English and Foreign Items.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 15, Issue 777, 11 April 1870, Page 3

English and Foreign Items.

One hundred and ninety-two persons were killed in the streets of London by horses or vehicles during last year. Edward Mansell, an inmate of the Bridgenorth Union Workhouse, has attained his 100th year. The old man is hale and hearty, and avails himself of a morning's walk unassisted. Mrs Fallon, of Cabra Castle, near Thurles, has given instructions to her agent to forgive all the arrears due on her large estates. From three to six years rent was due. This benevolent lady has also distributed £2OO worth of blaukets and clothing amongst the poor living on her property.—Limerick Chronicle. On Saturday night, while Sergt. Browne, of the 65th Eegiment, station at Ballincollig, was proceeding home from Cork, he was attacked by four men, who presented revolvers and demanded arms. Finding that the sergeant had no arms, the party withdrew. Subsequently Browne returned to the city and reported the circumstance to the police. No arrests have been made.

Mr Bernard Cracroft writes a letter, in answer to Mr E. A. Freeman's condemna. tion of field sports as cruel. Mr Cracroft is not, as lie says, above his age; he bits a bird when lie can find an opportunity, and he likes a chase after a fox. But though he goes thus far in his admiration j for field sports, Mr Cracroft is earnest and severe in his detestation of the " elegant atrocities" and "lazy bloodshed," dignified by the name of sport: —"How shall I express my execration of the horrors of pigeon shooting, or my wonder and contempt for the thing calling itself a man, which glorifies itself in matches, where pigeons, noblest and faithfullest of birds, have their breastbone carefully broken beforehand, 'in order' that they may be ' easier to shoot at!' How shall 1 pity delicate ladies in delicate attire, born and bred to every refinement, who rejoice to sit under summer trees, and clap fair hands to these would-be elegant ruffians, un moved, even when gentle birds, chosen symbols (justly chosen) in Christian poetry and Christian art, of all purity, sweetness, love, and loyalty, fall bleeding, crying, shattered, and convulsed into their very laps, amid a brilliant and tittering circle ! Horror for horror —I agree with Mr Freeman—give me the bull-ring. What shall I say of the coarse idiotcy, the sickly effeminacies of the modern battue or that triumph of vulgarity, the ' Boquet,' so innocently and earnestly portrayed by the Illustrated News last week, to please the Prince of Wales ? To what lower depths are we doomed of brutality and snobbishness ?" Mr Cracroft wishes the Prince had better advisers.

" Mater," in reference to the " Welsh Fasting Girl's " case, writes : —I have a daughter who had a very similar illness, beginning in the same way, and continuing for three years ; it was called an " obscure case" by the doctor who constantly attended her with the most indefatigable care and interest. The last year of her illness she lost flesh rapidly, and became quite a skeleton. Her power of sitting up or walking was quite gone. A teaspoonful of fluid, tea or broth, a few times a day, or a tiny biscuit, was about all she could be prevailed on to take; and her repugnance to this was so great that she would resist even to weeping before she would submit to swallow it. She appeared to be rapidly sinking, and was given over by her doctor. A consulting physician, of great eminence, called in for the second time at this juncture, repeated his belief that the case was one of those obscure affections of the nervous system which baffle all medical skill and treatment. He said she might die or might recover. He could find out no reason why she should not recover. It might be weeks, months, or even years first; and she might one day turn the corner almost suddenly, and recover as by a miracle. All he prescribed was, that food should be given peiemptorily. She was to take it as medicine ordered by the doctor. She was to be roused, and obliged to make efforts ; to be taken out in the air, and be required to drink a tumbler of milk between morning and evening, and sipping it at intervals, and another between evening and morning ; and after a few days meat was to be given and forced on her as physic, This was done determinedly, and a strong will exercised over her accomplished it. She had at this time no wish to recover —quite the contrary, and considered the efforts to restore

