The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5, 1905. NOTE AND COMMENT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 790, 5 April 1905, Page 2

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5, 1905. NOTE AND COMMENT.

Tew men welcome criticism, and the Tsar it angry over what THE has appeared in the EngTSAR' 9 lish' press. Perhaps he WEALTH, does not know all. There is a story which says that when the Times has anything which might -be displeasing to the Emperor, his satellites print a faowdlerised edition of the issue and present the dummy copy. That is as it may be. Another story has it that the Tsar has five millions invested in English securities, and would, were the worst to C|ome to the worst, fly, and live In England as otker troubled monarchs have done befose him. Then he has a second string to his bow in tho £1,200,000 invested in American rails, iron, and coal. So long as he remains in Russia, however, ho draws —according to a French international almanac, which was recontly suppressed in St. Petersiburg— £8,514,720 a year. His service to Russia and humanity is not exactly cheap at the priqe. That does not represent the total income of Ms family, of course; the swarm of relatives account for a huge sum, the Imperial appanages alone representing two millions l sterling per annum.

M. Matterlink's recent reference, in , his suggestive and LONELINESS, haunting manlier, to the strange lonoliness of the human race, affords Mr E. A. Manning Foster a peg for some interest ng reflectiohs in the Saturday ' Review. "* We are,' Maeterlinck 1 wrote, 'alone, absolutely alone, on ' this chance planet, and, amid all the forms of life that surround us, not one, excepting the dog, has made on alliance with us. A few creat urcs l lea r us, most are unaware of us, and not one loves us.'- Of ajl the mysteries -of life none, perhaps (says Mr Manning Foster)-, is more inexplicable than this division of the species into hermetically scaled compartments. During iall the K ountless centuries of his life on -th s earth man bos learnt practically nothing of its other inhabitants. He cannot get outside himself and enter even for a brief moment into the mental kingdom of those others. And yet there is, who can doubt it 1 so much that is worth whiie to learn. , . . Poignant as this sense of race-loneliness may be in some moods of our life,it i annot the intensity of that feeling of individual isolation which comes upon us in our relation with , our fellow-men, felt in proportion to tho nervous perfection to which we have attained. Not to be conscious of loneliness argues a rare greatness or a sublime stupidity. Many—and perhaps they are to be accounted on the whole the fortunate ones—experience merely what may be called physical loneliness. They do"not like for ong to be alone. They feci the need of some living being—a friendly dog perhaps—with them constantly. When they are by themselves they are the prey of all kinds of nebulous fancies and ( vague terrors. Darkness and quietude—the absence of light and the bustle of the work around them—fill them with a strange uneasiness that is not bodily fear, that the presence of a child or dumb animal will at I once relieve. The worst form of physical loneliness is that of those who from some disease, unhappy accident of birth, or loathsomo malformation, aro cut off for ever through (heir .lives from the touch of gentle hands or thc.willing caresses of loving lips. Apart from, yet frequently oxistingin combination with, ph.vsicnl loneliness is that sense of mental and spiritual ispjftjtfon which is the most terrible TvKtf, *. t yyt the root of ,inost religions lies' man's fntenso loneliness —hia longing for a world altogether fairer and better than that I about him, his dim foellng for nomeI thing somewhere in the heart of things that 1 may haply understand. It is the sense of th'is self-eircuirwcribed destiny that gives to some who are particularly susceptible ill -those matters that aspect of wilfulness, as of those who are over aware of the tears that lie behind the surface of things." j