The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1879-06-21 00:00:00

flVe deem it right to state that we do not at all times
identify ourselves with our Correspondent's opinions.]

Once more does the anniversary of Her Majesty's
Accession to the Throne remind her subjects of the
flight of Time since the opening of her reign, Queen
Victoria was eighteen years of age when she began to
reign, and forty and one years has she ruled over this
empire. She was then four years younger than her
youngest child is to-day. It was about five o'clock in
the morning of the 20th of June, 1837, that the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury and the Lord Chamberlain ar-
rived at Kensington Palace, where the Princess
Victoria was then residing, with her mother, the
Duchess of Kent, bringing with them the intelligence
the k'n,:s death. They had travelled frort
Windsor by road, there being then no railway c-m-
-munication, and the j airney had occupied nearly three
hours. The crown and the sceptre had pessed from
tha fiends of an old man of 72 into those of a young
girl of 18; and the change seemed typical of that re-
newed life which, as oveutA have proved, was in store
for the nation. For a lorg time the people had become
so accustomed to monarchs of mature years that they
had almost begun to regard them 113 permanent insti-
tutions in this country. More than a quarter of a
century before, the jabilee of George 111. had
twe., celebrated, and he was then seventy years
ei ago. A decade waned away before he was
succeed« d by George IV., at the mature age of
sixty. And when " the first gentleman in Europe'
was gathered to his fathers, his brother, William
IV., was 63 when he came to the Throne, and he
was 72 when he died. It was therefore almost with a
sigh of relief—certainly with a feeling of intense satis-
faction—that the people turned towards the young
Queen, who commenced her duties amid the meet
sincere good wishes of all classes of her se.bjects. It
has been a reign without a parallel for the enormcns
strides which have marked the progress of the arts and
sciences, and of those moving forces which tell of the ad-
vancement of civilization. It is only necessary to recal the
fact that there were then but very few railways, fewer
electric telegraphs, and no penny poet, to F e e the marvel-
lous difference between now and the time when "Long
live the Queen" was first proclaimed by the heralds
in the market-places of our great towns. The Queen,
although a greategrandruoteer, is only sixty now—far
younger than any of the Sovereigns of the House of
Hanover when the time has come for them to lay aside
the royal insignia; and there is no one amongst us who
does not entertain the hope that her Majesty will cele-
brate her Jubilee ei.ht years hence.
In looking over the political changes which have
marked the reign of green Victoria, it is interesting
to note that of the 658 members of the House of Com-
mons who, on the 20th of June, 1837, took the oath of
allegiance to the new Sovereign, nine or ten only
Low remain in that 'assembly. Of these the most
conspicuous is Mr. Gladstone, who had then
been a representative of the people five years,
having been first returned in 1832. The right hon.
gentleman has, therefore, been a member of the British
Parliament for the long period of 47 years. Of the
Ministers of that day, there has for a long time past
not been one left in the Lower Cnamber. Lord
Melbourne was Premier; but the name seems to
carry us almost as far back into history as that
of Lord Godolphin or Sir Robert Walpole. The
statesman who is best known to the present generation,
and who was one of the foremost members of that ad-
ministration, was Lord John Russell, who, under his
title of Earl, passed away at an advanced age a little
more than twelvemonths ago. Lord Beaconsfield was
returned to Parliament at the general election,
which immediately succeeded her Majesty's accession,
He was then thirty-two; he is now seventyeour. But
with the one or two exceptions herein mentioned, in
which the names will stand brightly on the pages of
English history, the House of Commons of two-and-
forty years ago seem to have dissolved like the baseless
fabric of a vision, leaving scarcely a wrack behind.
"Our fathers—where are they?" And where is the
collective wisdom of that far-off time? Gone, with all its
iTtruggles and its discords, sharing the fate of all things
terrestrial; while the Sovereign then is the Sovereign
now, still free from the rancorous attacks of party
controversy, and with the gathered experience of
mature years a living example of the axiom that the
Queen can do no wrong.
A few days ago the an- ouncement of the death of a
Waterloo veteran came as a reminder that the 18th
of June was near at hand, and that sixty-four years
have fled since that memorable Sunday in 1815, when
Wellington and Napoleon met for the first and the
last time, and by the final overthrow of the latter
peace was secured to Europe for nearly forty years.
Few must fl )W be the survivors of that sanguinary
fray, the close of which is so splendidly pourtrayed
by Maelise in the Peers' Robing Room of the Houses of
Parliament, where the graphic picture of the meeting
of Wellington and Blucher represents the British
general as grave and thoughtful, and the Prussian
commander, a quarter of a century Wellilgton'a senior,
all life and animation, and only eager to be off after the
retreating French army. Wellington was not an emo-
tional man, but it is on record that when the moon rose
that night, and-sent her cold and lifeless rays down upon
the hideous scenes of that gory battle-field, he wept
ae he rode throueh the reeking carnage and heard the
groans of the wounded as they awoke the echoes of
tl:e silent hours. The reflections evoked by the con-
templation of the field upon which a battle has been
fought and won are well interpreted by Lord Byron,
in the lines—