her cruel. As soon as ever she could be moved she was taken away from the scene of her illness, and for nine months she was t r subject to continual change from place to place. None of her family going with her she became obliged to exert herself, the ' friends to whom she was Bent being made ' aware that they must ignore her illness 1 and expect her to throw it off as much as ' possible. After six weeks she began to walk with crutches a little; by degrees ' her appetite returned ; she took an inter- ' est in life, gained strength, occupied her.self, and mixed with people. She returned home before the end of the fourth year last October, completely oured —rosy, fat, active, lively, useful, and thankful; and is now her mother's right hand —the most energetic of all her daughters. The meet of the Queen's staghounds on the 7th January was at Winkfield Church. A lady was following a gentleman, and in consequence of. his horse being slow at clearing the ditch on the other side of a fence, and the lady checking her horse on arriving at the same leap, to give him the the opportunity of clearing himself, he unluckily missed his footing on landing, and fell into the ditch, carrying his rider with him, who absolutely lay under her horse. The hunter was stretched out lengthways in the ditch, and the lady's head was between and slightly in advance of his fore legs, where she could be seen and talked to by those who assisted in extricating her. At first it was thought that the only way of d iivering her would be by digging her out, commencing on the further side of the hedge; but at last it was decided to move the horse by urging him forward and raising his head and hmd quarters at the same time by main force. The only fear was that the horse might trample on his rider, which it really seemed almost impossible for him to avoid. The lady showed marvellous courage during this trying period, and put full faith in the gentleness and instinct of her horse, which, she said, she had ridden for four years, and had been accustomed to pet and feed with horses' dainties. Her reliance on him was warranted by the result, a 9 the horse on moving forward placed his feet on the only available spot of ground which her form did not cover, and the only mark on the lady's face was one where his knees rubbed her in making his i first movement, which it was impossible to avoid. There was general joy at the lady's recovery from her dangerous position, as all anticipated something fearful must happen.

" The Anglo-Australian," writing to the European Mail on the Colonial Question, says:—The Cannon-street Meetings of Colonists came to an untimely end on Jan. 5. Without much discussion—for what little there was Mr Beaumont had almost entirely to himself—that gentleman's string of resolutions were accepted and adopted, in the place of Mr Westgarth's j but as it was, this result seemed rather to proceed from most of those present being completely weary with the whol eaffair, and willing to let things drift their own course, than from any shadow of a conviction of what they were doing. It was determined at the meeting to form an Association to be called the National Colonial League, but I be lieve that no further steps have been taken towards its realization, and its fate may easily be predicted. It is more than likely, from all I can learn, to fall into the limbo of unfulfilled projects, like its oonfrbre the " Colonial Conference." The original promoters of the Cannon-street Meetings are, I believe, thoroughly disgusted with the fiasco that has been brought about, to their ridicule and confusion, by Mr Beaumont, with his sudden onslaught in the shape of new resolutions, when a set had already been deliberately agreed upon for discussion at the most numerously-attended of the meetings. The committee appointed under his Resolutions sit once a week to consider the basis of the proposed new League. It is but right and just to give the views of those who believe still in the good effected by the Cannon-street meetings. Truth lies ever in a middle path between extremes. "Are you not," they argue, " a little hard on us Aug o-Colonials in the very serious business we have in hand ? And does it not occur to you that despite the severe things said of us at both ends of the earth, we are meeting with very considerable success in getting the British public to think upon the Colonial qnestion, to the possible modification of some of their narrow Mauchestor school axioms? Viewed philosophically and in regard to the tremendous issues at stake (for if England casts away her distant pos-

< sessions it is difficult to think to what eba > may descend), the present agitation is not i only important, but thus far veryNSucOessi ful. With our resolutions completed and • embodied in a petition to Parliament and s the Queen, with an urgent demand for i inquiry into the whole question by Eoyal i Commission, public opinion will rapidly i become modified; and as the discussion runs its course, the great dangers exhibiting themselves will more thoroughly impress themselves on people's minds. Andperhaps then our endeavor to mediate be* tween two parties who little understand either the question or each other, may be found to have been after all deserving of respectful attention. In the meantime, nothing is more amusing than the idea that we go into this sort of thing from love of the bother, expense, and worry of it. We have, the greater number of us, had too much work of any kind; and this is exactly the kind of work from which we would rather be free. We mostly live out of town, and a mere visit to your dirty crowded city is acute misery to many of us: and to fancy that we go there from choice is one of the most ludicrous of misconceptions, as far as we are concerned." Such are in substance the arguments of.the Cannon-street patriots, and I feel bound to giro them the benefit of the last word. No one will deny that they are plausible. I may state that when a collection was made at the final meeting to defray the expenses of the series, the amount contributed was most paltry and inadequate, and afforded very poor evidence of the earnestness and enthusiasm of the colonists here in the cause. On January 12 a number of gentlemen assembled in the corridors of Cannon-street Hotel, in ignorance that the meetings had come to an end, as no announcement of their termination had been given in the newspapers. Bren a few spare shillings, it seemed, could not be found for an advertisement for that purpose. Some had evidently cone with orations ready-made for delivery, and were sorely disappoiuted at the lost opportunity of airing their eloquence. Many strolled up and down the passages of the hotel for nearly half-an-hour, in the belief that a meeting would surely take place; and it required the assurances of several waiters and the polite manager combined to dissipate their delusion. And now I have done with this Cannon-street Conference, simply and sincerely saying, Bequiescat in Pace. In the meanwhile Englishmen and colonists alike may accept the sentiment of Shakspeare—

