ANNIVERSARIES IN 1913

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8356, 17 February 1913, Page 10

ANNIVERSARIES IN 1913

A CALENDAR OF SOME NOTABLE CENTENARIES. Although 1913 is not particularly brilliant in its calendar of notable anniversaries, several interesting and even great names will be brought to mind as the mouths unfold —names of sufficient fame in varying spheres to call for the early preparation of centenary honours. The record of literary and political celebrities who first saw the light in the thirteens of any century m. curiously scant. But in English literature, at any rate, there are Laurence Sterne, whose ‘'Tristram Shandy” and ‘'Sentimental Journey” are of bookshelf classics, and William Edmonstoune Aytoun, the author of ‘'Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers,” and hardly less famous for his collaborations with the late Sir Theodore Martin in the ‘‘‘Bon Gaultier Ballads.” In French literature there will be the bicentenary of Diderot, the philo-sopher-novelist, and the tercentenary of La Rochefoucauld, whose memoirs and "maxims” are also classics in their way. In music the centenary of Richard Wagner will be, of course, the outstanding event, and it will bo interesting to observe that plans are completed in London and the leading musical centres of the provinces for the adequate commemoration of the master of modern music. The great Italian, Giuseppe Verdi, was also born In 1813; and to the same year belong Sir George Macfarren, the English composer who was for many years head of the Royal Academy of Music, and Vincent Wallace, the erratic Irishman whose “Maritana” has a curious enduring charm for music-lovers of a certain class. In politics, two names will recur in the New Year calendar —Isaac Butt, the Nationalist leader, who is not without some claim to be regarded as the Father of the Home Rule movement, and Edward Cardwell, a mid-Voctorian statesman, who was Irish Secretary in Palmerston’s last Ministry and Secretary for War in Gladstone’s first Administration. ’ Cardwell was the Haldane of ’6B, for although neither a distinguished orator nor a brilliant debater he was useful as a solid, safe, and sound man who had a very real capacity as an administrator, a , gift displayed both in the political reorganisation of the Army and in the initiation of notable reforms at the Board of Trade, of which he was also President for a while. _ Other interesting anniversaries due during 1913 include those of. David Livingstone, the plans for whose fitting commemoration have alreay been detailed in “Westminster Gazette,” Sir Isaac Pitman, whose memory shorthand writers all over the world are preparing to honouur; Jeremy the famous Protestant divine; Bishop Pearson, one of the most distinguished occupants of the See of Chester; and the Rev. Mark Pattison. Among the principal events pf the New Year that may be already foreseen are the opening of the Panama Canal, the celebrations of the restoration of the kingdom of the Netherlands, and the assembling in London in August of delegates from - all countries to the seventeenth international Congress of Medicine.