Notes

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 2, 10 January 1907, Page 22

Notes

A Difference The Paris ' Uniyers ', in a recent issue, quotes the following a , decree' passed by the. Revolutionary National Assembly* on November 2,, 1789, on th© * motion o. Mirabeau :— • • All ecclesiastical goods shall be at the disposal of the nation, subject to a suitable provision for the expenses of public worship, the support of the ministers of religion, and the relief of the poor ; in the arratalgements to be made for the -sustentatioir)of the pastors, they must be assured of at least 1200 livres a year, exclusive of house and garden '. ' The National Assembly ', says the ' Univers ', • which our present-day revolutionaries would like to take as their model, plundered the clergy ; but it at least showed some solicitude for the future' of tho~se it robbed, by not claiming the right brutally to "deprive of all 'means of existence those whose sole.vocation is one of prayer and the exercise of charity '.

An Unlucky Quotation In his ' .English Bards and. Scotch Reviewers,' Byron flails ' the Sabbath bard, sepulchral Grahame ' for that he

' Undisturbed by conscientious qualms, . Perverts the Prophets and purloins the Psalms.'

Dr. Clifford, the English ' Nonconformist leader, , has within the past few weeks perpetrated a prize blunder of quotation that merits him a place beside ' sepulchral G-rahame.' In an address to -his -brethren, urging a strenuous forward movement in regard to the illstarred Education Bill, he wound up .a thunderous - exhortation with the Miltonian line :— 1 Awake, -arise, or be for ever fall'ri.' - . - The customary ' candid friend 4 then stepped forward, and reminded the Doctor, - through the columns of the

' Daily Graphic ' that the quotation -in question is the closing line of Satan's exhortatation to the • princes, potentates, warrib-rs ' of hell to scale high heaven and do battle against the Almighty. The art o£ quotation is a Uailish one. But it does not' every- day af- - ford such : finely rounded ' bulls' ' as that of the * doughty Doctor. '