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One of the arguments urged in the House of Lords against patent laws was that Switzerland and Holland did without them. > Mr. Edward Jenkins, M.P., declared that no class of her Majesty's subjects suffered at this moment such wrong as authors. _ In Russia a commission is to examine the expediency of reducing the number of holidays enjoyed by that too happy people. Torpedoes are now sent into whales, at the end of a newly-invented harpoon in use at Norway. They kill the fish without delay. The learned German historian Von Eauke, has written a history of England iu the seventeenth century, in six volumes. Kladdcnalatsch says the only way horses can go out of Germany into France is with Uhlans on them. Belgium is apparently the little lamb who disturbs the water of the stream from which the Prussian wolf says he wishes to drink. One of the new volumes of the International scientific series will be "Money and the Mechanism of Exchange,", by Professor Stanley Jovons. The house once occupied by Dumas' D Artagnan, on the Quai I'Horloge, at Paris, has just been pulled down. Ambrose Pare", the surgeon, once lived in the same house. The Prince of Monaco makes nearly the same boast that Charles V. did, that he cannot see the sun set on his dominions. But the Prince is blind.
M. Jules Bernou, a Frenchman, Carlist correspondent of the French Journal Dc VEst, has been captured and -shot by some of Alfonso's volunteers.
Germany's military forces, including those of Bavaria, comprise at this moment 31,830 officers, 1,329,000 men, 31-1,970 horses, 2700 field and 820 siege pieces of cannon. Emperor William has written to adescendaut of Handel that a new quarter is to be added to the city of Berlin, in which all the streets will be named after Germany's musical celebrities.
All the guns on the great ram Thunderer will be worked by machinery. If they keep on increasing the dimensions of ironclads the notion of men handling them at all will be comparable to ants running round a windmill. The new literary magazine published at Washington, styled the National, had the misfortune to die with the issue of its first number. It had no material basis and precious little intellectual.
The industrious Paul Lacroix lias published a complete bibliography of the works of Kestif de la Bretorme, a voluminous writer of what are called " Facetias," who flourished from 1760 to 1805.
It is claimed in England that the title of cardinal is not necessarily ecclesiastic, and that it comes within the category of foreign orders of nobility that caimot.be legally held without the direct consent of the Queen.
Musical copyrights are worth something in England. At a recent sale the "Prince Imperial Galop" brought the enormous price of £990, besides which every copy of the music printed is subject to a royalty of one penny. The London Academy says that Mr. Bancroft's " History of the United States," though it will not place him in the front rank of historians, even among those of his own country, will remain a standard one, by its fullness and workmanlike character.
Alpine literature is getting unmanageably voluminous, yet here comes Miss Plunket, calling herself the Honorable Frederica Plunket, with a book, "Here and There Among the Alps," the only peculiarity of which is that it was written by a woman. Three priests have just been sentenced in Prance to ten years three years and two years imprisonment, respectively, for having organised an agency for the sale of masses. They procured the celebration of mass in any church at a fixed price. It is thus that the Madrid Gazette informs the world that Alfonso and his sister are well : "His Majesty the King (whom God preserve) and her Koyal Highness the Infanta Donna Isabel continue in this court, without novelty in their important health." Donizetti, who wrote very rapidly, was reproached by a friend with abusing his own facility. Ho said, in answer, " There are authors who have to plant and raise flowers in their brain, but I find them already'grown, and only have to gather them." Viscount de Losgeril has investigated apothecaries' profits. He says that a bottle of seidlitz water, sold for twenty-five cents, costs to make it one cent and a half, and that other profits generally are in this proportion. He proposes to tax sales of this class. Some one has written Colonel Porney, at Nice, asking if the vile stories about his pocketing that $25,000 have any foundation in fact, and the Colonel in a very gentlemanly manner replies that "the very air is heavy with the fragrance of mimosa and orange blossoms." i Chicago Journal. • London has another new industry. A man j advertises himself as " Knocker-up and win-dow-tickler, from three to seven." He wakes heavy sleepers who .wish to get up early. Window tickling is waking without ringing the bells, by means of along pole, with which he taps on the window pane. , Ostape Veressai, now at St. Petersburg, and the guest of the Geographical Society of that city, is a Tartar Homer. He" is seventy years old and blind, and his-rhapsodies are;the only known relics of the ancient legends of the Ukraine. It is. to be hoped the society (rill | have them written. .. . Here is -a versicle that was of ten, attached to' the column in the Place Vendome when the statue of the first Napoleon stood on that monument : Tiger standing there on high, If the blood that thou hast shed Were gathered hero, thou might well nigh Drink, nor yet incline thy head. The manufacturing industry and art of the Bible forms the subject of a new book by James Napier, F.R.S. The book is very learned on copper, tin, and bronze, and treats of gold and silver in genuine flamboyant style. Mr. Napier, however, does not show that the manufacturers of the Bible were stimulated by a high protective tariff. At least one important reform seem 3 likely to come out of the agitation of cremation. This is the substitution of other material than wood for coffins. Just now the municipal authorities of Paris are deliberating the propriety of requiring that all coffins shall be made of cement, as they were, in fact, in the GaUo-Roman period of French history. M. Caro, just admitted to the Academy Francaise, was a professor at the Sorbonne. One day his lecture was disturbed ; there was a lively clamor, which he could not silence. He could scarcely be heard for minutes. But he seized a moment when the noise was a little thinner, and shouted, " Gentlemen, let us only talk four at a time." They laughed and became tranquil. There was recently sold in Tipperary, Ireland, the lease of twenty-one acres of land, without houses of any sort on it. The lease has fifty years to run, the yearly rent is £32, and the lease sold for a premium of £SOO. Ireland, therefore, is not in so bad a condition as the agitators would make out. In this country very good land can be bought for the rent paid as above. At Patti's benefit in St. Petersburg, she sang in " Rigoletto." The Imperial family were present, and remained to the end of the performance. Tho Emperor sent for Mme. Patti, and congratulated her on her success. A diadem, composed of sapphires and diamonds, was presented her by subscription, while the crowns, baskets of flowers, and bouquets showered on her were innumerable. The Jardin d' Acclimatation, Paris, has a chimpanzee which measures four feet in height,_is perfectly tame and extremely gentle. While its master lived at Sierra Leone it performed in the house the functions of a servant, saluting visitors, opening tho door for them, escorting them out, and offering them their hats. ■ ■- - . Monaco is in danger. In that switch of a state a German was put in prison for two months. He is now out of prison and in a rage. He has sold his property in Germany to, buy two gunboats, and has sworn some dreadful oaths that with these gunboats he will mercilessly bombard the whole State—the Prince s palace particularly.
