a principle, but simply to procure the rieht to marry another woman." This from a Protestant standpoint I Mrs Livermore declared her agreement with the Catholics as to the injustice done Mary, Queen of Scots ; and that she, and not Elizabeth should according to English law have succeeded Henry's eldest' daughter. The lecturer then eulogised Elizebetb, according to bar eminent desert, as statesman, scholar and patron of literature. The lecture was followed— somewhat inconsequently, it might seem to the ordinary mind— by the passage of a resolution proteiting against the proposed State grant to Carney Hospital.