Current Topics AT HOME AND ABROAD.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume 51, Issue 51, 22 April 1898, Page 1

Current Topics AT HOME AND ABROAD.

A BURNING. QUESTION.

Wellington has its burning question. The local cremationists are busily agitating to tax the ratepayers of the Empire City with £2,000 for the

erection of a crematorium. As usual, the supporters of the old primeval system are silently oonfident that the strength of public opinion is, and long will be, too great to bring about any extensive change in the principle of returning the bodies of our race to the earth from which the Creator compacted them. We find no trace of cremation as a form of burial among the Jews, either under the primeval, or the patriachal, or the Mosaic dispensation. The oldest secular records give inhumation as the general practice from Egypt and Assyria to Scandinavia, and from Hindustan to the Peruvians and the early races of Central America. The same holds good regarding such conservative races as the Chinese, who always committed their dead to the earth. The early Christians had so great a horror of cremation that by the fourth century this pagan custom had completely disappeared. There were, of course, in all ages, exceptional forms of burial. The Parsees exposed their dead on tall towers, the Scythians on trees, the Australian aborigines on four posts, tho Orinooos practised temporary burial in running water. Cremation was one of the most obvious and widespread of those departures from primeval custom, especially among the IndoEuropean races. * # *

The subject has been debated in all the moods and tenses from the dayg of Julian the Apostate down to Sir Henry Thompson and Erichsen. Since 1874 over 3,000 books and pamphlets have tortured it from the sanitary, the legal, the economical, and the religious points of view. Siemens's and Gorini's furnaces undoubtedly minimised the sickening exhalations that arose" from the funeral pyres or the older forms of crematorium. But it has yet to be ehown that the revival of the old pagan practice is, on hygienic grounds, preferable to a proper grave-burial with perishable coffins, and the avoidances of such abuses as leaden caskets and such other hindrances to the antiseptic action of mother-earth. The same may be said as regards the question of economy. What is wanted is, not an overthrow of the ancient system, but a reform in the direction of greater simplicity. The present abuses are in the interests of the undertaker. They are not inherent to the system of earth burial. We believe that only in exceptional cases is cremation preferable to inhumation — as, for instance, on the battle-field, or in plague-6tricken cities, where large numbers of festering bodies corrupt the atmosphere. In such exceptional cases — as in the great plague at Milan— the Church not alone permits, but urges, a departure from her ordinary rule. The legal objections to cremation — as in cases of poisonirg, etc. — have never yet been satisfactorily answered.

For the rest : Catholics look upon even a lifeless Christian body as something different in nature and destiny from the remains of a brute. It is, in their eyes, something sacred. It was once the temple of the Holy Ghost ; was washed with the waters of Baptism and anointed with the Holy Oils. It is not in every sense dead. Like Lazarus, it '• only sleapeth" — awaiting a glorious resurrection. Religion is not necessarily compromised in cremation. The least instructed Catholic need not be told that the burned body is not thereby rendered less fit for its rising — identical as to substance, but " a spiritual body " — on the last day. From the Church's standpoint the chief objejtionj to ere nation are: (1) The canonical processes required regarding the mortal remains of her saints, some of which like those of St. Teresa, Sb. Charles, and St. Catherine of Bologna have been preternaturally preserved ; (2) her practice of venerating their relics ; (3) her conviction that our bodies are treated with greatest respect when consigned to mother-earth with plaoid

faoe, untampered with and undestroyed, to await their resurrection. To this we may add (4) the fact that cremation is a pagan system of disposing of the dead ; that it has been, since the days of Julian the Apostate, associated in the minds of many — and still is, by many of Its chief supporters— with the denial of a balief in a future life, and that it is therefore unfitting for those whose best hopes lie beyond the grave. It was chiefly on this last-mentioned ground that the praotioe of oremation was forbidden to Catholics by a decree of the Holy Office,|bearing date May 19, 1886. Curiously enough, a similar prohibition was issued to the Jews of Italy, about the same time, by the General Consistory of the Rabbins at Turin.

