The World.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2212, 11 September 1886, Page 2 (Supplement)

The World.

[Tub following paragraphs are extracted from thi London society papers and other journals.] The Court Journal says that the latest high-life innovation in fashionable marriages in Paris is the display of the bride's wedding outfit on dummy figure* ranging on a platform, as was done at the late reception for the signing of the marriage contract of the daughter of the Countess de P ; assistants from the dressmakers who had produced the toilettes attended to point out the beauties of their creation. No less than 248 lawyers announced themselves as candidates at the recent British elections. Of these 140 were barristers in practice, including four Irish barristers and five Scotch advo cates ; nineteen were solicitors. Eighteight were barristers not in practice, and one was a student. Of the lawyers in practice sixty-seven were Gladstonian Liberals, sixty Conservatives, twentytwo Unionist Liberals, and ten Parnellites. Tho Italian journals relate a characteristic story of the benevolence of Quo n Marguerite. A poor girl had knitted for her a pair of stockings, and sent them hh a present to the Queen on her fete day. The Queen sent to her little protege" in return another pair of stockings, one with some pieccß of gold in it, the other filled with bon-bons and a letter in the Queen's handwriting, in which she wrote : '* Tell me, my child, which of these stockings has given you the greatest pleasure ?'* A few hours later the Queen received the reply: "Dear Madam, the Queen — I have had only trouble with the stocking*. My father took the one with the gold in it ; my brother the one with the sweets !" A gentleman who died recently in Paris left a legacy of $6,000 to his noice in Dubuque, lowa, who, it appears, died about the same hour of the i-ame day. The question which died first turns upon tho relation of solar time to true time, and must be determined by the difference of longitude. If the neice died at 4 o'clock a.m., and tho uncle at 10 o'clock a.m., the instants of their death must have been identical. Assuming: that to be tho hou" of the tehtator's death, if the neioe died at any hour between four and ten, although the legacy would appaiently revert to his estate, it would really vest in her and her heirs, since by solar time «he would have survived her uncle. The Due d'Aumale has had to quit France as the result of a protest against his dismissal from the army. The Duke can hardly have expected anything else, hut it will not do to write many more such letters, as the majority in the Chambers, in their present humour, might be easily induced to confiscate the property of the Orleans family. Louis Napoleon did this after the coup iVctnt of IS.">l with regard to a portion of their estates, on the ground that it was property which the Orleans family had derived from the Crown, and which ought lo have been turned over to the State, in accordance with inimemoii.il usage, when Louis Philippe ascended the throne in IS3O. The rights and wrongs of this proved a very knotty question of French law, w Inch was mucli debated, but the enemies of the Empire always treated the seizure as pure and unmitigated robbery. After 1870, what was left of the property— about half — was restored to the princes, and since then the Due d'Aumale has investpd an enormous amount in the restoration of Chantilly. Among the follies not generally known, committed by the demented King of Bavaria, was the erection of a circus on the first floor of the Royal palace of Munich. The ceiling was made to imitate the skies at night-time, with the moon aad stars, lit up from behind by electric lights. On the walls were a series of coloured frescoes representing various country scenes, including an Itilian capanna, a French auberge, and a Swiss chalet. The monarch and his guests, twenty in number, first went to the theatre. Then they returned to the palace and supped. About two in the morning the King ordered his favourite charger, and, mounting, invited his friends lo follow him. Their horses were brought up, and as soon as thpy were all in the saddle His Majesty rode ofF to the circus. The Royal party galloped round tho ring several times. The King stopped, descended, and tapped at the door of the capanna. Suddenly the door opened as if by magic, and a crowd of persons emerged from it They were dressed in the different country costumes of Italy, and bore baskets of fruit, cakes and wine, of which the guests partook. During the repast an invisible clioir pang Italian airs, accompanied by a brass band. Ilis Majesty again mounted his charger, and followed by his friends rode round the circus once more. Ho now knocked at the door of the anberge, and French peasants came out with more wine and eatables, which the poor guests already suifeited, were bound t> consume rather than offend their eccentric host The musicians here executed iavoutite French songs. The same performance was gone through at tho chalyt, and then the King, at half-past four in the morning, abruptly withdrew, leaving his companions more dead than alive. The French Government contemplate a bold deed in introducing a Bill for the total extermination of betting. In England, without a doubt, racing and betting would fall, as they stand, together, for though the Britisher's innate love for the "sport of Kings" is proverbial, it is mostly kept alive by the hopes of what he will be able to ir.ake out of the object of his affections. Bioadly speaking, racecourse attendances comprise two classes— those who come to bet, and the roughs, who do not bet, because they have no money, but who come to make themselves generally unpleasant. By the side of these two main divisions the number of true sportsmen who love racing for racing's sake is almost inappreciable, and certainly insufficient to maintain the spot on its present magnifi cent scale. And as it would be in England, so in all probability will it be in France, inasmuch as racing there is largely an English importation, trainers, jockeys, grooms, bootmakers and horses all alike being of British extraction. The Academy, says an English paper, is much more hospitable to strangers thaa it used to bo. Twenty yens a#o we should not have found ho many foreign works upon our walls. But our hospitality is nothing compared with that of the Salon. The great French exhibition contains works from the studios of all nations. The Americans are certainly the most numerous. At the present exhibition as many as ninety-one painters are represented. But then a large proportion of these pictures aro painted in Paris itself. Belgium naturally comes next, with, however, only fifty-four. Italy has but a third as many as America, and Switzerland has as many as Italy. Twenty-five English artists now exhibit, which with cix Scotch and two Irish makes the British total come after the Belgian. All Germany sends but nineteen, Spain eighteen, Holland seventeen, and Russia thirteen. The variety in, in fact, more surprising than the actual number of foreign contributors. That redoubtable lady duellist, Mine, Astie de Valsayre, delivered a longwinded discourse on June 4, at the Salle dcs Conferences in Paris. Her lecture was entitled "L'Eeerime et la Fein mo," and her name was sulliciont to attract'a large audience, chiefly composed of women. She is a thin little woman, not by any means fierce or pugnacious in appearance. She was dressed in a black bodice with white sleeves, and her gloves had long gauntlets. Her hair was dressed in a large chignon, tied with a piece of red ribbon on the top, and she wore large coloured glassy. The gi eater pait ot her long discourse was devoted to the endeavour to prove that skill in fencing had a poweiful influence in developing the form, muscles, and brain of women. It enabled them to settle their quarrels by duels, and not by tearing each other's

