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OUR LONDON LETTER.

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OUR LONDON LETTER. (From Our London Correspondent.) Special accommodation has been provided on the P. and O. liner Marmora for the comfort of the Duke and Duchess of Connaught, who, with Princess Patricia and a considerable staff, are to make the journey to the East on her. The Royal travellers are to have sepa- rate sleeping cabins, which have been formed by knocking two of the ordinary rooms into one, thus giving a space of 14ft. by 6ft. for each room. Each is comfortably furnished, and the hangings ara of dark green, while the carpets are a warm red, setting off the oak work pannelling very well. The Duchess's boudoir is a charming blue papered apartment, containing everything that could be regarded by a traveller as necessary, and some things that may almost be described as luxuries—the dainty arm-chairs and hangings of pink, the piano of satin-wood, and innumerable little knick-knacks which should certainly ensure the comfort of the Duchess and her daughter. Opening out of the boudoir is the Duke's writing-room, papered in red, and upholstered in green, amongst its contents being an an- tique escretoire. Both the last-named apart- ments are lighted by skylights provided with curtains to match the furniture, these lights being in precisely the same condition as when in use by ordinary passengers, and having re- ceived no special decoration. The Duke's writing-room opens in turn into the alley-way on the starboard side, where the cabins of his suite are situated. All the apa.rtments are heated by electric radiators which provide a maximum of heat and at the same time pro- vide the cosy appearance of a fire, and at the end of each alley way is a door which leads directly on the promenade deck, so that there will be no necessity when fresh air and exercise may be required to descend to the hurricane dock below. It is not true, as at first re- ported, that the Duke will go on to America, for the Royal travellers are to come back by way of Egypt. In noting the departure of the Duke of Connaught, the "Graphic" recalls the story of a pompous prelate who met his Royal High- ness at some function without recognising ,li i- m. The Duke observed that he had been delayed by attendance on his mother. "I see you are a dutiful young man," said the Bishop, with high approval; and how is the dear old lady?" The Duke replied that "the dear old lady" was very well, and it was not till after- wards that the terrible truth was broken to the Bishop! Another story is told of the tour of the Duke and Duchess in Egypt. Owing to an accident to the Duchess's saddle she was unable to ride home, and so a sort of sedan- chair was improvised out of a gun-carriage. At the end of her journey the Duchess ex- pressed the hope that the bearers were not tired, whereupon the officer, with perfect naivete answered, Indeed, no! madam. You .0 not heavier than the gun they are accus- tomed to carry." There was peculiar appropriateness in the hoice of the last resting-place of the late jBaroness Burdett-Coutts in Westminster Abbey, for the site which was chosen in the west end of the nave might well be termed the Philanthropist's Corner. At the head of the gmve stood the statue of the great Earl of Shaftesbury, which, appropriately enough, was unveiled by tho Baroness herself sixteen years ago; while a few paces down the nave is the spot where in 1869 the remains of George Peabody were temporarily interred. After at few days in the Abbey his body was removed to America and re-interred in Massachusetts, liis native State. Near the grave is Onslow Ford's bust of General Gordon, of whom it can be said that he has memorials in both St. Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey, though buried in neither, his bones lying out in Khartoum. C5 The late Baroness enjoyed a unique distinc- tion—she could claim that her father, as a political offender, had suffered imprisonment in the Tower of London, and, moreover, that it required a force of his Majesty's Life Guards to take him from his house, No. 80, Piccadilly, round which an immense mob of his supporters encamped by day and bivouacked by night. Not till cannon had been posted in the stroets and blood had been shed did the military succeed in capturing Sir Francis. His alleged offence was a breach of privilege in selKng for a shilling copies of his speech in Parliament, defending a Liberal speaker from imprisonment. At this juncture Queen CJrai loite wrote to Sir Francis's father-in-law, the grandfather of the late Baroness, threatening to withdraw her slender balance from Coutts and Co. at three days' notice. The sturdy old banker met the Royal message with a reply that Coutts's Bank needed but three hours' notice to withdraw -even £ 500,000. One is reminded of a notable man of the past by the fact that the Daniel Lambert," which has been established for more than a century, is up for sale. This is the only hostelry in London which perpetuates the memory of the most corpulent man of his time, and is situate on Ludgate-hill; but probably very few of the thousands who pass it day by day ever notice it. Lambert in his youth is said to have been a nimble pedestrian, an expert rider, and a crack shot, but when lie came to London he scaled the enormous weight of over fifty stone, and a suit of clothes cost him no less than 220. It was an- nounced in the newspapers that Mr. Lambert will see company at his house, No. 53, Picca- dilly, next the Albany, nearly opposite St. James's Church, from eleven to five o'clock. Tickets of admission Is. each," and during his stay in London, which he only survived three years, Lambert proved the fashionable celebrity of the moment, all day long his rooms being thronged with society crowds, in which Mayfair and Belgravia were largely pre- dominant. The fine old cedars of Lebanon at Kew Gar- dens are gradually and surely diminishing in number, and the authorities record with regret the decadence of vet another, one of the group growing near the Pagoda. It was, 75ft. high, and its trunk, which was 14ft. 2in. in circumference near the base, and lift. 7in. at 10ft. from the ground, contained nearly 300 cubic feet of timber. It is believed to have been planted about the time the Pagoda was built in 1762. The group now consists of only three trees, whereas, about half a century ago, the cedars were growing so thickly all round the base of the Pagoda that the ground was quite hidden from the view of anyone looking down from the top. There are still some twenty specimens flourishing in other parts of the Gardens, but it is considered that the adverse influences of London smoke and a sterile soil shorten the lives of these trees in Kew, and their decadence has certainly been accelerated by the large proportion of dry summers experienced in the Thames Valley since 1593. S. J.

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