Papurau Newydd Cymru

Chwiliwch 15 miliwn o erthyglau papurau newydd Cymru

Cuddio Rhestr Erthyglau

9 erthygl ar y dudalen hon

\ THE COURT. -+--

POLITICAL GOSSIP. --

THE ARTS, LITERATURE, &c.…

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.

OUR MISCELLANY. -+-

Newyddion
Dyfynnu
Rhannu

OUR MISCELLANY. -+- An Eccentric Woman.-Mrs. Floyd, who had accompanied her husband to India, by her eccentrici- ties tormented the general, a man as precise and formal as she was wild and impulsive. Many curious scenes were the result of this contrast, when the grave martinet was .made the victim of her practical jokes. On one occasion she stood near him, with her baby in the nurse's arms, when, after an inspection, the troops were marching past. Shrieking as if the child was threatened with some unseen danger, she threw it on her husband's saddle, and running away with the nurse, who was privy to her purpose, left the general with a squeaking baby in his arms, before all the troops. At another time Mrs. Floyd had a woman, dressed for the occasion, placed in a palanquin, and carried to the general's tent. On arriving there she raised a greit outcry, and seemed in intense agony, caused, as she eaid, by the attack of a tiger, from whose fangs she had been misaculously rescued, on a mount rising on the plains some distance off. The general was at that moment giving orders to his officers; but moved by the woman's cries, and excited by the prospect of a successful hunt, all were eager for immediate action, and business was for the time forgotten. They pro- ceeded forthwith with some Sepoys to the spot, and in a short time saw an enormous tiger crouched behind some shrubs, half-way up the rock. The general ordered a volley to be fired at him, while some venture- some youth clambered up the side of the mount, to take a more active part in the capture of the prize. The volley was fired, but the tiger remained immovable. Another volley waa now directed at him by the Sepoys, and still he continued motionless, Its if regardless of such unskilful assailants. At length, those who had advanced up the rook approached nearer and nearer, when one of them, giving the animal a blow with the butt end of his gun, it rolled down the precipitous rook, and fwl at the feet of its astonished pursuers I below-a staffed ekin General Floyd went back to his tent, without an observation, and no one in his presence ever alluded to the morning's adventure. Mrs. Floyd insisted, against all precedent, on giving a newly-born daughter two godfathers, who were to be Col. Wellesley and Col. Cotton, and on having the child named Flavia. Both officers officiated accordingly at a grand christening, which was followed by an even- ing7 party. When most of the guests had departed, Mrs. Floyd requested the two colonels to oblige the clergyman te christen the child again, as she declared he had not crossed its forehead properly in the morn- ing. It was in vain that they expressed themselves quite satisfied with the ceremony, and urged the im- propriety of having it repeated. The lady became so nervous and irritable, that to appease her the chaplain, however, crossed the child's forehead, without repeat. ing any part of the baptismal service. Mrs. Floyd was the mother of the beautiful Lady Peel and Lady Fuller.—Memoirs of Combermere. I Nachod.-There is something very weird and ghostlike about reminiscences of names and places, not only of the Seven, but also of the Thirty Years' War memory, that come cropping up on all sides in this terrible German struggle. Few people are probably aware that Nachod, the little Bohemian town with its 3,000 inhabitants, about which there was such hot and bloody work for the last few days, and even nights, is the birthplace of no less a man than Wailenstein. The church belonging to the deanery of Nachod, which existed as early as 1384, contains the tombs of the ancient Bohemian family of Smirziczki, from which Wallenstein'a mother derived her dsscent, or rather of which she represented the last branch. The castle of the Wallenateina. Castle Nachod," is very ancient, and belonged, up to tha time of the HuasiteB, to the family of the Berks of Daba and Lipa. After that robber-knighta took possession of it, and after several further changes of proprietorship, the Smirziczki came into it. After the battle of the White Mountain (1620) Count Terzki, Wallensteia's brother-in- law appears as lord of the castle, but after the murder of Wallenstein at Eger (February 25, 1634) Octavio Piccolomini received the property as a reward for his dastardly treachery. He gave the castle its present shape, and commemorated that wonderful fact in a boastful inscription inside the gates. It stands on a rock, which rises steeply almost immediately behind the market-place of the little town, and which is reached by a flight consisting of 333 steps. Three courts surround the enormous edifice, and round about them are situated the houses of the retinue, the stables, and other outbuildings. The Piccolomini have long died out; only their portraits have survived. Particu- larly striking is that of Oatavio, with which there is also found a battle-piece commemorating his victory over the French at Thionville. The castle now belongs to Prince Auersperg of Prague.