hair, hats, bonnets, and head-gear. A somewhat ungallant titter ran through the male portion of the audience when the speaker, in alluding to development, motioned to her own fignre by way of pointing her moral. Both men and women, she said, were undoubtedly descended from apps, but the influence of "AUviam' 1 was moie predominant in the man. The ladies of Paris, tired of wearing dead hit da, arc now spending fabulous sums in procuring all sorts of creeping things— such ns spiders, beetles, etc — with which to adorn their hair and dresses. It seems the idea otig:nuted with Mine. Judic, who, during her tour to "The Goldun South Americas," was presented by a deputation of fern.de admirers in Br.uil with a couple of Brazilian beetles, or ''gold bugs," which, it appears, can be rr.uned, and are tetheied by thin gold chains to a hairpin, and are allowed to wander about her head at their own sweet wills. This idea of adorning theniHelwes with living insects is, a contemporary remarks, hardly original. Not to go back as far as the Egyptian, and Ktruscans, we our selves remember seeing in the Bra/ils a party of ladies who, having captured a number of fireflies, enclosed them in long tubes of muehn, with which they trimmed the fronts of their dresses. The effect in a garden after dark was quite as pretty as the electric lights which the "lolanthe" fairies wore at the Savoy. If Vime. Judic's beetles could speak, they would probably say with Pascal, " Fashion is a tyrant from which nothing frees us." In the meautime they are the subject of much comment in Paris ; for, as Pope said in a famous epigram, "Ladies will talk of what runs in their heads."