MISCELLANEOUS.

Southland Times, Issue 1201, 25 January 1870, Page 3

MISCELLANEOUS.

The Italian papers state that Lord Bute has presented his holiness with a tiara, encrusted with diamonds, costing £35,000. The Pope had scarcely any need of any ornamental head-dresses, as the ex-Queen of Spain lately compounded for some little peccadilloes by a gift of a diamond-decked tiara which cost £10,000. " Dar are," said a sahle orator, " two roads, through this world. De one am a broad and narrow road that leads to perdition, and de odder am a narrow and J broad road dat leads to sure destruction," " If dat am de case," said a sable hearer, " dia cullud iudividual takes to de wood." Every one now is familiar with Mrs Beecher Stowe's dramatic scene, when j Byron and his wife, immediately after their marriage, entered the carriage, and he burst forth — " You might have saved I me from this, madam ! you had all in your own power when I offered myself to you first. Then you might have made me what you pleased ; but now you will find that you have married a devil!" Here is another account of the incident. Lady Louisa Stuart, writing June 17, 1816, to the Hon. Mrs Stewart-Mackenzie of Seafortb, and referring to Byron, says — " That man must have a black heart. He told Lady Byron, the moment the marriage ceremony was over, that, now he had her in his power, he would be revenged for her repeated refusals of him. She took it for a lover's joke, but said she had reason since to recal his words, and think their meaning literal. This Mrs Siddons repeated to a friend of mine." Lady Louisa's letter is now before us, and is partly printed in the North British Review for November 1863. — Inverness ' Courier. There is no other spoken language so cheap and expressive as the English. S. the electric wires are becoming teachers of our mother tongue in foreign countries. The same amount of information can be transmitted in fewer English words than French, German, Italian, or any other European language. In Germany, and Holland especially, it is coming to be a common thing to dee telegrams in English to save expense and ensure precision.