WHAT THE WORLDS SAYS.

Kumara Times, Issue 1151, 7 June 1880, Page 4

WHAT THE WORLDS SAYS.

[by atlas. J

The oldest bishop in Catholic Christen* dom at present ofßoiating—John, Arch* bishop of Tuam, to wit—entered his ninetieth year only on Monday last. And he still sails about the wild isle of the West, carrying his orozier, and preaching in the native tongue; he holds his monster stations on the hill-sides and, takes care of the politics of his arohiepisoopal province. lam told that his Grace i who has lived and acted in more chapters of Siberian history than any man of the age, is engaged in arranging papers and literary notes in such a form that when —possibly early in the next century— he shall go over to the majority, his memoirs may easily be written. What an amount they must spend on their sticks! The cratch went out, and was followed by the ebony cane with an agate top, alternatives being tortoiseshell or balls o! plain gold or silver. From this they rushed rapidly to the extreme of rusticity, and took to eazel sticks with shepherd’s crook handles. And now they have a kind of golf-club, the big end of which is carried downwards. The dear boys! “La Femme & Papa” has brought to the Varietes Theatre, in 100 performances, L 19.000 profit. After the hundredth pa -formance on Thursday last, the manager, before the customary supper, held a “ prize distribution,” when all the actors and actresses engaged in ' the peformance of tbe piece received clocks, bronzes, and other objects of art—some of the gentleman chronometers, and some of the ladies that object dearest to a pretty French iroman, enamelled looking-glasses. The tomb of Andrew Ducrow, the ringmaster, with its tawdry theatrical effects—.circus hat and leathers, whip, gauntlets, and the rest of it, in white marble—is one of the best known in Kensal Green Cemetary; and its present condition suggests reflections which may interest those who are concerned in the proper and fitting maintenance of the last resting places of the departed. I Timber “Curiosities of London” and other handbooks are to be believed, Ducrow’s tomb should be especially well kept for he bequeathed a sum of money for the purpose. Keeping this in mind, the visitor of to-day will find in the neglected condition of this ostentatiously showy tomb one more illustration of the vanity of human wishes. Ducrow has been dead only a little over thirty years, and its marble is dirty where it is not a slimy | green ; its shrubs and plants are nntrimmed and untended ; its tiny gravelwalk is grass-grown; its whole aspect in one sf melancholy neglect. Threepenny worth of salt would cleanse the gravelwalk, and a few shillings’ worth of labour would make the tomb and evergreens descent; but it is apparently nobody’s business, and the result is pitiable. Did Ducrow leave money in trust for the preservation of his tomb ? If so, who are the trustees, and have the Kensal Green Cemetery authorities no sort of responsibility in the matter 1 To buy a bit of ground, and to bury our dead in a garden of their own, looking forward to lying with them peacefully under the flowers, is a far prettier and more poetic idea than the old atrocities »f brick graves and gloomy vaults ; but if there be no way of insuring that the garden shall not in a few years become a dreary and neglected waste and if even an adequate pecuniary consideration will not provide for its ordinary cate, our cemeteries will lose a permanently pleasing feature, and we shall allbe restricted to tbe solid, tidy ugliness of the stony slab. Cardinal Newman has sustained a deep bereavement In the death of Monsignor Russell, the President of May nootb College which took place on Thursday in Dublin. Dr Bussell was one of the moderate school of ecclesiastics, who looked upon varied learning as the natural ally of theology. He was probably one of the moat precocious students of Maynooth, which he entered in his fourteenth year, already learned enough to outshine some of tbe young gentlemen in minor orders; and successfully he filled the highest scholastic pieces !n the gift of the Irish Roman Catholic hierachy. But Dr Russell’s chief claim to remembrance by posterity will be the direct authorship of the conversion of John Henry Newman to the Roman Catholic Church. Russell was eleven years younger than Newman ; but when the leader of the Oxford movement, disJ”? 1 th . e condemnation of “ Tract * r etired with a few companions from St Mary’s Oxford, to Littlemore, Dr Russell, then one of the chief professors of Maynooth, albeit he was still under 30 became a correspondent of tbe future Cardinal. In the Apologia will be found many of the tronblings of conscience which JJe Newman presented for the guidance of his correspondent at Maynooth; and, indeed, the light of the Oratory candidly states that Dr Russell bad more to do with h» conversion than anybody else : “ He called upon me in 1841, and I think I took him over some of the buildings of the University. He called again another summer on his way from Dublin to liondon. Ido not resollect that he saida word on the subject of religion on either occasion. He sent me, at different times, several letters. He was always gentle, mud, unobtrusive, oncontroversial. He lot me alone.” And therefore he won on the perplexed prophet of the new Oxford school. He was a kindred spirit, and his letters, full of suggestive thought were the events of the time at Littlemore. where they sent Dr Newman’s companions, one by one, “ over to Rome.”