NEWS BY THE MAIL.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2501, 11 January 1877, Page 3

NEWS BY THE MAIL.

(feom the home news.)

It is stated that Professor Blackie lias received subscriptions to the amount of about £9000 towards the endowment of a Celtic chair in the University of Edinburgh. This sum is within £1000 of the minimum required by the council for the establishment of the proposed chair. In these days of great pedestrian feats it is worth while to record the doing 3of an old Xorkshireman who has just died at the ripe age of eighty-four years at Mash am, in Yorkshire. James Heap was a schoolmaster, and carried on his calling in a wild and bleak part of the county, walking every day a distance of eight miles. He lived at a cotton-mill just below the village of Healy, which is the western part of that poriion of Yorkshire called Mashamshire. His school-house was four miles distant at Coltersdale, which is still further west, and among the bleak moors and wild hills leading away to Westmorland. A storm of wind and rain is no trifling matter in these parts, and during a snowstorm the snow very often drifts so thickly as to make the roads impassable but no condition of the ■weather or the atmosphere could shake James Heap's steadfast purpose, and he never had any ailment or accident which kept him from going his daily round to the school and home again. Many a time j had he to wade through snowdrifts to find that his pupils were not able to reach the school, and he was constantly subjected to a drenching rain in the winter months. Yet from December, 1822, to January, 1867, he never missed a single day, and during 2292 consecutive weeks he walked more than 110,000 miles, or nearly five times round the world. Nor was he altogether idle on Sundays, for during forty-two years of this period he shared with others the teachings of a Sundayschool at a place called Summerside, about the same distance from his home, and in an equally dreary and wild district on the moors wiih Coltersdale; seventeen Sundays in each year during these forty-two years did he walk eight miles to teach, which adds an aggregate of 5712 miles to the former sum, so that taking Sundays and week .days into the reckoning, lie would,, ifhe had continued his work for rather more than another year, hav^ covered a distance equal to half the space > between the earth and the moon. The old man, until quite lately, enjoyed good health, and the Schoolmasters' Association had only lately written to tell him that an annuity which he had been in receipt of for some time would, after the Ist of November be still further increased. This arrangement, however, he did not see carried out, for he died last week. , "

The Cavendish College, at Cambridge, was opened on Oct. 26 by the Duke of Devonshire. Its main object is to place a University education within the reach of those who are obliged to commence the the active work of life at an earlier age than ordinary undergraduates. Earl Fortescue, at the luncheon succeeding the. ceremony, enumerated the various claims which the college had upon the public. The advantages of the institution ware also dwelt upon by the Duke of Devonshire, Professor Fawcett, M..P., Mr Bodwell, M.P., Mr S. Morley, M.P., and Mr Marten, M.P.