ENGINEERING A ROYAL ASSASSINATION,

Karditza may or may not be a crack shot. We . cannot Bay. But he admits having " drawn a bead" six times at the King of Greece, at close . range, with a result as harmless as that of a French duel. We thought it strange, but we satis fled our minds by reflecting on a German official return which showed that even the phlegmatic Teutons, with all the moral ad van tage of victory on their side, fired at the rate of 250 bullets for every Frenchman they struck in 1870. and 1300 bullets for everyone of the enemy they killed outright. But the London papers just to hand publish details of the attempted assassination of King George, which strip it bare of all the halo of romance, that had olußtered around it, and reveal it as a political move somewhat clumsily en gineered by over-zealous friends of the Danish dynasty.

The King's position had become precarious. During the courae of the inquiry into the conduct of the late disastrous war with Turkey, 123 officers — all of them staunch Royalists — had given cvi* dence that the operations of the Greek fleet were rendered useless owing to direct orders from the palace. Popular feeling against the Royal Family was running a " banker " when, at a lucky moment for the King, the attempt at assassination was made. King George placed himself between the flying bullets and his frightened daughter, shook his fist defiantly at Karditza, and deported him. self with right royal coolness and bravery. And, of course, as the Times said, " a strong revulsion of feeling set in in favour of the dynasty."

The facts surrounding the attempted regioide are sufficiently curious. The drive where the attempt was made — usually a much frequented one— was absolutely deserted at the time. Instead of the usual spanking pair, two quiet and phlegmatic old horseß were attached to the royal carriage. The usual coachman was left at home, and an old man — a friend of Karditza's — handled the ribbons instead. The two fierce assassins — Karditza and a younger com. panion — quietly blazed away with their Gras rifles, beginning with four shots at 10 yards ahead of the royal oarriage, and firing their parting salute some 20 yards in the rear, after it had passed by. The coachman declares for 15 shots at least ; the King for six. The only damage done by all this close-range practice was an alleged wound in the back of the leg of a footman from a shot fired in front of him — and acting, perhaps, on the principle of the Australian boomerang — a " slight dent " on a japanned tin lamp, a " small mark " of non-descript character on the wood of the carriage, and a trifling abrasion of horse-cuticle ! The Gras bullet must have lost its cunning, for, in its normal condition, it cuts through 18 inches of solid oak as easily and as cheerfully as it would through a Swiss cheese. A police search of Karditza's lodgings furnished at least a plausible solution of the mystery : blank cartridges were found there of his own manufacture, but no bullets. It will be remembered that Karditza had undertaken to settle with the King. His other companion was to fire only at the horses. During the fusillade a public fiacre was only 28 yards in the rear of the royal carriage. Three mounted police rode 200 yards behind. None of them put in an appearance on the scene. The assassins returned to the city unmolested, and gave themselves up in a leisurely sort of way the following day, Karditza — who is said to be usually as impecunious as Micawber — ia flush of money now ; and the curiously wounded footman is in

hospital, under orders to answer no questions. And this is the end of the great coup do theatre at A.thens. The Tinvs did -well to congratulate the King that the horses did not run away. Had they done so, his Majesty's bones might have been in danger.

roue's becruits.

The Church Times reminds one of Nelson, who clappsd his blind eye to the telescope when he did not wish to see a signal which was distasteful to him. The secessions of the Anglican clergy to Rome are the blind spot of the Church Thnci. Dr. R. F. Horton, a Dissenting minister, is reported to have said : '• There are some hundreds of clergy of the Church of England who, believing that Anglican Orders are not valid, have sought and obtained ordination - through a Papal channel." To this the Church Times replied that only an occasional " witless curate" seeks safety in the great heart of Catholic unity. The Liverpool Catholic Times, in the course of an article on the subject, says :—: —

