Personal Notes.

Freethought Review, Volume I, Issue 5, 1 February 1884, Page 10

Personal Notes.

. General Thibaudin, the late French Minister of War, has been elected President of the Parisian Freethinkers’ Society. It is said that Professor Huxley’s son is the rising young poet of England, and that his friends see in him the future laureate. There is to be a monument erected to Dr. Samuel Johnson, at Lichfield, England, on the centennial anniversary of his death, December 13, 1884. Count Von Moltke’s mind is failing. FI is memory is a blank, and he fails to recognise even intimate friends. He is living on his estate at Kreisau, in strict privacy, having ceased all official work. A funny but thoroughly enjoyable feature of the attentions paid at Ramsgate recently to Sir Moses Montefiorc, the Jewish philanthropist, was the singing under his window, in the early morning, by an admirably trained choir of children. First they sang in Hebrew the famous Jewish hymn of Moses, and then “ Rule Brittania,” which closed the programme, as intended by the teachers who had drilled the choir. But the little fellows had not roused their enthusiasm and trained their voices for so much only, for they concluded by singing “ For he’s a jolly good fellow.” A German journalist gives an interesting account of the surroundings amid which M. Renan delivers his lectures at the College de France. The ledture room is one of the smallest in the College, about thirty feet long and half as wide. Its principal furniture consists of a long table laden with old Bibles, an enormous blackboard, and a faded map. Its sole ornaments are two busts—one of Aristotle, the other of Quintilian. The audience is surprisingly small, consisting mainly of elderly scholars, with here and there a clergyman, a rabbi, or an occasional visitor. Renan appears punctually at the stroke of the clock. Fie begins his lectures in a quiet, almost indifferent sort of way, but soon warms up, and never fails to charm his hearers.