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Globe, Volume IV, Issue 386, 7 September 1875, Page 4

Signor Salvini, the Athenaeum says, has been asked to accept an engagement for fifty nights to act in New York and Philadelphia. Very high terms have been offered, but it is not known what the result of the negotiation will be. Quite lately, we understand, Mr Irving declined a similar engagement, and it is rumoured that Signor Rossi will be applied to, should Mr Irving and Signor Salvini persist in declining. M. Paschal Grousset, writing to a London paper, says : —“ On relating how a political prisoner in New Caledonia had been ordered to perform the office of executioner, and how, upon his refusal to obey such an oider, he had been almost beaten to death, you have questioned the possibility of such an occurranee. But a letter which I have received via Australia enables mo to confirm this horrible story. It is a real fact, of which there can be no doubt, and, as if to increase the horror, you must know that the convict selected for this work is a distinguished literary man, a poet, M. Henri Brissac ; still further, he is well known for the earnestness with which he has always combated capital punishment, both theoretically and practically. I could furnishjjyou withj till minuter details, and tell you bow those who know him intimately esteem him, how noble his nature, how tender and generous his heart, how superior his intellect: but no doubt I should be accused of converting this ‘ convict’ into a hero of romance.’