"The 'occasional perversion of some witless curate,' as a desci'iption of the unceasing flow of converts from clerical ci/cles during the last forty or fifty years, will certainly cause amusement to any man of mature years, and can only lead one to suppose that the writer must bj very unobservant and very juvenile. To us, who have enj tyed the ministrations of some of the devoted priests who left behind then good livings, comfortable parsonages, and happy hoaies, to embrace the true Faith, this spiteful sentence will only excite pity when we remember our two great Cardinals, and, amongst those who are gone, Canon Oakeley, formerly Prebendary of Lichfield Cathedral and Incumbent of All Saints', Margaret street, the respected parish priest at Islington ; Canon Macmullen, Vicar of St. M.iry Magdaden's, Oxford, another hardworking priest at Chelsea, or Fathers Lockhart. Anderdon, Faber, Yarde, Marshall, etc. (/?././-'). The list of names at every turn brings up memories of good and holy men, who laboured on in obscurity, and whose departure from the Church of England must have been a sad loss to the Protestant a'linirers they left behind.

" Should he still be in doubt as to the numb of clergy who have left his Church and found the truth at the feet of the Vicar of Christ, he can obtain somj idea, though not a complete one. from a list giving most of their nanae^ and former livings in a book entitled Concerts to Borne, published by Sivan, Sonnenschein, and Co., Paternoster Square, in 18!)2, and from which the following figures are taken. The numbers stated therein (including only Oxford and Cambridge men, up to five years since) are : Archdeacons, 2 ; deans, 1 ; prebendaries, 1 ; rectors of parish churches, 3<i ; vicars, 37 ; incumbents, 8 ; perpo f ual curates and curate?, 142 ; other clergy, \)7 ;—; — total, 324 up to ISIJ2. On glancing over the names and particulars of the latter item of '07, it will be noted that it includes some very very distin names, and the whole list comprises sons and relatives of bibhops. he id masters of schools, literary men, etc. Only the Catholic Church could have drawn from an opposing camp men whose secession was to themselves the loss of almost everything they loved in many ca^es, but which has given to us some of our most devoted bishops (at least five), priests, and married laymen, for to some of them who had wives and families it meant only what they too well knew. Tho streams still flows steadily on, and maybe future yeirs will show more triumphs of the Church in rescuing from error tho&e whose hearts grow weary of doubt and confusion."

A NKW COUNTERFEIT.

DtruiKG the acute stage of the siege of Paris there was fur a brief period, ,1 lively trade done in rabbits, at about £2 jicr head. It was, of course, a mere matter of detail that every " rabbit was a cat. But the starving Parisians head too much of the hunger-sauce to be finical or supercilious about m to questions of nomenclature, A cat was not to bo had every we'jlc, nor a welcome slice of black bean-bread or even of honest rat-pie every day. And a rose by any other name was just as sweet. The polite deception of the Parisian cat-vendor was trifling compared with such invasions of our internal economy as wooden nutme^a, boot-pcg 1 cloves, and chalk cocoa. The latest addition to the list of food adulterants is bogus flour — " flourine," as it is termed. It is said to bear the same relation to flour that butterine does to butter. The manufacture of the new article of commerce is carried on by a Glucose Sugar Refining Company in one ot the Western States of America. The composition of the new product is a trade sei rot. Il is said to bo a preparation of maize, to be unsafe to mix. with who.it-fl >ur in a greater proportion than ten to twenty per cent , arid to bear bo close a ret-enilulance to the genuine article that it would be stupidity for the non-expert not to be deceived by it. The difference can be detected only by the aid of a powerful microscope. Thus the staff of life may prove as deadly as a Tongan war-club. * * *

Who knows ? Perhaps the New Woman may come to the rescue by including a laboratory in her kitchen out-fit, as well as pots and pans. Civilised countries will not give up wheat-flour bread. They will take it—" flourine" and all— rather than fall back updn the only substitutes that the world has yet to offer. And what are they 1 In the remote parts of Sweden people use stone-hard rye-bread, baked twice a year. Farther north barley and oaten bread are the rule. Laplanders use oaten bread mixed with the inner bark of the pine. Buckwheat bread finds favour with John Chinaman as well as Uncle Sam. Only 17 per cent of the bread used in Italy is made from flour. The rest is manufactured according to local plans and specifications from maize and chestnuts. In some of the poorer parts of the Marches and the Abruzzi a kind of bread is made from oaknuts. Rice-bread is largely used in China, Japan, and India, and durra (a kind of millet) in Egypt and Arabia. The siege-bread of Paris was made largely of beans, and specimens of the J' hungerbread " of the dragooned Christians of Armenia were compounded of clover-seed and linseed -meal, mixed with edible grass. There are probably worse bread stuffs than " flourine." There are also better. In any case "flourine" is but a fuller evidence of the fact that a great deal of the commercial life of our day is saturated with fraud.