Naught shall make us rue, If England to itself do rest but true. The Standard says that Sir Charles Dilke's views as to the Colonial question are equally decided and equally valuable with his crude opinions on the Alabama cantroversy. One perceives what it is that a man gains by travel over the world at an early age. The problem, which to other men is so puzzling, is solved by Sir Charles Dilke in a few sentences, of which it is difficult to know whether to admire more their profound wisdom or their striking truthfulness. "The cessation of all Imperial expenditure on the Colonies " —this is the connsel of the member for Chelsea. As to the vulgar notion that the waste lands of the Colonies are available for emigration, Sir Charles Dilke disposes of it simply by assuring us that this is a " vital mistake." There are no waste lands in the Colonies. The lands are not given away, but are sold, and the " money applied to Colonial purposes." England has "no more hold over the waste lands of the Colonies than over those of the United States," and the Colonies are " even positively mischievous from the emigration point of view."

A lamentable accident occurred during the height of the gale, about 1 o'clock on the Bth of January, outside the Clarencegate entrance of the Regent's Park. Some of the houses in Clarence-terrace have rear entrances in Clarence-place, and that ofNo. 1, occupied by Miss White, had a small court-yard, enclosed by a brick wall twelve feet high, within which grew a plane tree of large size. This tree, swayed violently to and fro by the force of the wind, is supposed to have forced out the wall, which fell bodily on the pavement at the moment when two ladies, Mrs Clayton, of 6, Hamil-ton-terrace, St. John's Wood, with her sister, Miss Wells, aged 30 years, were passing on their way to Mr Dodd's, a poulterer in Clarence-place, adjoining Clarence-gate. Mrs Clayton escaped with severe injuries to her legs and the lower part of her body, but Miss Wells was completely buried by the falling wall. The noise and cloud of dust occasioned brought

(several persons to the spot, and among iks rest Mr Dodd, who observed Mrs Clayton on her knees in the roadway pointing frantically to the ruins, beneath which was presently discovered Mies Wells, totally Unsensible, seriously disfigured, and bleeding from the ears and nose. The unfortunate lady was got out as speedily as possible, and conveyed in a cab to St. Mary's Hospital, Mrs Clayton following in another cab. The injuries sustained by Miss Wells are such as to leave small hopes of her recovery, though consciousness partly returned on Monday night. Mrs Clayton has since been conveyed to her residence in Hamilton-terrace. About an hour previously, on the same day, another accident occurred within little more than 100 yards pf the same spot, at Gomwall-lodge, a detached villa residence standing in a bend of the park at the end of Cornwall-terrace. Owing to the greater height of the adjoin-1 ing houses the chimney stacks of Cornwalllodge are carried about 20 feet above the roof, and about 11 o'clock one of these stacks was blown down, and, breaking through the roof, buried Mrs Gee, an aged Jady, who had been bedridden for some months. The crash alarmed the servants in the house, who, rushing upstairs, found their mistress completely buried. A.fter great exertions they succeeded, with assistance, in extricating their venerable mistress, who is, however, so seriously injured that no hopes are entertained of her surviving. The Emperor of Russia is suffering from hypochondriasis —a malady which is hereditary in the Imperial family of Eussia, and which is extremely difficult to combat. It has thrown a gloom over his existence. Ifc }s said that the Emperor, whose robust appearance and fine aspect of health are considerably altere 1, often refuses 3 food, and shuts himself up from all outer comniunication, and from all the social enjoyments which he used formerly to seek. The following curious specimen of Bussian Jenkinsism is published by the Tarnboff Gazette, under the head of " Court News " :—" Yesterday his Imperial Majesty deigned to wake at 7 a.m., and after a frugal breakfast, was graciously pleased to go for a bear-hunt. On entering the wood with his suite; a bear, moved apparently by a happy instinct to reoreate the mind of the father of our holy Eussia, immediately came to the spot where his Majesty had posted himself. Paralysed at the sight of the ruler of millions who idolise him, the bear stood still, and it was observed that instead of the fierce aspect by which this savage animal is usually characterised, his countenance bore an expression of blissful anticipation, as if he wore looking forward, like a loyal subject, to the happiness of being put to death by his gracious sovereign. On returning from the chase, his Majesty caught cold; but the usual remedies having been applied to him, he deigned to feel better. He then went to bed, and next morning he was graciously pleased to be quite well." Subscriptions have been collected in America for the relief of the once famou? Eonian leader, James Stevens, who is said to be sick and in great poverty in Paris. A startling mystery is reported from Spain. Certain subterranean noises, says the Diario, similar to those made by a train just starting, have recently been heard at Cadiz. The sounds are produced at intervals in different points of the city, and what is very strange is, that the governor is almost always informed by anonymous warnings of the hours when the noise will be heard. Several families have quitted Cadiz, not believing themselves to be in safety, At a meeting of Liberals recently held at Earnworth, Mr Barnes, M.P., who was in the chair, speaking of the reciprocity movement, said he was certain that if people really understood what reciprocity i[n trade meant as between nations when it was reduced to practice, they could not talk about it as they did. Eeciprocity simply meant, "If you cut your nose off I will cut mine off."

