ITEMS BY THE MAIL.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 4951, 3 February 1877, Page 3

ITEMS BY THE MAIL.

The Servian Government i have begun to .issue notes -with" a -forced circulation."' - ; !" " Wild horses ar;e being imported into France from the. River Plate, and tamedj , The relations of Sj)ain and the Vatican are not very friendly,. 1 principally in consequence of the' dispute in relation to the Italian Church in Madrid. ’ ’ ’ ’■ ■ ’ '

: The Chambers of Commerce of Marichester, Liverpool, Plymouth, arid Bristol have passed resolutions in favor of the proposed colonial museum., 1 , ■ !: ; ‘ ; J I

The East and West . India Dock Companies have announced a reduction of 15 per cent, on the consolidated rate for Australian arid other vessels warehoused with the company after the Ist January. > —No more Sunday trading in Canada. The Dominion Government have issued’ orders that no trains shall be run on the Sabbath day, except in - cases of great emergency, and then only on direct order of the Government. The Russians have formed a vast fortified oainp at Bender. The Work is going on night and day, and’ stores -in great quantities are accumulating there. At Tieraspol large barracks have fieen constructed, and at .Faelze and Ungenhenz immense quantities of hay have been stored. /• ■ ' •

A New York Herald London daspatoh says the Porte has • put in a claim for indemnity against Russia to reimburse the additional outlay caused by her aid to Servia, which prolonged tlie insurrection. , Russia, on the other hand, demands that Turkey shall pay the cost' of- military occupation - of" Bulgaria until Plenipotentiaries and Envoys Extraordinary have communicated with their Governments, i The last report of the London Missionary Society shows that the total income for the year was. £ll4,Bs3'_lßsi . lid, of which- sum Polynesia had contributed --£3405 6s. ‘ -sd. There were . 151 English missionaries in'the employment of the society, 543 native ordained ministers, 3657 native ordained preachers, 961,147 church members, 411,627 native adherents, and about 70,000 scholars. In schools connected with the society,, paying fees amounting to between £4OOO and £SOOO. Cardinal AntonelU’s will has been published, and is a remarkable document. It contains no evidence whatever that he possessed; any fortune beyond such as he may have inherited from his father, and begins with a solemn denial, of the calumnies which attributed to him great wealth. The Cardinal declares that he “dies tranquil, in the conscience of never having failed in his duty towards; the sacred person of the. Pope, and the conviction of having always, with. all earnestness and honesty, served him in the true interests of the Church and of the State.’’ He'leaves the Pope his crucifix, distributes his means among his ' relatives, and orders that “domestics who have served him twenty-five, twenty, and ten years should enjoy different rates of ' pension, the highest being full; pay for ‘ life/ '■ The will might have been that of spine devout Catholic Bishop, full of domestic feeling, and unclouded reverence for the Papacy. ; | Mr. E. J. Reed, formerly Constructor of the Navy, and now M.P. for the Pembroke District, wrote a letter to The Times lately on thp condition of the Russian n'avy, which he . sump up thus:—“l think it will be,seen.from the foregoing narrative that-j the pretensions of Russia in a naval sense are modest indeed, and I do not hesitate to say that so far from having evinced any great ambition in this direction of late years* Russia has allowed herself to fall far behind the position, which shfe ought' to occupy, even tin; the Baltic. There are very considerable ironclad a squadrons-id those seas, and. Russia has done 1 almCCt nothing of late years in the way of competing with them. , Her efforts, at ironclad . construction have been for several years past limited solely to the 1 three cruising partly-armored,frigateC, and to the : peterthe Great and the two circular. ironclads.” In the construction of all these vessels Mr. Reed thinks that Russia has shown a laudable desire to do well, and oven

