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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VII, Issue 5, 5 January 1872, Page 2

The Wanganui Chronicle says there are ho fewer than one hundred and fortytwo rivers,,streams, and streamlets between Wanganui and New Plymouth, many of them insignificant threads in summer, but even the smallest of them sure to swell into a brawling brook after a heavy rain. They are a capital feature of the country, but rather expensive i-n a road-makiug point of view. - Railway Accidents. —Two -accidents recently took place on' the Bluff and Invercargill railway, through cows getting on tho line. In each case George Stephenson's remark was verified by its proving '" the worse for the coo.". The first accident was unattended with damage to the train, but in the secoud, one carriage containiug fourteen persons, ran off the, line, and, as the Southland Times says, with unconscious irony, " but for the fact that the train was travelling at a very slow speed, fatal results must have ensued." ' Strange Accident. —Mr. W. A. Lyon, of Islabank, Jacob's River, met with a singular and serious accident lately while engaged about a threshing mill at work on his farm. The driving belt of some part of the machinery slipped, and in its recoil caught a pitchfork, hurling it with great force towards where Mr.Lyon was standing, one of tbe tines entering at the back of his thigh and passing through and out in front immediately above the knee-cap. It was withdrawn directly afterwards by one of the men about the mill, and the sufferer was conveyed with all haste to Riverton. Making the Governor Pay. — Sir George Bowen and family have recently been on a visit to the Wairarapa. The Mercury thns accounts for their absence from the races: — "We are informed that His Excellency the Governor, with Lady Bowen aud suite, were unable to attend the Wairarapa Races at Masterton owing to the tremendous cost of their lodging. We

may mention, as a guide for the future that four meals for five adults and two children, with sleeping accomodation for two nights, cost £31 at Dixon's in Masterton ; and the same for two amounted to £11. Comment upon this is needless ; but we are afraid that His Excellency the Governor and His Honor the Superintendent will not carry away a very good impression of the accomodation-house keepers of the Wairarapa, and in their future visits will take very great care to make arrangements prior to tbeir coming." Most probably they will.

Trout Fishing in Tasmania. — A correspondent sends us the following :- — "In the Clyde, Mr. A. M\Dowall lately hooked a splendid trout measuring 24^-ins. in length, and weighing 51b. 6oz. — no doubt one of the fry deposited iu the river by the same gentleman three aud a half years ago. About the same day the wardeu, Mr. Reid, brought down with his gun a cormorant, from the maw of which he extracted a trout six inches long, alive, and another fish partially digested." The s-ime correspondent informs us that the fishing is still very good, there being a large quantity of herring and brown trout in the various streams.

A Good Story is told of a Minister of the Crown, noted for the general urbanity of his demeanor, who has been recently taking a trip towards the northern boundary of the colony. Staying for a short time at a not unimportant township, he was interviewed by a cunning rate-col-lector. The said rate-collector had long beeu impressed with the idea that the Minister was the owner of a certain piece of land on which long arrears ot rates were due, but cduld not prove the fact. Addressing the honorable gentleman, however, he said. "By the bye, Mr. , what will you take for that land of yours at the Springs ; will you take £2 per acre?" "No, certainly not," was the reply. £3, £4, £5, were successively named, and still refused. At leugth, the representative of the Crown named a price, and the rate-collector went away rejoicing. He, however, shortly afterwards returned and presented the Minister wuh a bill for arrears of rates calculated upou his own valuation of the land. The Minister was disgusted. History is not explicit as to whether he liquidated the account, but he did not ask the rate-col-lector to dinner. — Melbourne Argus.

Who was He ? — A Californian United States senator arrived at the Metropolitan Hotel in New York. In the evening he concluded to go and see Forrest as " Coriolanu3." In front of the hotel he found a hackman, and told him to drive to Niblo's Garden. Said hackman drove him round nineteen blocks and landed him safely at the theatre, waited until the theatre was out, and then drove around seventeen blocks back to the hotel. His fare was 15dol, It was not until the next day that the successful politician ascertained that both the hotel and theatre were under the same roof, and that the entrances to each were less than twenty feet apart. — Cincinnati Inquirer.

For remainder of news see fourth page.

Destruction op Cockroaches. — Take a deep dish, with smooth upright sides, say a very large pie-dish ; put into it about two inches deep of beer or porter, sweetened with sugar. Threepennyworth of arsenic will be about sufficient to last four or five times, if measured out into equal portions. Slantingly from the edge of the dish to the floor lay a coarse towel dipped in beer and sugar, so as to form an easy pathway into the trap, which, if set at night, will be found to contain many captives before morning.

Problem by an Artimetical Madman. — Suppose a man and a girl were married — the man thirty five yearß old the girl five —this makes the man seven times as old, as the girl ; they live together until the girl is ten years — this makes him forty years old, and four times as old as the girl ; they still live until she is fifteen, the man being forty-five — this makes the man three times as old ; they still live until she is thirty years old, and so on. Now, how long would they have to live to make the girl as old as the man.