"When all is o'er it iz humbling to tread
Upon the welt'ring field of the tombless dead,
And see worms of the earth, fowls of the air,
Beasts of the forest, all gathering there.
All regarding man as their prey—
All rejoicing in his decay."
There is another 18th of June, the memories of
which are not recalled by Englishmen with HO much
satisfaction. In the summer of 1855, after the allied
forces of England, France, Turkey, and Sardinia had
been besieging the redoubtable fortress of Sebastopol
eight months, it was resolved to make an effort to carry
the place by storm; and early in the morning of the 18th
of June a desperate attack was made upon the Redan
and Malakhoff batteries by the French and English.
They were met by a murderous fire from the
Russian batteries, and the assault, after a conflict
that lasted forty-eight hours, was repulsed. The
English lost 21 officers and 144 men killed; 68 officers
and 1,08 men wounded. The French lo.t 37
officers and 1,544 men killed or missing. The
Russians admitted the loss of 781 killed, and nearly
4,000 wounded. Great was the gloom caused in Eng-
/and by this disaster. Prince Gortschakoff, the Rus-
sian commander, was naturally in high spirits. In a
spirited proclamation to his soldiers he said:
"The hour is approaching when the pride of the
enemy will be lowered, and their armies swept from
our soil like chaff blown away by the wind." The
result of the war did not quite accord with Prince
Gortschakoff's predictions, Sebastopol being in the
possession of the allies less than three months after-
wards.

Hospital Sunday in London, so far as it has
hitherto gone, can scarcely be described as a success.
A net sum of £-_5,000 for distribution does not seem
an adequare result in the midst of such a vast popula-
tion. The explanation is, however, clear enough.
In an enormous place like this there is not that cotn-
mnnity of interest which is so striking a feature of our
Drovincial towns. The resident in Belgravia knows as
little t the wants of the denizens of Bethnal Green
as Leeds knows of Exeter. Higbgate has as little sym-
pathy with Norwoud as Norwich has with Liverpool.
Both are nominally in London, but the geographical
features of the one place are totally unknown to the
Inhabitants of the other. Hence it is that an appeal
for a general fund for the hospitals of the metro-
polis is not heartily responded to. The people
in either district would contribute towards the
rapport of what they see in their midst, for they know
its worth; but the householder at Wapping is not
enthusiastic in his subscriptions towards a fund
wld,h is to be distributed at Charing Cress and St.
George's. The idea of Hospital Sunday is a good
one, but it is better adapted to towns where the people
know the worth of their own iere'tutions than to a col-
lection of great cities like London, where one street
knows nothing of another, and oftentimes a man is
nut acquainted with his next-door neighbour.
Temple Bar has disappeared at last. The main
body of the building was removed about eighteen
months ago, thus throwing open the facade of the Law
Courts, but the southern arch way was left standing as a
buttress for Messrs. Child's bank, which having now
been reconstructed, no longer requires the aid of the
tottering Bar, and this obstruction to the traffic has now
altogether ceased to exist. No longer will the heads of
traitors be exposed upon the civic structure; no longer
will it cause delay and inconvenience to impatient
travellers who find themselves blocked in a-crowded
thoroughfare when they are hastening to catch a train;
no longer will the Sovereign, on entering the City of
London in State, knock at the gates of Temple Bar for
ission thereto. The last time when this ceremony
adwa:lperformed was on Tuesday the 27th of February,
1872, when the Queen, amid such a demonstration of
loyalty and a wealth of decoration in the densely.
erowded streets as can never be forgotten by those who
witnessed it, went to Sc. Paul's to return thanks for
tlke recovery of the Prince of Wales from his danger-
ous i!lnese.
The laying of the foundation stone of the newEddy-
stone lighthotise by the Prince of Wales and the Duke
of Eiinburgh is an o-.!oasion of national interest and
importance. Smeatan's famou tower is not dispensed
vith because it is in the slightest degree insecure, for

it is as; firmly rivetted into the rock now as it was a
century ago; but the rock itself has been undermined
by the constant action of the sea, arid thus a neigh-
bouring ledge of the same reef has had to be selected
as a more secure basis for a new lighthouse. Singular
is the life led by an Eddystone light keeper. He has
three months on duty in his lonely towerin mid-channel,
and then a month upon the land. When located in the
lighthouse, fourteen miles out from Plymouth, and in
the very midst of the sea, there is nothing but "water,
water every where" around him by day and by night.
There he is in the fiercest storms, which sometimes in
the wildness of their fury make a clean sweep over his
solitary dwelling. It must be a curious sensation to
be standing upon dry ground in the very middle of
the waste of waters; to be immovable amid eternal
motion; and while recognizing the immensity and the
grandeur of the tea, to be enabled to defy the utmost
power of its might. Yet this is the lot of the light-
housekeeper, as the reflection of his warning beacon
is seen for miles upon the waves, and he himself is
lulled to sleep by the deep diapason of the sea.