The World.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2224, 9 October 1886, Page 2 (Supplement)

The World.

[Thjs following paragraphs are extracted from the London society papers and other journals.] Thk Queen intends to invest the King of Portugal with the Order of the Bath (G. C.8.) when he visits her at Oborne next week. His Majesty was made a Knight of^ the Garter many years ago. Lord John Manners in the formation of the Government behaved with great dignity. He offered to go to the Upper - Housto or to do anything to facilitate the formation of a Government; but Lord Salisbury thought it necessary to have the, first and most faithful of Lord Beaconsfield's disciples in hi* Cabinet. The well-known estate of Oxcombe in Lincolnshire,jjwas sold at Louth the other day for £15,000— a very remarkable price, considering that this property changed hands two yearn ago for £28,600, and in 1576 realised £45,000. Tim Due d' Aumale has offered to lend Oacombe Manor to tht» Conite and Comtesse de Paris. Cracombe is a very grotty place, within a short walk of Wood or ton, the Due d' Aumale's seat in Worcestershire, where he ,i& now residing. The Comte de Paria visitod Eastwell a few days ago, but I hear that he does not fancy the place. Among the victims of the Burmese blunder few will be more generally regretted than Captain Wilbraham^ of Prince Albert's Somersetshire Light Infantry (formerly known as the 13th Light Infaqtry), whose death from wounds in the last expedition has only been recently reported. The sth Lancers in the Soudan were led gallantly enough by Major Gilborne, one of the smallest men in her Majesty's cavalry ; but " Tiny " Wilbraham was perhaps even smaller and slighter. For the festivities in honour of the cominc of age of the Hon. Francis Denison, son and heir of Lord Londesborough, the preparations, are upon a scale which may fairly be termed gigantic. There is :to be, in particular, a revival of the old English sports and games formerly held in Londesborough park. The hoax that was perpetrated at the expense of Mr Gladstone recently -was silly enough, but the invention of the Labrador distress is one of the worst freaks of the foolish on record. There is little doubt in the City that the authors of the shameful fiqtion sought to injure the scheme of the Manitoba and Hudson Bay Railway. It ought to be possible to find them out. Exit Sir Hicks, enter Lord Randolph. I do not know that it signifies much which of the two is Leader of the House. ' Sir Hicks made a mistake iv joining in the intrigue against Sir Stafford Northcote ; but he always struck me as a good Loader, Lord Randolph is a better debater ; but this is only one quality which a Leader ought to possess. I doubt somewhat whether his health will stand the toils of leadership, for it requires an iron constitution. The members of the committee which haa been formed to obtain funds for the endowment of the proposed separate See of Bristol do not appear to take a sanguine view of the proßpects of the scheme, as they are content to look forward to raising the sum required " in the lifetime of their children. The fact is that there is no real need whatever for a Bishop of Bristol, as the existing diocese of Gloucester and Bristol, is a "light" one, the work being mere child's play compared with Ripon, Manchester, Rochester, or London. If Bishop Ellicott is beginning "to feel the weight of years," he can retire on a pension of £1,200 a year, and make way for a move vigorous successor. There is one reason, and there can be only one, why Mr Arthur Balfour has not been assigned a seat in the Cabinet. He has the. misfortune, as well as the good fortune, to be a nephew of the Prime Minister, and Lord Salisbury does not care to run the risk of being exposed to the taunt of promoting his distinguished young relative. Yet Mr Balfour ought to have been promoted, especially as he is Secretary for Scotland. Seeing that both the Duke of Richmond and Sir G. Trevelyan were in the Cabinet, his exclusion is almost a slight to Scotland, and assuredly he is a more able man than six Cabinet Ministers who might be named. The survivors of the departed season seem during last week to have found at once a haven of rest and a political try-sting-place at the " Colonies." On Tuesday Mr ShawLefevre, Sir Lyon and Lady Playfair, Lord Acton, and the Prince de Wag ram all met accidentally in the Quadrant. Lady Jersey and Lidy Waterford were both there ou the following evening, and Lord Yarborough came there to bid adieu to the joys of bachelorhood ; on Thursday the Lord Chancellor sought quiet and consolation at Kensington, but was startled to recognise Lords Bury and Kilmarnock and Mr AshmeadBartlett (at once triumphant and anxious) amongst his fellow-divers ; on Friday Sir Charles McGregor aud Sir BrydgesHenniker were masters of the situation. Lord and Lady Wimborne are staying at Schwnlbach, and will not return to England till the middle of next month, when they are going to Canfon? manor. Lord Wimborne has let his splendid shootings in West Ross-shire to Sir Daniel Cooper, who is to pay £0,000 a year for five years. Achnashellaoh is one of the* moat beautiful lodges in Scotland. It stands on a lawn at the head of Loch Doule, with the river Carron flowing close by, the view extending to the sea. The salmon and trout fishing 1 are not surpassed in the country ; the forest, which extends to about 50,000 acres, affords abundant sport, and it has been so much improved during the pest fifteen years that, although the hills are exceptionally high, it is very easily worked, there bein# a perfect network of pony-paths in all directions. There ia an immense stock of deer, and several grand heads are got every autumn. Mr W. A. Wynne, whose affairs were under investigation at the City of London Court the other day, appears to have been enjoying a novel means of subsistence. According to his statement on oath, "he had been engnged to a lady whose uncle paid him £550 a year for being engaged to hia niece." M©it men would have thought this good enough ; but Wynne was not easily satisfied. He gave up the engagement at £560 a year, and married a dressmaker. Mr Commissioner Kerr naturally asked why. " Because," said Wynne, " it was a very unhappy engagement all along " Fancy a man who is paid £500 a year to be engaged, and finds himself unhappy all along ! Whether he was happier with the dressmaker does not appear, but probably his creditors were not, for all Wynne had to offer them was ono (.hilling in the pound and " a lot of pawntickets." One of those correspondents who have so much spare time, apparently, to devote to the collection of statistics more or less useless, and who are able to tell you with equal alacrity how many words there were in Mr Gladstone's last speech and what is the average number of plain buns eaten by each visitor to the Colonial Exhibition during the current week, has favoured me with a communication, which I reproduce. "It may be interesting to note," he writes, " that for every run made by Maurice Read iv his wonderful inning* of 186 against the Australians at the Oval, that admirable youup professional received four shillings and onethird of a penny. To arrive at this result, to the ordinary fee paid by the Surrey Club to their professionals has been added a moiety of the sum collected in the ' cap ' which was made on behalf of Abel and Read on Friday." Were such results frequent, we should, doubtless, hear of the ranks of our professional cricketers being largely increased. To be paid for a score at the rate of four shillings and 333 of a penny per run is considerably better than penny a lining, for example. It is related of General yon Manteuffo), the late German Military Governor of