—Pall-mall Gazette. Garibaldi's Soldiera -They are of all ages, from 12 to 35, and of every shade of brown. Those yaung gentlemen, with Eastern "fezes," faces almost Nubian, and demeanour somewhat subdued, are said to ba de- serters and refugees returned from Egypt, in the hope that, by taking a gallant share in the impending struggle, they might be permitted to atone their fault. The Government refused to make any pact with the children of Italy who had taken refuge on a foreign soil, but permitted them to volunteer. There are many noble-looking men among these volunteers, including veterans of 25, decorated with three medals; but, as a general rule, they run small and young—so young, indeed, that we find it difficult to believe a barber who assures us that, in one evening, his receipts for shaving amounted to 59f. They have a long drill at five in the morning, and a shorter one in the after- noon. The rest of the time is at their own disposal, and it is most creditable to them that, as yet, no single instance of drunkenness, insubordination, or mis- conduct of any kind can ba laid to their charge—a circumstance the mora noticeable,when we consider the results usually engendered by the combination of excitement and enforced idleness. But this move- ment is in reality exceptional, and cannot be judged by ordinary rules. Perhapa the most astonishing fact, however, connected with these young men is one that reached U3 from what seemed an authentic and intel- ligent source, that the whole body, 7,000, spend in the shops and ooffee-houaea of the town 30,000 francs a day Now, their nominal pay being one franc and a tenth—subject to deductions—it follows that, unless friends at heme have been very liberal, er shopkeepers at Como very confiding, but little cash will find its way with the Garibaldini into the Tyrol. The corps are capitally dreese3; the bright red frock, now become historical, 13 of excellent make and quality; and with the neat grey trousers with red seam, and red cap with a shade, something like that worn by the French, they have the appearance of rather irre- gular regulars.—All the Year Round. An American Sketch of a Guardsman.—Ho was six feet high. His hair was a handsome, wavy blonde, parted in the middle. His moustache was yellower than his hair; his military whiskers a modu- latory tone between the two. His manners were those of a great, green, conceited boy, brought up by hand" by the relentless Mrs. Joe Gargery, of British tradition. His life was one long chronic sin against the canons of natural good breeding but he would sooner have been unjoin ted alive than to have offended against those artificial ragulatians which proved his blood, gave him his entrej at Alaaack's,. made him liked in his club, or secured his posi. tion in hia Regiment. Ha was twenty-four years old: I was twenty-eight, and on his social level- so I could be much more patient with him than if I had held in any respect the junior hand." His father had once owned the estate adjoining Nestle- down which fact accounted for his intimacy with the family, and his invitation to pass a summer's furlough with them. Ha had the long upper lip and the short nose of his race, which make so many Englishmen look like a gutta-percha head of Antinoas pulled out length-wise; his eyes were a handsome blue, opened into a perpetual stare of astonishment the moment he got out of England, As we have seen, he said, Aw i" and thought thiuga "prodigious," under circumstances whose tendency on our veriest American Hoosier would have been only to make him more cosmopolitan. A man whom one would gladly have had at his back in an Inkermann charge; bat, oh! what a dreadful oomrade for any minor emergency like a rainy day at Nestledown.—Harper's Nev: Monthly Magazine. A Sketch in the Isle of Dogs.—Gone; ah, Heaven! it is but a few years, and yet the place is changed past recognition. Where were tress and fields, are now bristling masts and huge iron-works; there used to be pretty houses and iw covered cottages on the island where Charles II. kept his spaniels. But the other day I was asking con- cerning one of these same ivy-covered cottages, with lawn sloping down to the river's brink, and behold, the place where it once stood knows it no more. There is change everywhere—the colour factory I picked my way through three years since; the experimental chamber where I Silt among carmines and greens, among pots and pans, among all manner of chemical apparatus, are swept away. The barrels, the vats, the pans, the raw materials and the manufactured articles, have all been removed. A century formerly scarcely sufficed to efteafc the changes a few months does now. The men and the women who used to reside due East, and leavened it with a certain leaven of wealth, solidity, and respectability, have all chosen for themselves homes elsewhere. What tradesman now resides over his shop in the city ? What shipbuilder, or ironfounder, or wharfinger would dream of living on the Isle of Dogs ? It is all changed, the old inhabitants are gone, and the old places with them, and the scene over which the eye wanders to- day from the garden of Beach-house is as unlike that on which Olivine Barbour and Henrietta Alwyn gazed, as the present half-finished terminus of the South- Eastern Railway in Cannon-street is unlike the old churchyard and the quiet court, the sites whereof it now ocaupies.—From The Race for Wealth." Effects of the War on Labour.—The news from Germany is bad, and can scarcely be anything else. No one can tell the amount of misery which the war is likely to inflict on the working classes, who, though they have no control whatever over either their home or foreign affairs, have always a good share —a great deal more than their share—of any sufferings which their tyrants' policy may bring about. Already in many soldiers' families destitution is adding i-.s horrors to the pangs of sorrow for the dead and wounded, and anxiety for the living. In a large num- ber of Government and other offices, counting-houses, and workshops, the labour of women ia being had recourse to; and those among the advocates of the rights of wamen who want to make the most even of a bad case, are congratulating themselves oa the great progress which, through the present crisis, this question of the amploymentof women ia making in Germany. The day may not be far distant when they will have too much of it, and when women—as was I pretty often tho case in America daring the late war -will have to take to the work of the field, aa well as to that of the shop. Can anything more distressing be conceived than the weaker sex overworking them- selves to maintain armies of brothers engaged in the impious task of spilling one another's blood P—The Working Man.

Dives and La.za.rus.

London Pastorals.

A REVERSE.

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