A DREADFUL "SELL."

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 182, 3 August 1871, Page 7

A DREADFUL "SELL."

In a village about four miles from Nottingham an eccentric old gentleman, unmarried, and reputed +o be very rich, recently made his will. He bequeathed £10,000 to the General Hospital, and a like sum to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. To one relative- he left £1000, and legacies to the amount of £500 were numerous. The total bequeathed amounted to £45,000. The secret leaked out of the beneficent acts of the testator, and the expectant legatees were very demonstrative in their expression of thanks. Presents of wine, game, and other good things were sent in profusion to the unpretending but comfortable cottage in which the recluse resided, attended only by an aged woman. Although extremely reluctant to leave the shelter of his own roof, he was frequently compelled to yield to the solicitations of his friends, and pay them long visits. A Nottingham cab and coach proprietor placed his vehicles and horses at his services, in gratitude for having been put down in the will for the handsome sum of £500. The old gentleman was courted by more than one lady whose early youth had passed, but who had no objection to a widow's portion of a considerable fortune. It is difficult to imagine a more comfortable existence than the generous testator led in his declining years, each of his friends rivalling and feasting him and smoothing his descent to the grave. He died at the reverend age of eightyfour, and the friend at whore house he breathed his last, honored his remains with an expensive funeral. This friend had also the melancholy satisfaction of paying the expenses, for the testator died considerably in debt. , Tl\e l&rge sums he! had bequeathed existed tiiilf: in imagination. 1 -^" P.all Mall Gazette. 1 ' j

The Berlin correspondent of the " Observer " thus writes of the recept tion of Mr Darwin's Descent or Man in Germnny.— " Darwin's new book is exciting universal attention in the scientific world of Germauy. After all the noise and excitement of the war it has given us a pleasure akin to that which a cooling bath affords to a weary and exhausted pedestrian. It was in Germany that the great Englishman found the first and the most enthusiastic of his disciples, and his influence over every branch of science here is even greater than in his own country. I cannot but recall with deep and mournful feelings the eagarness with which one now no more awailed the appearance of the work which now lies on my table, it was on the very evening when the news of Sadowa reached Jena that Professor Schleicher said' to me, 'After all, it is not Bismarck, but Darwin, who will leave his stamp upon, our age, for whom it will, be reraemfcerjed/*