Alsace, who hated nil that was Frenoh, that he once at a publio dinner engaged in a dispute with a French diplomat who maintained the superiority of the French workmen over the artisan* of all other nations. "A thing so ugly does not exist that the skill and genius of a Frenchman cannot make of it a thing of beauty," he said. Angered by the contradiction, the old soldier pulled a hair from his bristly grey tnoustaohe, and, handing it to the Frenchman, said curtly, "Let him make a thing of beauty out of that, then, and provo your claim." The Frenchman took the hair and sent it in a letter to a well-known Pariman jeweller with a statement of the case and an appeal to hi« patriotio pride, giving* him no limit of expense in executing tho order. A week later the mail from Paris brought a neat little box for the general. In it was a handsome scarf-pin made like a Prussian scarf-pin made like a Prussian eagle, thnt held in its talons n stiff grey bristle, from either end of which dangled a tiny goldon ball. One was inscribed Alsace, the other Lorraine, and on tho eagle's perch were the words, " You hold them, but by a hair." The Colonial descent on Plymouth, with breaks at Salisbury going clown and at Exeter coming back, occupied three days, and was -extensively patronised, The Indians showed a specially strong partiality for the west country expedition. Rajah "Patal" was faraway in the Highlands, but Nawabzada Nusrullah Khan qt Sachen, Mr Cowasjee Dinshaw, Mr Pesikaka, Mr and Mrs Khunker, and a gentleman described in the official catalogue as "Mr Mukharpi Baboo, T.N., and cousin," all went to Devonshire. The M.O.s were as plentiful as blackberries, and nobody received more marked attention than Mr and Mrs Payne, who are generally supposed to be the dc jure native King and Queen of Lagos. At Salisbury the ecclesiastical reception was somewhat marred by the absence of the organist and the occurrence of a meeting in the Chapterhouse ; but the municipal hospitality was irreproachable. At Plymouth, balls, receptions, naval displays, dances, aud torpedo practice followed one another with lightning-like rapidity. "Sir Saul" and "Sir Graham" poured out torrents of Imperial eloquence ; and when Mirza Kasim Hosein ro^e in jewels and kinkab to speak in touching- terms of the native contingent "sent to Egypt to fight against the vile Egyptians and sow their blood on that vilo sand," and to pray God " to keep the mos^, exalted Royal Family in the kind shadow," th,e enthusiasm of assembled Plymouth fairly overflowed. Mr EdwarJ Clark improved the occasion, and somehow or other his constituency contrived to give the Colonists a happy combination of a dozen other successful excursion*.