Eclipse Expedition. — The total failure of the Eclipse Expedition from this colony is greatly to be regretted (says the Australasian), but our hope ia that in other parts of the world the numerous expeditions which have been organised and despatched "with a view to observe and record the phenomena presented, -will have been more successful. In Western Europe the breadth of the zone of totality would be not less than 100 miles, and there would be so many places at which observations could be taken — as, for example, at Tavira, Xeres, and Malaga in the Peninsula, at Mount Etna and Syracuse in Sicily, and at Adrianople and Sebastopol — that we may reasonably expect some highly interesting particulars in February next. The Imperial Government contributed the sum of £2,000 and the means of transport for two expeditions, the one to proceed to Spain and the other to Sicily ; while the Government of the United States, with a munificence which puts to shame the small dole of Mr. Lowe, granted £6,000, as well as the means of transport to two American parties. It is a circumstance worth noting, as the astrnomer- royal of Great Britain has pointed out, that the port of Taganrog and Novo-Tcherkask are two of the last places at which the total eclipse would possibly be visible. It was at NovaTcherkask that the Russian astronomer Wisniewski obtained the final glimpse of the celebrated comet of 1811, in August, 1812, as it set out upon its unseen journey through space of upwards of 3,000 years. From the same authority we learn that the next solar eclipse which can be witnessed by persons in Europe, without making a long sea voyage, will take place on the morning of May 17, 1882, in Upper Egypt aud the Peninsula of Sinai. Although our own expedition has been unsuccessful, owing to causes altogether beyond the control of those who are engaged in it, the Governments of these colonies did their duty to the cause of science, by contributing the necessary funds.

"Modern Fiction as a Rational Amusement." — Mr. Anthony Trollope recently delivered a lecture at the Melbourne Town Hall to an audience of about 3000 persons on the above subject. After dealing with the objections that were commonly raised against novels, the lecturer proceeded to notice some of the great novelists of the present century. In speaking of Sir Walter Scott, he is re-

ported to have said :— ln his teaching there was no mixture of immorality. He had taught us many lessons, and we had probably failed to analyse his teachings so as to know exactly what we got from him ; but we were all probably aware that we had not favored any vice or any meanness on account of any word written by him. The teaching was good of its kind — it was intended to elevate the mind, and left the reader better than it found him. The works of Scott effected a revolution in the English mind in reference to prose fiction, and gradually removed the embargo laid on novels in many domestic circles which Miss Edge worth and Miss Austin were not strong enough to dislodge. Did anybody think an injury was thus done to morals ? Yet Scott told tales which freezed the blood, the Bride of Lammermuir ; of fallen woman, Effie Deans; of broad farce, Bailie Nicol Jar vie; of fairy land, the White Lady of Avenel ; of villainy, Varney ; and also of too forward feminine behavior, Miss Julia Mannering. Bat no woman became forward, nor any man a villain, under his teaching. The purity of domestic life was advanced and not impeded by the reading of Scott's novels. A word as to tbe special qualities of his works. Iu the creation of incidents he was unrivalled; in certain touches of pathos he had been almost divine ; there was a strength of expression in Scott not equalled by anyhing in prose fiction. He waß great in

the creation of character— -of out-of-the-way characters. He was a giant when describing the life of the outside world which he himself created, but in treating of the life of which we ourselves knew, he was not natural. There was something chilling in the grace of his lovers. Most of us had had love scenes of our own, but we did not conduct them as Scott's heroes ; and had we done so probably would not have been so successful even as we had been. His prose fiction, as had been remarked, divided our prose fiction into two epochs, but he himself was of both. His works partook of the unreal romance, the very base on which our prose fiction was founded ; but he wove them into stories of such vital interest, and threw into them such movement, passion, and merriment, that he created a new system of stories. If not life-like himself, ho produced a love for the life-like which had imposed an obligation on all English novelists who came after him. Of Thackeray Mr. Trollopa spoke as one who had described humanity — the real flesh and blood, with the heart and mind working with them — the human beings we saw and knew our very selves, with an accuracy that had been within the reach of no other writer of prose fiction. His power went beyond that. There was a fineness of touch iu it, a grace of finish, a capacity for seeing and reproducing the minute workings of the heart, which warranted the statement that he possessed an intellect combining both male and female qualities. He felt intensely the duty of writing that which should not do evil, but he could not describe the world otherwise than as he saw it. Charles Dickens enjoyed an audience greater than any other novelist. He reached the hearts of all who could read, and many who only knew his works from the reading of others. His power over the English mind was so great that to speak adequately of him the lecturer would need the attention of the audience for a whole evening. But this was to be said of him — that neither boy nor girl, neither youth nor maiden, neither man nor woman, ever received evil from any word that Dickens wrote. Describing Charlotte Bronte as a great novelist, of the rest he said that there was good conscientious work provided by the novel writer, and it was for the reader so to choose novels that no evil should come from the lessons which they conveyed. According to his view, a novel was bound to be both sensational and life-like; if it failed in either particu-

lar, it was so far a failure in art. No doubt a string of tragic incidents combined without any truth in details, and told as affecting personages without any character — wooden blocks, who could not make themselves known to the reader as men and women — did not instruct or amuse. Horrors heaped on horrors, which were horrors only in themselves, and not as touching any recognised and known person, ceased even to horrify, and such tragic elements of the story might be increased without end and without difficulty. Some novels had been written without any other attractions; but nothing could be more dull and deadly, or more useless. Stories charmed not simply because they were tragic, but because we felt men and women, creatures with whom we could sympathise, were struggling amidst their woe. Let the author tell his story so as to touch our hearts and draw our tears, then he had done his work well. If there were truth — truth to nature, a novel, he thought, could not be too sensational.