ENGLISH ITEMS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 4964, 19 February 1877, Page 3

ENGLISH ITEMS.

Indulgence in spiritualism would seem to have a worse result than losing your guineas. Prom a very interesting pamphlet just published by Dr. L. S. Forbes Winslow, called ‘‘Spiritualistic Madness,” it appears that nearly 10,000 persons, who have gone insane on the subject, are confined in the public asylums of the United States. ; The curious correspondence of railway progress in Europe and America may he illustrated by the following comparison, which includes under the latter head the whole of the railway '•/stems of North and South America: —ln 1855 the mileage of the European sys-’ terns was 21,144 and of the American systems 20,155 miles. In 1860 they were respectively 32,031 and 33,539, America thus getting slightly in advance. In 1885 —the-civil war having retarded American progress the European mileage was 46,693 and the American 38,845. But in 1870 they were respectively 64,448 and 58,477; and in 1875 America had yet further recovered lost ground, for the railway mileage of Europe was only 88,007 miles against 83,910 miles of American rail. The American extensions during the last decade have been in fact greater than the European—the former amounting to 49,075 miles, and the latter to 41,311 miles. One of the most interesting inferences to be drawn from the records of the Arctic Expedition appears to be that the total abstainers—at least, those of the total abstainers who had been in the habit of total abstinence for some time before the Arctic Expedition—were apparently much less liable to scurvy and able to do much more work under exposure to great cold, than those who took the ordinary proportion of alcohol. The total abstainers on the Alert—the ship whose crew suffered the greatest privations—surpassed the rest of the crew in the work they did. Ayles had been out 110 days and Malley ninety-eight, and neither of them was attacked by scurvy,; indeed both enjoyed good health. Yet Ayles (who is a teetotaller of many years’ standing) was absent on one occasion eighty-four days from the ship in one expedition. Indeed, scurvy attacked every member of this ship’s party except Ayles and Lieutenant Aldrich, and Lieutenant Aldrich, though not a total

abstainer, was the next thing to it, so greatly did he dilate his grog. So, too, Henry Petty, of the Discovery, a total abstainer of some years’ standing, entirely escaped scurvy, in spite of great exertions. On the whole, the expedition is decidedly unfavorable to the supposed utility of alcohol. Lately before Sir James Bacon, Chief Judge, an appeal was heard from the decision of the Judge of the Sheffield County Court, which involved a point of some novelty. It appears that a debtor named Beale, a wine merchant of Sheffield, had some twenty years ago gone through the ceremony of marriage in Switzerland with his deceased wife’s sister, Miss Walker, and on the liquidation taking place she tendered a proof against the estate for the sum of £3OOO, money lent and advanced by her. The proof was rejected by the trustee as being statute barred, whereupon she appealed to the County Court, alleging a new ground for proof, viv., that the proof arose in respect of a sum,of £2,970, left by her father, and placed by Arrangement—£97o to be used in the business, and £2OOO to be held in trust for her. The Court below held that the proof should be allowed for £2OOO, as being trust money, and against that decision the present appeal was brought. Mr. Dessex, Q.C., and Mr. Finlay Knight appeared for the respondent ; and Mr. Windlow, Q.C., and Mr. Gould for the applicant. The Chief Judge, in giving judgment, remarked on the singularity of the case. As it appeared to him the wife —although not legally the wife—had done what any good wife would do, she had handed over all she was entitled to to her husband to be employed in the business, and it was so employed ; but at the date of the failure, a proof was tendered for the sum of £2OOO as being trust money. But how did the case stand then ? The whole of the trust money was gone in the business, and the assets left were applicable in the first instance to the payment of the creditors. In fact there was nothing left on which the trust could operate. In his opinion the proof ought not to have been admitted, the order of the Judge below must be discharged, Appeal allowed, without costs. ' In alluding to the foreign policy of the present Government, the Spectator pays a high tribute to the British Premier and exclaims: —“ No one can deny Lord Beaconsfield’s heroic courage as a statesman. But if anyone were prepared to deny it before the Guildhall speech, that speech would have converted him. No political proposal of our day has ever approached even remotely in sublimity and grandeur the ideal which Lord Beaconsfield makes the aim and object of his Eastern policy. He has aimed, he tells us, and aims still, at keeping intact the European treaties which affect Turkey. He has aimed, further, and evidently still aims, at securing both the integrity and the independence of the Turkish Empire.” The article concludes, however, with a severe condemnation of the encouragement thus given to Turkey to expect aid from England which the Cabinet would, if , asked, certainly refuse. The change that has taken place in the personnel of the rank-and-file since the late Sydney Herbert inaugurated the series of sanitary reforms by which the annual mortality of the army was reduced one-half is so complete (observes the Naval and Military Gazette), that the officer or the soldier of a generation ago could not recognise as belonging to the same grade the self-respecting soldier of to-day and the degraded devil-may-care ne’er-do-well of the last, to whom a sentence of flogging brought no great sense of shame or disgrace. The groundlessness of the prejudice entertained still by the thoughtless is so admirably put in a letter from a non-commissioned officer to a contemporary, that we cannot do better than quote his words ;—“ The public think of the army as it existed twenty years' ago, and ignore the material reforms of late years ; having little evidence upon which' to form a judgment it fosters a prejudice which more than anything else prevents respectable youths embracing that active life which has so many charms for an enterprising spirit. How groundless this feeling is can be at once seen by comparing the position of the soldier with that of the agricultural laborer or artisan, and I can fearlessly say that the former is better housed, better fed, better clothed, and better paid than his working brother, and I believe that the true state of the case only requires to be known to induce many who how Bang back to enrol themselves among their country’s defenders.”

