Notes

New Zealand Tablet, Volume 14, Issue 24, 14 June 1906, Page 18

Notes

A New Star-Chamber An English contemporary puts its finger on the worst spot in the English Education Bill. It is ' the Star-C lumber Commissions of three, charged to arrange the conveyance of other people's property from the owners to the State. That Commission is an outrage on every principle of English freedom. It can summon witnesses at pleasure, seize property temporarily, 'tear up or ignore trust deeds, and finally convey property to the State without fear of appeal against its decision. Its ' schemes, decisions, or other proceedings • are absolutely final and irrevocable by any authority in the land. No one can review or change anything it chooses to dtx The Commissioners are absolutely omnipotent. It is impossible that British citizens should submit to such a gross outrage on their civic rights and liberties. If such a Commission can take our schools', why may they not next week be empowered to take oar cjyur'ch.es, oar 1 convents, qur homes ? Mr. Birrell, as a lawyer, must surely feel' that the country will never grant him such a tyrannical tribunal for the confiscation of private property. 1 Vesuvius ' Veder Napoli, c poi morir '—see Naples and die. So say the Neapolitans— when skies are bright and all's serene. But they had quite a different tale to

tell -when. Vesuvius rose in riotous activity and wiped out the charms of Naples in a falling rain of thick volcanic ash. The following is one of the most vivid descriptions we have seen of what befell Naples— it is from a special correspondent, and appeared in the Dublin ' Freeman ' :— ' Ten clays ago I was down a burning mine ; this morning I strolled for an hour over burning lava ; and 1 am wondering which is the livelier sensation. Naples when I reached it, in the same train from Rome as the King and Queen of Italy, seemed a city in a dream. It was not sundown a few miles away, but here it was black night. The sun a glowing red-gold ball, set, as far as we passengers were concerned, two or three stations before Naples. It disappeared in a, lurid, purplish cloud hanging over the city. The usual pandemonium of the Naples terminus was increased by the bustle over the arrival of the Sovereigns, and rendered fantastic by the thick darkness in the courtyard outside. There I found what I can only call warm, brown snow falling softly and swiftly. It lay 'a foot deep on the pavement ; deadening sounds of wheels and horses' hoofs, and it went en falling steadily. It gently penetrated dip's clothes and ears.'

Baldness and Virtue The following dual testimonial as to the advantages of a hairless poll is going the rounds of the New Zealand press. It is quoted on the authority of the London ' Daily Mail ' •— llt is stated that :—(1): — (1) There are no bald criminals. (2) There are no bald lunatics. Neither statement is laid down as absolute or infallible, but it is claimed that therei are ora'y sufficient exceptions to prove the rule. The authority regarding the first statement is Mr. J. T. Riley, a magistrate of the Halifax Bench, who said in Court that he had only met with two bald "> charges " in his twenty-three years' experience. With regard to the second statement, the Rev. 11. M. Nield, of Bradford, quotes " a head official " of th? Rainhill Asylum, who asaured him that he would never need the ' hospitality of that institution, as he was quite hald. It was difficult to find authorities in London who whole-heartedly bore out these two theses. A gentleman who frequently visits Bethlehem Hospital in an official capacity said to a representative of it he " Daily Mai '": " My impression of the lunatics I meet there is tint they are usually a shaggy race." An experienced police inspector bore out to a great extent Mr. Riley 's statement about the lack of bald-headed criminals, but he advanced a commonplace explanation. " Criminals," he said, " are notoriously a short-lived race. I admit I have seen very few bald-headed men in this charge-room, but by the time a criminal reaches the bald-headed period of life he has either 'died or has reformed. There is one notable exception, however— til at was Charles Peace, the murderer and burglar." ' * The paragraph quoted from our Christchurch contemporary is only another evidence in favor of the old Scriptural saying that) there's nothing new under the sun. We turn up M. Martha's ' Moralises de 1' Empire Romain,' and on page 273 the author records how Synesius (a learned man of the fifth century) wrote what might be termed a panegyric on baldness. lie levied on history and on the whole circle of the sciences of his' time for facts and arguments to prove that the owner of a bald pate should not alone be a happy man, blut that he desenes well of his country into the bargain. Personally, we doubt very much that he succeeded in convincing his readers. Perhaps he had no readers. His book may have been a mere ' tour de fo^ce ' — like Lucian's eulogy of the house-fly, or Catullus's poem %>n the death of a pet sparrow, or Whately's ' Historical Doubts Relative to Napoleon Buonaparte.' Or, mayhap, Synesius's panegyric may have nothing more or less than a fresh application of the argument of the fox that had lost his tail in a trap. In the days of Louis XIII. no man of fashion would dare to appear in public without his wig. And ''the wig sometimes cost £100 to £140. That was the goklen age

of the wig-maker. This is the golden age of the 'hairrestorer,' that does nothing more than to sustain the perennial and refreshing hopefulness of the lord of creation whose top-knot is thinning or gone. Wisdom in Louis' days sat in a bob-wig, fche does so nowadays only on the woolsack and in our courts of law. Outside, her emblem in some departments (in literature, for instance) is— more or less— the shiny poll. In art it is a fuzzy hirsutenes-s: What Artemus Ward calls ' a barefooted head ' may indeed be a sign of sanity and virtue and wisdom. It is by no means a necessary sign. But it is about the only sign of sanity ox virtue or wisdom that some people display.