DE OMNIBUS REBUS.

Globe, Volume V, Issue 549, 22 March 1876, Page 4

DE OMNIBUS REBUS.

A solemn agent for the patent automatic baby-jumper called last week at the house of a couple who had been married about a month. The husband was not at home, and the agent immediately came out again to look for him. He was accompanied by a flat-iron, a Bible, a rolling-pin, and two breakfast plates. Professor Sachau, of Vienna, has been called to the newly founded chair of Oriental Languages at the University of Berlin, Dr Ulrica. Kohler has relinquished his chair in the University of Strasburg, and accepted the post of secretary of the German Institu tion for Archaeology at Athens in the place of Dr O. Luders, who has returned to his former duties in the diplomatic service. The Inman Company's Royal Mail steamer City of Brooklyn, on the 7th January, on her way from New York to Queenstowu, ran down off Cape Clear the Emilia, an Italian barque, from Constantinople, with wheat, to Queenstown. The barque sank in a few minutes. One boy was killed in the collision, and two men are missing, one of them the mate. The captain and eight men we e rescued, one of them with a broken leg. The steamer lost her bowsprit. On the same morning the steamer Valentino, 312 tons register, of London, bound from London to Swansea with pit wood, was run into at 6 o'clock, to the east of the Lizard, by a vessel supposed to be a schooner. The crew thought the steamer was sinking, and were trying to get out a boat, when the davit broke and fell away with the gear attached. The latter caught round Captain Waters and took him overboard. He sank at once. Afterwards the crew found the steamer not sinking, and brought her into Penzanea. In a long article on-the primary schools of Russia, the Moscow Gazette strongly advocates the introduction of a system of compulsory education in the empire. " The almost universal ignorance of reading and writing," it says, " which prevails among our country population is everywhere felt as au impediment—in our courts of justice, in our juries, in our communal administration, and in our army. Something, no doubt, is being done to spread education by municipalities and private benefactors ; but there is hardly BDy sign of progress. To say nothing of the defective schoolhouses and the insufficiently qualified teachers, the proportion of pupils and schools to the number of the population is smaller not only than in any other civilised State in Europe and America, but than in the Christian districts of Turkey, where in 1861 there was a school for every 1774 inhabitants, and one out of every seventy of the latter wag being educated, while we in in 1875 only had one school for every 33,439 inhabitants, of whom one in eighty was being educated." Compulsory education (proceeds the Moscow Gazette') is therefore a necessity, and it has, indeed, been accepted " in principle " by the Government. " But before parents can be forced to send their children to school there must be schools and teachers to receive them. At present there are only 22,000 schools in Bussia, most of which are badly situated and have inefficient teachers ; while to supply the educational requiiements of the country about 200,000 schools are wanted, with a corresponding staff." The Moscow Gazette says that the Minister of Education proposes, as a step in this direction, to establish training schools for schoolmasters and a special school fund for the erection of schoolhouses, to be composed of unexpended balances of the school rate levied on the peasants and contributions from the funds at the disposal of the district assemblies. But this.would not attain the object with sufficient rapidity ; and it thereto: e suggests that a similar system should be adopted to that existing in the United States— i.e. to appropriate for the benefit of the school fund certain portions of the land belonging to the State, or, as it is called in Bussia, the "crown domains."

Duels of late years have lost much of the deadly character which was formerly the chief objection urged against them, and "hostile meetings," as a rule, have now no more eerious result than the waste of ammunition involved by the necessity of both parties discharging their pistols and interchanging complimentary salutes. A fatal duel has, however, just taken place in Spain, where the Marquis de Sofraza has been shot by Major Lilburne, an Irish officer in the service of Don Carlos. The duel, it is stated, was conducted with "chivalrous couitesy" on both sides. The first interchange of shots being ineffectual, the seconds most kindly decided on allowing the combatants to indulge in a second shot, and thus give them a chance of compensation for the disappointment caused by their first ineffectual effort to destroy each other. This second attempt was partially successful, for although Major Lilburne was not killed, his bullet pierced the biain of the Marquis de Sofraza, who died in a few minutes. No one, it is said, regretted the fatal result more than the survivor, whose conduct throughout the affair was so marked by good taste and feeling as to call forth the warm commendations of all concerned in the gallant affair. Unfortunately the Major's regrets came a few minutes too late to be of much service to the Marquis, who, nevertheless, had he killed the Major instead of being killed himself, would no doubt have been equally profuse in his expressions of regret. The cause of the meeting arose out of a rather heated argument on Spanish politics.