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New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIX, Issue 18, 30 January 1891, Page 19

Archbishop Banjean reports that in the diocese of Colombo (Ceylon) there have been, m the past six years, 3,700 conversions of adults ; 1,800 baptisms of children w.iose parents were not Catholics and more than 27,000 infant baptism? amongst the Catholics. I he Riforma, rfignor Cnspi's organ, publishes the full text of a circular addressed by the Grandmaster of Italian Freemasonry to the members of the Order as to their conduct during the coming general elections. Amongst other things it calls upon the Freemasons "to fight without truce against clericalism, the only party hatred which may be considered as holy." There was a time, observes a contemporary, when it was thought that tJ have Shakespeare an J Muton^recognised as subjects to be taught in schools was going too far in the direction of educational levity. We have got a long way past that point now. The Indian Government has recommended George Eliot's "Silas Marner " in usum scholarum. It seems curious mental fare for the young Baboo. But they are, naturally, more advance! still in France. The French Minister of Public Instruction has just issued a circular recommending tbat the old " classical " authors shall be dropped, and the nine-teenth-century writers taken up. No more Bossuet, and Corneille, and Racine, and Mootefquieu in the Lyceei and the Colleges. Instead, the boys and girls will read Michelet, and Victor Hugo, and («ave the mark I) Alfred de Musset. After th^t no doubt, Dumas Jilx, and Paul Bourget, and Guy de Maupassant will follow. " Education "is ge ttng more amusing every day. We do not despair of Hiding Oxford offering a prize for the smartest " society " paragraph and Cambridge establishing a Tripos on the British Drama of the Nineteenth century.