A NOTABLE CENTENAttY.

A remarkable centenary was celebrated on the 21st of March — namely the BOoth anniversary of the foundation of the venerable Order of th

Cistertians. The Order owed it existence to a French Benedictine monk, St. Robert, who in 1098 took up his abode with twenty-one companions in a wild and desolate forest at Cister-ciurn (Citeaux), near Dijon. The object of the Cistercian monks was personal sanctification. Hence they selected as their dwelling-place the lonely forest and the desolate valley. Their lives were a round of little sleep, long hours of meditation and prayer, hard labour, and rigid fasting. They never tasted meat, grease, eggs, or fish, and milk but rarely. One of the most illustrious superiors of the Order was Stephen Harding, an Englishman, who guided its destines for twenty-five years, from 1109 to 1134. Four years after he had taken up the reins of government the Order had reached the verge of extinction. The Burgundian Court took deep offence at his reproofs ; sickness broke out among his monks ; their poverty was extreme ; the rigours of their rule deterrent ; and no fresh subjects presented themselves at Citeaux. The Abbot and his monks betook themselves to prayer. Soon, the young St. Bernard and thirty of his kinsmen joined the Order in a body. This was the turning point in its career. In the twelvth century there were .100 abbeys affiliated to Citeaux ; later on the number increased to 1800. This was the golden age of the Cistercian Order. With the wars, the plundering and impoverishment of the fourteenth century the days of its decline set in. At the time of the dissolution of monasteries by Henry VIII., there were over 100 Cistercian Abbeys in England. During the French, revolutionary wars the Cistercian foundations suffered severely in most of the Continental countries. It had touched bottom. Then the days of the restoration set slowly in. After many trials and persecutions, the Order has now 77 monasteries. Of these, .j.j are in France, 1 in England, and 2 in Ireland— one of these the wellknown foundation of Mount Melleray. Every decade sees the Order spreading where there is Christian pioneering, coupled with hard physical labour, to be done. Floreat !

A NEW KLONDYKE.

Since the days of Peter John Faber and the other alchemists, people have been in search of some means of turning their iron pots and leaden

gutters into good yellow gold. The recent transformation of silver into argentuuruvt is a big stride in the right direction. In the meantime people are eager to face frostbite and starvation on the Yukon to secure "Gold, gold, bright and yellow, hard and cold," or to crush each others corns and twist each others ribs in a scramble for Lipton's conversion shares. Lipton's big tea and bacon business has been floated into a limited liability company The rush to Klondyke was a tame affair compared to the wild scrainple for •' Lipton." No such excitement has been witnessed in London since the issue of Guinness's and Allsopp's big brewing businesses. Special rooms and extra clerks were set apart at the National Bank of Scotland, at Hill and Co's, and at the special buildings fitted up by Sir Thomas Lipton for the purpose, with a staff of 300 clerks. All were deluged with applications. The first van-load of letters delivered at the National Bank of Scotland numbered 18,000.

Only about £1,000,000 worth of stock was available for distribution. Yet when tho share list closed on March 10, over 200,000 subscribers had sent in applications for shares ; about £.">0,000,000 were subscribed — in Glasgow alone the total issue was more than twice over applied for ; and deposits amounting from £.~>,000,000

to £6,000,000 were withdrawn from trade and remained locked up for two or three weeks. This serious displacement of capital affected the money market considerably.