Attention has been drawn of late (says the Broad Arrow) by more than one of the London daily papers to the part enacted by a young Englishmen in aiding Turkey at the outbreak of the last war with Russia, the deeds of Butler and Naesmyth being specially cited. It is curious to reflect, on the other hand, how prominent our countrymen ' have been in fighting for Russia in the Crimea and the Black Sea. Marshal Lacy, who led an Imperial Army, in 1736, into the peninsula across the Putrid Sea, was an Irishman, and died Gover-nor-General of the Baltic provinces at Riga. Colonel Brown, who' was with Marshal Munich at the forcing of, the lines of Perekop, was Irish also, and died General Count Brown at Riga. General Keith, second in command under Munich, was a Scotchman • and Generals Johnston and Leslie, Who distinguished themselves in the Tartar''wars, also hailed from north of the TweeiJ, and had left our country from political reasonsj inany officers who had been “out” in’ls and ’45 taking service in foreign armies after the collapse of the Jacobite rising. In the Russian war with Turkey which broke out in 1768, the great naval .victory in the Bay of Tchesme was gained by the skill and intrepidity of the subordinate British officers Elphinstone, Greig, and Drysdale, the former afterwards attaining the highest ranks in the Russian navy. The victory of Tchesme was as fatal a blow to the Turkish Navy as the battle of Lepanto under Don Juan d’Austria,' or that of Navarino under Sir Edward Codringtou. The first person who is said to have made known the capacities of the port of Sebastopol was the English Lady Craven, afterwards Margravine of Anspach; and one of the early governors of the Crimea was an Englishman, General Michelson, who afterwards suppressed the rebellion of Pagatchef, and saved the tottering throne of Queen Catherine. Priestman, an admiral in the Black Sea Eleet, was also an Englishman, and read the burial service at the grave of the philanthropist Howard; and a notable countryman of ours was Admiral Greig, who founded the Astronomical Observatory at Nicolaief, and was brother-in-law of, Mrs. Somerville, the well-known authoress. In the present operations between Servia and Turkey, Colonel Mclvor, a Scottish soldier of fortune, has been until recently in command of a brigade of Servian cavalry, and was personally - decorated by Prince Milan for valor in the field. Colonel Mclvor is, we understand, at present on leave ini this country. It may be doubted (observes the Saturday Review) whether Lord Macaulay would have altogether approved of the process to which his nephew and biographer has just subjected some of Iris writings. Mr. Trevelyan, indeed, quotes his relative’s remark that “a good thing by a good writer is much better in its place than can be conceived by those who see it detached from the context but he at once sets it aside on the plea that Macaulay’s “productions lend themselves with unusual facility to the labors of the selectors.” It is true that Macaulay’s style is such that a reader can take him up at almost any point, and enter at once into the spirit and sense of the passage ; but we cannot see that Mr. Trevelyan is doing a . useful service in tempting people to be content with fragmentary extracts from writings which it would certainly be more profitable to read through as a whole. In some cases, perhaps, as in that of young people, this selection may lead'the way to the complete works ; but it is to be feared there least an equal chance that it may mak“i indolent or superficial people believe .that they have got all the plums out of the pudding and need look no further.

The Pall Mall Gazette, in alluding to the dirty state of some of the London footpaths, makes some amusing remarks on the way in which many of them are occasionally cleaned, and thinks the process rather extravagant, and observes;—“ All through lost season the pavement of St. James-street, for example, was in a state of accumulated filth; and on windy days the wayfarer In those parts was always

liable to be rained upon by a shower of the same bits dirty paper which had assaulted him on previous visits ; to have his eyes and nose filled with the same savory dust mixture, always lying handy on the pavement, ready to be lifted by the first breadth of air. The law of the case is understood to be that each householder is bound to cleanse the portion of pavement before his own door. It would be about as sensible an arrangement to prescribe that each householder should keep the peace in front of his own door. As a practical result the only sweeping ever given to the pavements is that afforded by ladies’ dresses; but not to say that a gown costing twenty guineas or so is not an economical form of broom, to use it for that purpose involves also bringing a good deal of superfluous dirtinto the house, over and above that which in London house can never be avoided. It seems not unlikely that a moderate subscription among the gentlemen in the neighborhood, wherewith to hire sweepers and lay on water occasionally for flushing the pavement, would be found a cheaper as well as pleasanter arrangement than to employ their wives’ dresses as scavenger-brooms ; what is much more unlikely is that a such-common-sense plan will be adopted next season.”