In England the persons opposed to vivisection are endeavoring to secure the passage of a law to regulate this mode of interviewing nature.
There has been published at Gottingen a collection of the letters" of English refugees in Switzerland, containing unpublished letters of Ludlow and others of the English regicides. The Augsburg Gazette says that the rumor which spread through Paris, 4th March, of an imperial coup d'etat was not altogether without foundation, and arose from the discovery of a " military conspiracy " at Nancy. "What great libraries are to do for space in the great future is a conundrum only matched by the question what the writers of books are to do for titles. Every good title will inevitably come to be used over many times. The Pope " censures " the Swiss authorities for not suppressing a religious demonstration he dislikes ; yet people say that Bismarck and Gladstone are wrong in arquing that the Pope pretends to supervise secular affairs. London's newest entertainment is a " soiree of hairdressing," in which a professor of the art performed on chosen heads before the public with the skill and artistic sense with which Paganini performed on the fiddle. Diplomatic: gossips in Europe say that Francis Joseph will mention to Victor Emmanuel at their coming interview the subject of the Encyclical, and that Prussia's views in the case are worthy of consideration.
The dethronement of Isabelle, the flowergirl of the Paris Jockey Club, is a sensation in the gay city. This "girl" is forty years old, stout, very dark, somewhat rich, and mean enough not to support her mother. There are four or five other flower-girls in Paris. They all get rich and wear diamonds injtheir ears. '' The London Athenamm must pay some GOOOdols. to an aggrieved publisher, so say the jurymen who tried the case. In their criticism they alleged that the Messrs. Johnson, of Edinburgh, sold some one else's work as A. Keith Johnstone's, and thus imposed on the public. The Duchess of Edinburgh while out driving was caught in a shower and borrowed an umbrella at a cottage of an old woman, who refused to loan any but the " second best one," and next day the Duches3 sent it home with her compliments, one sovereign and a pound of tea. Apropos to the notion of putting clocks in all the principal streets of Paris, all combined electrically to give a uniform hour, the Figaro says :—"This is the last work of progress, and Paris, as usual, is in advance of all cities." But Brussels had this piece of progress ten years ago, and copied it from old-fashioned Ghent.
There is a British literary theory that Tennyson inspired Poe with the idea of " The Raven," because the lauretae wrote in his youth two short poems, in one of which the word "more" occurs, and the other has in it the name " Lenore." For our part, we have a distinct recollection of having seen the word " more " somewhere in Shakspeare's plays, and also in Johnson's dictionary, and Poe may have read both. But if Tennyson did inspire " The Raven" its a pity he has not inspired more and written less. The three richest men in the House of Commons are Sir G. Elliot, M.P. for North Durham, who made £600,000 from his collieries in one year, and is also head of an extensive firm of wire-rope manufacturers; Mr. Hermon, a cotton manufacturer and East India merchant, who sits for Preston, and has £300,000 a year; and Mr. Henry Fielden, who has the same income, and sits for Blackburn. Naturally enough, all three are Conservatives—especially Sir George who has risen from being a pit boy to being a millionaire baronet.
The report that M. Paul Cassagnac had been publicly chastised by a woman was an invention, and first appeared in the Evincmtnt. M. Cassagnac addresses the editor of that paper by name in this style : —" You attribute to me habits of a cafe' haunter, of a drinker of absinthe, probably imagining that we spend our time as you republicans do, tippling in the pipe sodden atmosphere of smoking rooms. And, finally, you relate with the most circumstantial details an agression against me, in which I am made to look like a fool. This morning in your paper you apologise. I refuse your apology. An apology from you is like a bad shilling—base coin, which no one will look at. However, there is one thing I wish to tell you—that your paper should be the last to publish these stories about encounters, assaults, duelling, &c, having at its head such a double-dyed coward as yourself, whom I have the honor to assure of my profound contempt." _______^__ — __
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New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4443, 16 June 1875, Page 3
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2,144ITEMS BY THE MAIL. New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4443, 16 June 1875, Page 3
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