NEWS BY THE MAIL.

Thames Star, Volume XI, Issue 3571, 7 June 1880, Page 3

NEWS BY THE MAIL.

,The Queen has signified her intention to confer the Victoria Cross on Peter Brown, a trooper in the Cape Mounted Kifles. The act of courage for which this honour is awarded is tbu9=stated in the Gazette :—" Trooper Peter Brown, during the assault on Morosi's Mountain, on April Bth, 1879, whilst lying under cover waiting for the order to recommence the advance, beard two men, who bad been wounded some time before, crying out for water. Trooper Brovn carried a waterbottle to these men under a heavy fire to an adjacent rock, to which they had crept for shelter. Whilst giving the first man water he was wounded severely in the right thigh, and immediately afterwards a bullet shattered his right arm, the use of which he has never recovered."

Lord Gifford, VC, has accepted the offer of the colonial secretary-ship of Ceylon, and leases England immediately for Colombo, to assume tlje duties of the office. This appointment had been previously offered to Lord Gifford, but was refused by him for employment with the forces engaged in the war at the~Cape. General Sir Garnet Wolseley is expected to take up his appointment at the Horse Guards, as quartermaster-general, in July, when it is proposed that Sir Daniel Lysons' shall leave the War Office and relieve Sir Thomas Steele in command of the division at Aldershot,

iAs a mark of the Emperor of Russia's fatotirancl. good will of Mr Gladstone, it is repprted from St Peters^iiirg that Count Schouvaloff Will be reappoioted ambassador at the Conr6 of St. James's. ■. • .

Opposition leaders have declared again and again that the policy of the past six years with respect to Egypt was indefensible; and consistency dictates that they should at once relax the endeavours that were being made to inaugurate a new state of things in Egypt by withdrawing Sir Rivers Wilson and subßtitutiDg a policy of comparative non-intervention. So ill-informed was Lord Beaconsfield as to the real feeling of the country, that when the dissolution of, Ihe late Parliament was announced he conveyed to the foreign Ambassadors here an emphatic expression of his belief that the constituencies would give Jthe Government a large majority in . the new ' House of Commons. This; furnishes the clue to the confidence with whicfT* certain journals, in Berlin and Vienna have predicted that Lord Beaconsfield's appeal to the country would give him a new lease of power.. There is fno doubt that Ministers were themselves the victims of .as gross self deception as ever existed in the annals of hnman credulity. Lord John Manners frankly confessed that he and his colleagues had been "stunned " by the crushing defeat they have sustained. At least the Government might have acted with a little more knowledge of human nature, and made due allowance for its love, of; change, most especially after bad times.**

The former Ambassador at Constantinople, now representing this country at Vienna—SirHenry Elliot—is likely to fall under the ban of the Liberal Government as being notoriously hostile to their views on the Eastern; Question; and several minor functionaries will share the same. 'hie. "ir There will be no end of removals in every direction. The hungry must be fed.

A singular festival was celebrated last Saturday, at the town of Pel pi in, in Prussian Poland. It was. the 50th anniversary of the ordination of Bis^pp yon Marwitz, of Culm, who is within a few days of completing his 85th year, and is still in the enjoyment of his faculties. He was a scidn o^an old Pomeranian family, and when eighteen years old joined the " Army of Ltbe^ration " as a Tolunteer, and made the dampaigns of 1813 14 in Blucher'a regiment of Hussars. Although he was present at every engagement of importance and hundreds of minor affairs he escaped without a wound. But his health was so enfeebled by the hardships and privations of the war that he had to spend eight years in enforced retirement at home, and it was feared he would be permanently invalided. He received a command in the Landwehr, but his health improving he took orders when nearly 33 years old. After serving in various clerical posts he was appointed bishop of Culm in 1857. He became known to the present King daring hid military careef^ and his Majesty has more than onc,e expressed his approval of his conduct, notably in 1864, after the abortive Polish insurrection, when lie conferred upon him the order of the Ked Eagle, accompanying the decoration with an autograph letter, in which he said that the bishop " had shown in very difficult circumstances that he knew how to give to Csesar what was Cfflsar's."