Never was the Preach better translated into plain than in the story which is told of an old-fashioned pair, who received a card of invitation to dinner from some much gayer folks than themselves, At the bottom of the card was the then new " R.S.V.P." (Respondez si'l vous plait if you please.) This puzzled the worthy gouple, and it might puzzle us in these days, although most of us are a little better acquainted with the French. The old gentleman took a nap ©$ it, from which he was awakened by his helpKWte, who, after shaking him up, said, " My love, | have found it out. 'K.S.V.P.' means ' Eemem- !«■> t&Teryp^ctuaJ!.'"

A "Paeeha" writes as follows to the Wellington Evening Post;—Sir—We have lately heard of a new way of ending the war, and the result of the first experiment is apparently related in the Daily Southern Cross, under the head of " Pursuit of Te Kooti." As interpreted by Kemp in his explanations to Te' Mahaikohe, the new way of ending the war consists in a simple chase after Kooti and Kereopa, for the gallant Major said he " desired not to interfere with anyone else unless he or his men were resisted." So then the new way is a virtual amnesty to all concerned in the war except Kooti and Kereopa, on whose heads rewards have placed. Is the Colony prepared to approve of this? Will the friends of the men, women, and children who have been barbarously! murdered in various places during the laßt two years be content with the punishment, even if effected, of Kooti and Kereopa ? Are they prepared to see the actual murderers forgiven, and even rewarded ? I think not; and as a friend of the late Mr Pitcairn, who was dear to me almost as a brother, my blood boils with indignation when I hear of an officer holding the Queen's com mission, and commanding what are supposed to be *tbe Queen's forces, holding a friendly korero with Te Mahaikohe, the wretch who in cold blood murdered Mr Pitcairn and Mr Bonnet White. Nor is this all, for Kemp, it is said, actually gave a revolver aa a present to the murderer's son, probably to be used in some more murders. Was Kemp acting under orders in thus holding friendly relations with this miscreant ? In any other country an officer acting thus would be at onco cashiered, but then of course ordinary rules never ap ply to Maoris or Maori affairs. When the Assembly meets this conduct of Kemp's will, I trust, be investigated, and if the Government is responsible for it— if a sample of the new way of ending the war —I trust that punishment will fall where it is due. f The Wairarapa Mercury, in speaking o the departure of the troops, says:—The Imperial troops, under whose protecting jshadow we have imagined ourselves dwelling so long, are gone at last, and without leaving us the faintest hope that they will ever return, except possibly on the recurrence of such calamities as we sincerely hope will never take place. Yet, after all, their absence is not so keenly felt as was anticipated, and we begin to think it possible that we might have done without them long ago, had we only made up our miDds to believe so. No doubt in the towns where they have been stationed the gallant 18th will be missed for a time ; the absence of the scarlet coat and the sound of the bugle will create a blank; while both officers and men will be missed by the many friends they made during their long stay. All honor to them, go where they will! Braver soldiers never upheld their country's fame, and better conducted men were never quartered among any population. Still, we must say, and we are glad to say it, that the Colony at large scarcely heeds their departure. Auckland, Napier, Taranaki, Wellington, and Wanganui may be du 1 for a time ; but let them cheer up: the old order of things has passed away, but the new one comes — Le Hoi est mort Vive le Hoi I Elliott is gone, or going, and Branigan succeeds. The red coat will be replaced by the Constabulary tunic; the bearded soldier by the Bobby, "shaved to a hair," and the martial bugle by the prison bell. Already Wellington has shaken off all military memories, and fallen in with the " March of the Branigan men." Mount Cook Barracks, utterly oblivious of its former occupants, shines forth in more than pristine splendor as the home of the demilitarised— Who, heedless of a soldier's name, With pot-sticks charge the evil horde, And march in polished boots to fame,

—But, alasl there is one individual—the highest placed in New Zealand—to whom it would be vain to address words of comfort. Like "Bachel weeping for her children," he looks after the departing troops, and refuses to be comforted " because they are not." One half of his dig nity took its departure in the City of Melbourne. Where are now the oificers at his stately banquets? Echo answers " Where ? " A Governor he, and without the eclat of a retinue ! Why, he is in the forlorn condition of Busby of old —a man-of-war without guns ! Peace be to him ! We can scarcely go so far as to shed a tear of sympathy, but we will not obtrude upon his sacred sorrow.