The rush for wealth was a pitiful one. One man appealed to Lipton for shares " for my little girl who is immensely interested in your chocolates " ; others on the plea that they had eaten only Lipton's hams and drunk only his teas for a fabulous number of years. In the eager hurry of the rush to the new Klondyke, cheques were unsigned or signed with no address or application form. One man sent the half of a £50 note to a £25 deposit on an application ; and a Scotchman fell so far short of his nation's characteristic caution as to send a corpulent bundle of £200 in bank notes, unregistered, through the post. We consider this about the most striking evidence of the manner in which the public mind was turned by the rush to the new Klondyke which Sir Thomas Lipton suddenly opened to the British public.

not only be a happy man, but that he deserves well of his country into ? the bargain. We doubt very much if he succeeded in convincing any of his readers. Perhaps he had no readers. Hia book may have been a mere tour de foree — like Lucian's eulogy on the house-fly, or Catullus's poem on the death of a pet sparrow, or it may have been a concrete instance of the argument of the fox that had lost his tail in a trap. Perhaps some of our readers can explain why a shiny poll is so often mentally associated with literature, and a fuzzy hirsuteness — if we may use the term — with art ; and why baldnes3 is supposed by many to be a sign of wisdom. It is about the only bign of wibdom some people display : they go bald on the principle that an empty barn requires no thatch. And yet the loss of " thatch " is a trial to many. Robert Louis Stevenson tells of a friend of his— an American artist — who sat alone and unconsolable upon a bench, exclaiming : "lam old ; I am poor ; and lam bald 1" Baldness was apparently the superlative degree of his triple misery.

A COMING TROUBLE.

Rural depopulation continues apace in England and Continental Europe. It has already disturbed the equilibrium of things, and in the not distant

future promises to provide some of the knottiest problems that ever exercised a statesman's brains. According to statistics recently published, the growth of big cities in England and Germany has shown a clean pair of heels to the increase of their rt spectire populations. At the beginning- of the present century the face of Europe was estimated to be dotted over with a population of 175,000.000. It 1870 it had risen to 300,000,000. At present it stands at about 370,000,000. The increase of cities of over 100,000 inhabitants is still more remarkable. In 1801 there were only 21 such cities, counting among them 4,500,000 souls. In 1850 the number had risen to 75 ; in 1870 to 70, with a total population of about 20,000,000. In 1890 the number of such cities had swelled to 121, and their swarms of inhabitants counted about 3 7,000,000 heads. In 1 SOI, France had only three towns of ovor 100,000 population. England and Germany had only two each. Time has altered all that. In 1870 England had IS cities of over 1000,000 inhabitants, Germany 10, France i). In 1S!)(», England had 30, Germany 28, France 10. France shows the least increase in population ; but, as a sot-oft: to this, she also shows the least migration of her rural population to swell the dangerous, and over more dangero'i*?, proletariat of the city populations. It is no longer as in the days when Dick Whittington set his face towards London. The Hodge and Hans of to-day, lurching along citywards with slung bundles, are preparing sleepless nights and anxious days for the Broughams and the Bismarcks of the twentieth century. And tome of us may live to see.

The Father* called " Scolopii," or of the " Scuole Pie,' ! or " Pious Schools," are among- the foremost educational bodies of Italy. The first of their school, the first "Pious School," waa founded in Rome by their father, St. Joseph Calasanctius, in November, 151)7. The centenary of this noble event was celebrated late in the month of January, 18' IS. The centenary celebrations thus coincided with the Jubilee celebrations of his Holiness.

Sir Robert Ball has an amusing story of a meteorite which fell on an American farm. It is claimed by the ground landlord, because the leaso reserved to him all minerals and metals on the land. It was also claimed by the tenant on the score that it was not in the ground when the lease was made. The landlord then required it aa " flying game." The tenant, however, pleaded that it had neither wings nor feathers, and asserted his right to it as ground game. While the dispute was raging the revenue officers seized it as an article which had been introduced into the country without payment of duty.

THE IRISH CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY.

