Local Intelligence.

Lyttelton Times, Volume VIII, Issue 517, 17 October 1857, Page 5

Local Intelligence.

Owing to the late severe illness of the Chief Justice at Auckland, and the continued indisposition of Mr. Justice Wakefield, Mr. Gresson has been requested to hold courts at Wellington, Nelson, Canterbury, and Otago, under an acting Commission as Judge of the Supreme Court. He will probably commence his circuit at the beginning of the next year. On Thursday evening Mr. Jacobs delivered

his promised lecture on " The Cultivation of Literature in its bearings on Colonial life," at the Town Hall, Christchurch. The lecture was exceedingly interesting and gave great pleasure to a large audience. The rev. lecturer pointed out very forcibly the necessity for devoting tlio spare moments of a colonist's busy life to the cultivation of literature, and the pleasure which it gave to an educated man to meet in any quarter of the world, however wild and uncivilised, persons who were well acquainted with his favourite authors. Some amusement was afforded by Mr. Jacobs's quotation of a passage from George Herbert's quaint but beautiful poem, describing a condition of society to which we are especially liable: —

" Thy gentry bleats, as if thy native cloth Transfused a sheepishriess into thy story, Not that they all are so; but that the most Are gone to grass, and in the pasture lost." We regret very much that we are not in a position to give even an outline of this very interesting lecture. It is to be hoped that it is only the prelude to many more of a like nature.