The Evening Mail. TUESDAY, JUNE 18, 1878.

Oamaru Mail, Volume III, Issue 703, 18 June 1878, Page 2

The Evening Mail. TUESDAY, JUNE 18, 1878.

The Dunedin Star says : "We hear plenty of growling at some of the charges made for the supply of gas, which, in not a few instances, are voted exorbitant. "We know of one case in which a citizen, who owns and ocenpies a house that does not contain more than fifteen rocms, has been charged the moderate sum of L 32 for a month's supply! He intends to pay it under protest."

In one of a series of articles entitled "Pillars of the Empire" published in the Home News, the following flattering notice of Sir George Bowen appears. The unbiassed opiuion of those who know him best in this Colony would be one very different from that expressed in the Home News : —" Sir George Bowen is something more than an able, a careful, an industrious administrator, 03 well as an administrator who, at a pinch, is canablr of decisive action. He is one of the mist able Constitutional lawyers and Constitutionalist authorities of whom the Colonial Office can boast. If "<« als« a *""" ot brilliant literary attainments and aeademi achievements, and of oratorical powers which have been, by dint of practice and discipline, brought to a high pitch of perfection. A scholar of Trinity College, Oxford, he took a first-class, and became fellow and tutor of Brasenose. After three or four years he received the offer an accepted the po3t of Principal of the College established in Corfu. Political advancementthrust itself upon him, and he was made "he Chief Secretary of the inland, under the Lord High Commissioner. At Corfu, too, it was that he made the acquaintance of the accomplished lady who subsequently became his wife. The present Lady Bowen was the daughter of a distinguished member of the Corfu Assembly—the Count Diano di Roma, the representative of an ancient VenetoGreek family, and it is permissible to observe that as a leader of society her ladyship has displayed such gifts and tact that the must be regarded as a distinct element in the success of Sir George Bowen's administration."