NEWS ITEMS. [By the Auckland " Star's " London Correspondent]. London, April 24.

Te Aroha News, Volume I, Issue 54, 14 June 1884, Page 4

NEWS ITEMS. [By the Auckland " Star's " London Correspondent]. London, April 24.

We poor Londoners have been suffering during tho past ten days from a terrible east wind, one of the bleakest, most searching, and most marrow-chilling I ever remember to have felt. The obituary column of the "Times" forms a striking record of the death-dealing powers of this eastest of Easter visitants. Charles Reade, Henry J. Byron, the Bishop of Eipon, Frank Green, Mrs Alfred Wigan, and the Duke of Buccleuch are a fow of the most noted who succumbed to the weather, but the list of wounded is longer still. To quote my ever-ready friend " Dagonet" — " Everybody who is anybody seems to be ill. Now the bulletin is hopeful, now it is absolutely hopeless. Paragraphs announcing what Sir William This and Sir Andrew That think of the condition of their celebrated patients are dotted up and down the columns of the morning papers, and the summary of the day's news consists chiefly in records of the facts that So-and-so has been buried, So-and-So is dead, and So-and-So has passed a bad night, and his condition causes his friends great anxiety."

Death of Charles Reade. Poor Charles Reade had been ailing along time indeed. He never wholly recovered the death of an adored woman friend two years ago. Opinions of him both as a man and an author seem to be strangely various. The most interesting obituary notice was from the pen of the author-poet-dramatist, Robert Buchanan, and appeared in the always ajwopos "Pall Mall Gazette." Mr Buchanan is an enthusiastic adorer of Reade, and prophesies him a permanent hold on novel-reading posterity, but less biassed critics seem doubtful on the point. An almost unanimous opinion appears to be that " The Cloister and the Hearth" was his best, as "Never Too Late to Mend" was his most popular novel. You colonists, in all probability, seldom saw the eccentric epistles which Charles Reade from time to time addressed to the newspapers on current topics. He loved to startle the world, and was never so pleased as when by truculently laying down some apparently wholly untenable theory he could provoke " a foeman worthy of his steel" to literary warfare. Then woe betide the unwary adversary. Reade's vocabulary was fearfully and wonderfully comprehensive, and his keen incisive sentences cut like a knife. He used to say he hated fine writing, but no man resorted to refined Billingsgate more frequently ; indeed, his abusive epithets (usually self-coined) would silence all but the boldest. Mr Labouchere, speaking of the deceased novelist, says :— " Whenever Mr Charles Reade was angry he would pen the most violent epistles to the object of his anger, but in his private relations a more kind, courteous, and considerate man never breathed. It was difficult to realise that the soft-toned, soft-hearted gentleman could be the author of the fiery missives that periodically appeared in the press. As a writerhe had always a mission, and although he looked well after his rights he never weighed popularity against principle. I remember once sitting with him in a box during the first night of one of his plays. It was a failure, and the audience was beginning to hiss. *I am afraid,' said the despairing manager, ' that the play is not meeting with universal approval.' 'If you wished,' said Mr Reade, ' for a play likely to please an audience, you should not have asked me to write one for you.' " •*' Edmund Yates, less charitable than his friend "Henry," thinks Reade deliberately posed as an eccentric, and tells how he surprised and outraged the old fogies of the original Garrick Club by parading that august establishment in a pair of worn list slippers, which ho exchanged for his boots in a never used cardroom at the top of the house. "All his wild explosions of printed rage against his critics, or those who accused him of plagiarism, or those who stole his plays, were," says Mr Yates, "really mere business advertisements, for by nature as by practice he was a most kindly man."

Mrs Alfred Wigan. Mrs Alfred Wigan was, I'm afraid, wholly unknown as an actress in the colonies, but some of you who lived in London when Alfred Wigan and Charles Matthews were the great comedians of the day may remember her wonderful performance of "Mrs Sternhold" in "Still Waters Hun Deep," and of an artful spinster in "The Bengal Tiger."

The Queen's Letter oi Thanks. The following graceful letter of thanks from the Queen to her subjects has everywhere been received with something more than satisfaction. Is is addressed to the Home Secretary, Sir W. Y. Harcourt.

" Windsor Castle, April 14, 1884. " I have on several previous occasions given personal expression to my deep sense of the loving sympathy and loyalty of my subjects in all parts of my Empire. I wish, therefore, in my present grevious bereavement, to thank them most warmly for the very gratifying manner in which they have shown, not only their sympathy with me, and my dear, so deeply afflioted. daughter-in-law, and my other children, but also their high appreciation of my beloved son's great qualities of head and heart, and of the loss he is to the country and to me. "The affectionate sympathy of my loyal people, which has never failed me in weal or woe, is very soothing to my heart. Though much shaken and sorely afflicted by the many sorrows and trials which have fallen upon me during these past years, I will not lose courage, and with the help of Him who has never forsaken me will strive to labour on, for the sake of my children, and for the good of the country I love so well, as long as I can. " My de»or daughter-in-law, the Duchess of Albany, who bears her terrible misfortune with the most admirable, touching, and unmurmuring resignation to the will of God, is also deeply gratified by the universal sympathy and kind feeling evinced towards her. "I would wish, in conclusion, to express my gratitude to all other countries for their sympathy, above all to the neighbouring one, where my beloved son breathed his last, and for the great respect and kindness shown on that mournful occasion. " Victoria, R, & I."