The Catholic University question is well in the front of the fighting line of Irish politics just now. It is an old fight, dating far back, and there are at least indications that the sturdy perseverance of the Irish Catholic Hierarchy is to be at last crowned with success. Several Universities are already in existence in the British dominions on the lines demanded by the Irish episcopate — such a3 the Catholic University of Ottawa, with 463 resident students, and Laval University in Canada, which has 235 students in residence and some 5,000 in its seventeen affiliated colleges. A happy feature in the Irish movement is the unanimity of all classes and creeds upon the subject — with, of course, the perennial exception of the intolerant and noisy faction that dominates a portion of Ulster. Lord Charles Beresford is a man whose family traditions are strongly Protestant. Yet he is, and has been ever since 1870, a manly and consistent supporter of the movement in favour of an Irish Catholic University. In the course of a lengthy letter to the Times, he says :—: —

" This is not a political question. It is a simple measure of justice and right, and we who advocate it claim that it is for the benefit of education that this University should be established. I have always been of opinion that State-aided education should be ultimately and finally arranged with a due regard to the religious convictions of the various sects of the population, and that sect — which is merely an accident of birth in 99 cases out of 100 — should not debar a citizen of the State from any privileges to which any other citizen of a different sect is entitled. As a Protestant I should hesitate to send my child to a University Roman Catholic in lines and sentiment, no matter whether open to him or not. The Roman Catholic's conscience scruples under similar conditions are, I believe, even stronger than those of a Protestant, and for this reason, under present conditions, the Roman Catholic in Ireland suffers from a disability in the matter of University education. I cannot conceive what danger my gallant friend Colonel Saunderson, the member for Xorth Armagh, and those who think with him. can see ahead. The old days of the Inquisition are past and gone for ever ; and it ia a curious fact that the one religion in the world without a bayonet behind it to support it in Europe, Asia, Africa, or America is the Roman Catholic religionIt would appear that all the intolerance, suspicion, and distrust ■which at one time were synonymous with Roman Catholicism has now come over to certain sections of the Protestant Churches."

A new hopo springs up aurows the Irish Sea. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Temple, spoke a3 follows for himself and the other Anglican bishops in a recent interview which was reported in the West minder Gantte of March 7: — "I am very much in earnest when I say that I would like to see a Roman Catholic University established by the Government in Ireland, and what I say for myself represents what almost every bishop of the Church of England thinks on this subject. We must not allow Ireland to separate from us. We insist on maintaining the union between the two people, and ib is only just that we should recognise such differences as exist and deal with them fairly. I think it is far better that the rising generation of Roman Catholics in Ireland should have the advantages of a higher education than that they should be compelled to deny themselves a University course rather than do violence to their consciences. This is only justice. It is not only right, but it would be the means of taking the od^e off Ireland's poignant grievances.''

TO ALL WHOM IT MAY CONCERN.

M. Mahtha, in his Moral istex ih /' Umpire Ilomain (p. 273) tells how Synesius, a learned man of the fifth century, wrote what might bo termed a panegyric on baldness. Ho levied on history and on all the circle of the sciences of his time for facts and arguments to provo that the owner of a bald pate should

For over a century from the days of Louis XIII. no man of fashion would dare to appear in public without his wig — which sometimes cost £100 to £140. This was the Golden Age of the hairdresser. Nowadays the long-gone profits of wig-making are replaced by the more modest gains from such mysterious compounds as " koko " or " tricopherus," and the perennial and refreshing- hopefulness of the male whose top-knot is thinning or gone. But the allpervading microbe has bitten into even this source of profit. For has not the Contemporary Review told us of M. Sebouriaud's discovery that baldness is due to a specific microbe— a microscopio Gladstone whose unseen axe fells the head-forest and leaves us, to travesty a nautical phrase, running under bare poles. But now forth steps a German savant with an account of another microbe whose special mission it is to be man's ally against the baccillus of baldness. He is, literally, worth cultivating. Truth's bard attunes his lyre to the following lay :—: — " So all this research microscopic Which has tracked these new germs to their lair ; All the pars on a hair-splitting topic Leave things very much as they were ; And whichever bacillus proves winner, We shall probably have to deplore That our hair still goes on getting thinner. The same as before."