GENERAL NEWS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 68, 15 August 1874, Page 11

GENERAL NEWS.

According- to a return just issued, there are at the present time 185 peers of Ireland: viz., 2 dukes, 11 marquises, 66 earls, 38 viscounts and 68 barons, and that at the passing of .the Acb of Union there were 211 peers of Ireland— viz., 1 duke, 5 marquises, 77 earls, 58 viscounts and 70 barons. Since the Union 75 Irish peeragei have become extinct and 61 peers of Ireland have been created oeers of the United Kingdon. Of the existiug 185 Irish peers, 80 are also peers of England, Great Britain or the United Kingdom, and 28 are representative lords, thus leaving 77 as the number of Irish peers without seata. The ' Tuam News' has the following :— " A little fellow in Durry the other day having caught a mouse in a trap, laughingly held up the trap and shook it in his companion's face. The mouse, making a sudden spring, freed itself, and seeing the open mouth of the companion boy leuped into if, and p.issed on down his throat. The lad seems to suffer in no way from the accident, though he avers he felt the mouse biting him as it passed down his throat. Brooklyn has a Catholic Newsboys' ITome, where over one hundred little fellows are protected and cared for. It is under the protection of the St. Vincent de Paul's Society. The board is excellent, the dormitories are specimens of neatness, the gymnasium a perfect boys' paradise, the school (from 8 to 9 p.m.) cannot be beat, and the boys never swear nor use vulgar language. Each boy has a little pigeon-hole wardrobe for himaelf, with the key in his own custody. Mr Fish, the Secretary of State, has made a suggestion that a law should be passed to return immigrant paupers, vagabonds, and convicts landing in the United States by the same vessels which brin» them, and heavily fining the companies to which these vessels belong" It is telegraphed from New York that the Government of Guatonvila has granted the British Vice-Consul, Mr Magee, £10,000 as compensation for the outrage inflicted upon him by Colonel Gonzalez at St. Jose The vexed question of preoeedence among the Princesses at Court which has given rise to so much gossip and contradictory r«porta, has now been satisfactorily settled. Inasmuch as the Duke of Edinburgh, heir apparent to the Principality of Coburg Gotba, the Duchess will take precedence immediately after the Princess of Wales. The London correspondent of the ' Western Morning News ' gives a new explanation of the cause of the absence of the Duchess of Edinburgh from Beveral drawing-rooms lately. There is not room o-i the dais for all the members of the Koyal Family who hare been present ; and twice the Duke of Teck had to stand in the rear out of sight, behind the rest of the royal personages. The Duchess of Edinburgh not being fond of State ceremonials, and having noticed this state of things, begged Her Majesty's permission to be excused from, such frequent; attendance at drawing-rooms as is generally considered necessary, and her request was granted. An instrument for obtaining the altitude of the sua has recently been discovered under a stone near the harbor of Valencia, County Kerry. When discovered it wns enclosed in a case, which, on being touched, fell to pieces. The graduations were very carefully and accurately made, but there was no makers name or date. The instrument was of a most primitive kind, being intended to be suspended from the observer's thumb while he made the observation ; and no such instrument has been used for the last two hundred and fifty years or more. Two ships of the Spauish Armada are known to have been wrecked near Valencia, and it may have belonged to one of them. The Key. Henry Ward Beecher, in one of his recent sermons in Plymouth Church, said, according to the report in the ' Tribune' :— " Average the churches of New York and Brooklyn, and I think it can be shown that the aristocratic or prosperous element takes possession of the churches, and that the great needy classes, or the poor, if they go to them at all, do not go to them as a home, because tne churches do not satisfy their wants and cravings. The churches are not as demooratio as they aro in Europe. They are, largely, institutions for the mutual insurance of prosperous families (laughter)." Mr Beecher does say smart things now and then ; aud it id refreshing to see that no severe rule of respeot for the place or the worship keeps the congregation of Plymouth froia " laughter." Of course, Mr Beeeher, in speaking of " the churches of New York," did not include the Catholio Churches. A revolving cannon was fired at Prince Edward of Saxe- Weimar when he was stepping into his carriage to attend the levee. No injury -was inflicted. The assassin escaped at the time, but was afterwa ds captured. He proved to be a crazed Pole, who adopted this coarse to compel the attention of the "War Office to his invention,