The Warwickshire Herald. — 1886-01-07 (Birmingham, West Midlands, England)

NON RANEE "AT HOME."  The Times publishes an interesting description of a "Celebrity at Home "—namely Leopold Von Ranke, whose ninetieth birthday has just been celebrated at Berlin. The great historian is a man whose nature is still almost as sunny and simple as that of a child, and as one who never affects any of the disagreeable eccentricities of genius. On the contrary, every one who converses with Lim must be tempted to ask himself whether it be possible that such an extremely simple little man can be so great a writer. Even now, with 90 summers, or rather winters, on his brow, his talk is as firm, fluent, and continuous as ever it seemi to have been. His enunciation is clear and forcible; he requires not to stop and search for the right word; you never see him interrupt his story to pus his hand across his brow in the effort to regain some forgotten fact of fleeting idea, but all goes on swimmingly, and he will occasionally emphasise a sentence by a motion of Lie hand, or a flash of his bright, penetrating eye, which is still the index to his mind, and the redeeming ornament of his time-worn face. He spoke sadly, and with a thankful reference to the will of God, of other members of the human race who had attained, or nearly so, to his own marvellous age—of Sir Moses Montefiore, of Thomas Carlyle (who was born in the same year and month as Ranke), and of Sophocles, who might have even lived to be a centenarian, but for the fabled eagle and its tortoise. "But that will never be my fate," said the historian, "for Ido not live so much in the open air as did llophocles. I still do my two home' walking, or thereabouts, when the weather is good; but I don't like driving, it is too much of a bore. And this interval of exercise enables me to get through an average of eight hours' hard work every day. My first spell is from ten to two, and I return to my desk at nine till about one in the morning. Midnight is my most congenial hour, and this is the time, I find, when I can produce most." "And your Excellency can still write with ease ? " interjected the correspondent. "No, my writing days are done, but I lave two secretaries, whom I keep busily engaged in reading, looking up authoeities, making excerpts, and writing from my dictation. I have written little or nothing with my own hand since the appearance of my English History, and, strange to say, some of the works I thus dictated have been better received than others. Dictation sometimes enables one to be less fastidious and more natural. Of course, I have to be very careful with my mode of life. I have nee er been a sinker, but I can always enjoy a glass of good wine, and thank God, any nights are still free from sleeplessness, or I should never get on at all. You may think this house of mine"—a second-floor flat in the Luisen Strasse, with the high-level metropolitan railway trains screaming past—" you may think this house of mine rather a humble, ill-suited, and unfashionable abode; but I have lived in it now for more than the last 40 years, and cannot make up my mind to leave it. One good thing about it is that the sun can never get into my working-room ; and then I have all around Inc heie about 30,000 volumes, which I never could get properly removed and roatrange 1." The old historian said he intended his Universal History to be pretty complete, as tar as the Renaissance at least, though from that time up to the re-establishment of the German Empire, where he means to break off, it must necessarily bear more of the character of an art, rot.  A young married woman, named Elizabeth Weidner, of Stourbr dg., has c .mmitted suicide by drinking nitric acid. Her husband tried to prevent her, and burnt his fingers with the liquid, but iia swallowed some of the :mid, and died before assistance arrived. She also attempted to commit suicide six mouths ago.