i 'with originality, "what she attempts at -all ’; 3 , but,it,must be a. diseased mind, he thinks, j .which finds “a menace to Constantinople orito r Europe iri the coristr,fiction, over a- course jof yfiars by the great- einpire of Russia . powerful ship in the North and two . in the South.” Mr. Reed adds very justly that whatever Prince t Gortchakoff - may say, .no mrin of comriibn-sepse,will believe that ; Russia will be contented in the East while she is mewed up.in the Black Sea; and not allowed the natural access to her own ports. A lawsuit at Turphout, 1 , in Flanders, has caused great scandal ariiong the Ultramontane party. During the trial : fit .was discovered ■ that'certain documents produced to defeat the claim of a Mr. Dam to eertain property in the harids of the Capuchin monks were forgeries concocted by soirie of the .superiors of the latter.* The tribunal ordered the restitution of the property, find severely condemned the proceedings of the monks. The principal forger was a’superior named Vierpeyel, who died some years ago in the odaur of sanctity., Signor- Gavfizri addressing a meeting in Edinburgh on the 1 , evangelisation of Italy, said that fifteen years ago there wei-e only five Protestant congregations and .about 400 communicants;-while therfi were now congregations, 8000’ communicants/ andribout 40,000 hearers. He believed ; that now that obstacles were removed opt; of the way; the number of congregations and adherents would at the end of the next fifteen years be at least quadrupled.' -He said that the chief originator: of the, evangelisation of Italy was'Garibaldi, whP, wheri ho was dictator at Naples,.'told him (Signor Gayazzi) that he was at liberty to go and preach to his 'heart’s content,' .which" he did. At first, the Italian Government was.ncjt very favorable ,to thp Work i but he was glad to say , that iri Italy there wasasmuch liberty to preach the Gospel as there’’ was in this country. No doubt the' priests -were opposed to it; but he rejoiced in their opposition, as it tended greatly to strengthen the hands r of those who were promoting the evangelisationl of -Italy? ■’ rv ■ , The results of many experiments of late tend to suggest the great probability "that at no . very -distant i period, horse-power will be entirely superseded on our street tramways. ■ The great desideratum hitherto ’has, been fi power easily controlled, economical, and free from any demonstration of energy such as wopld he likely to frighten horses, and such a power has been produced lately in more than ] one quarter of ,the world. A well-known engineering firm of London has, the Globe under- • stands/ constructed a steaririengine which has fori some time been working most satisfactorily ] on the Continent/ and; in one or two of our provincial towns experiments, considered to be very successful' have b’een! tried., These have all, we believe, been'steam motors. A Parisian engineer has Recently devised a, car with which is incorporated 'mechanism for propel- j ling it by means of' corripressed air. Condensed air as a motive-power has been frequently tried before, jbut the particular inveri- ] tipn referred to appears, to differ from all others of the kind iri one important respect. At one end. of the tramway powerful.condensing engines are required, and by means of these air j is forced into‘reservoirs beneath the-car; finder a pressure of twenty-five or thirty-atmospheres. From these condensers the air inimost'other engines of the kind would operate directly oa the-machinery-of the oar. -By the-new-system, j however, it-passes first through a'volume of intensely hot i water,' and- I thus * becomes thoroughly 1 saturated with steam,' By-this c means - arvery small. ”air‘is sufficient for a considerable journey; 'With air condensed under a pressure of twentyffive atmospheres, eleven cubic feef will, ‘it is said, propel fin ordinary tram-car for a mile/ The new engine is pronounced to be easily handled, noiseless, and economical. The operations of slackening or increasing"ispee’d!"" stopping or , starting, arei effected with greater ease thfiri with horses, while. it .does not appear to be an especially complicated or expensive piece of mechanism. ■ A .correspondent) of the, ,Sydney ■ Morning Herald says “ The Lord Mayor’s procession is jostling ; Captain.; Nares’ .sledges and ice--bergs in every print-shop window ; not. an j inappropriate; conjunction, considering the bitter coldness of the 9th of -November. _ But the. biting frost-wind, caused no reduction of - the gazers, at the great, city’ pageant. It ' merely added—-as Dr. Johnson .might, have ■ phrased it-/-the dignity, qf martyrdom to the

.pleasure-; of gratified qgg&sty, . The line progress 'was thronged, ! believe,, beyond example with a mixed multitude—city folk; country visitors, arid a sprinkling even of the ■West~Eadr” After' all; a Lord Mayqrjs show; though j ofteu ridiculed, is not really eontempr title. We call it an anachronism, and think we have made a clever hit. ‘ Yet surely it is not an inappropriate; link-between the past and the present. Something of the magnificent spirit of ’ the old mercantile guilds—thfi . spirit which found, expression., in : . the costly quaintness of mediaeval, pageantry —-must still - survive -in a city now Worthier, than ’ ever of the' merchant princes.. '.its destinies, , “Howsoe’er these there is no falling off in the> splendour of i this annual civic show. There was a new feature in the procession of last week, whichjnot.only was. a godsend, to the sightseers,but seems specially appropriate to ’.the year iri ! which the Queen of England has been , first recognised as the Empress of India, i Light trained - elephants, glittering with “barbaric pearl and gold,” marched in the line and, performed their novel' duties, with all the stately - selfpossession of their- race.- --No douht-ifc-was-as easy to* sneer as to applaud ; hut the latter is the pleasanter—perhaps the wholesomer line. ■ . i