The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1876-03-28 00:00:00

Port Conatti Expreso.

TUMMY. MARCH IL Ifft

NOTES OF THE WEEK.

It is now an open secret, says the Examiner,
why Mr. Disraeli did not let the Royal Titles
alone. We cant ot, it is true, as yet pretend to
know all the stages in the gestation of his Bill
before it saw the light of Parliament. Who or
what first suggested to the Queen that the
jewels of her old crown had lost their splendour,
and that she should obtain permission to give
them a more fashionable setting, whether it is
an old idea of Baron Stockmar's, or an idea
that has grown out of the recent alliances of our
Royal Family, must be left to the Grevilles of
the present Court to disclose, when it can be
done with propriety. Perhaps Mr. John
Lemoinne is well informed when he says that
the object of the new title is to settle certain
questions of precedence which have been apples
of discord in the Royal Family. Perhaps this
theory is too obvious to be true. It will no
doubt be an interesting chapter in Royal history
when it is written. Meanwhile, it has been
semi-officially announced that Mr. Disraeli did
not introduce the enabling Bill of his own
motion, but at the express desire—or should we
say command I—of the Queen herself. This
much we learn from the Standard. But there is
another interesting fact which the Standard has
not yet seen its way to mentioning, namely,
that the Queen communicated the seine desire
to her Ministers when Mr. Gladstone was in
office, and that they succeeded in persuading
Her Majesty that they had good reasons for
declining to ask the House of Commons to give
her the necessary coruititutional powers. This
fact is interesting, because it shows that Mr.
Disraeli had a precedent for not acceding to
Her Majesty's request, and the question
naturally arises, why was Mr. Disraeli foolish
enough to disregard this precedent.

The Queen's visit to Germany is so timed
that on meeting the German Kaiser (people
stupidly persist in calling him Emperor of
Germany) she will be able to meet him on equal
terms. This was probably the reason for the
Bill passing through the Lower House. It
was well understood that the opposition in the
Lord's will be the merest form, so that for all
intents and purposes the Queen is an Empress
and can meet an Emperor on equal terms. It is
all nonsense to say in reply as Mr. Disraeli does,
that she is only an Empress in India, and a
Queen in Great Britain. The German Emperor
in the same way is only King in Prussia, but the
fact is that tho Imperial title cannot be localised.
The German Kaiser is Kaiser everywhere,
and in the same way the Indian Empress
is an Empress on her Continental travels. Mr.
Disraeli perhaps timed this delicate stroke of
Court flattery, so that tho Queen might air her
Imperial dignity at Baden Baden. If so, it was
a stroke of cleverness worthy of that political
Archimages who now holds the helm of State.
The special royal train by which Her Majesty
and her youngest daughter will be conveyed
from IVindsor to Portsmouth has had a satis-
factory trial trip, so anxious are our railway
authorities that the arrangements should be
perfect. Some improvements have been effected
which may be of interest to the public beyond
the royal journey. To the locomotive has been
fitted a steam indicator to show the number of
miles travelled per hour, and a new and power-
ful steam brake. We are all anxious that the
Queen should travel in safety ; but it may be
reinembered that, in a celebrated letter which
I she addressed to railway directors generally, she
expressed the hope that the same precautions
which are taken to secure safety when she
travels, might be employed for the public
generally. Perhaps the directors will take the
hint. The Royal yacht the Victoria and Alberta,
which is to convey Her Majesty across the
Channel, has just been fitted up and decorated
at the expense of £.5,000.

Madame Adelina Patti, charming vocalist as
she is, owes much of her popularity to the
enthusiastic gush of correspondents of some of
the daily papers, and the readiness with which
that gush is admitted. For example, the
Vienna correspondent of the Daily Telegraph,
alluding to her performance in "La Traviata "
at the Imperial Opera House there, says,
"from the beginning to the end of the per-
formance she was literally smothered in dowers."
How the prima donna could manage to sing
under such cimunistances—or, rather, under
such flowers, we cannot exactly understand.
The same correspondent adds that Madame
Patti subsequently "sang in the Huguenots
with even greater success " ; so that we suppose
on this occasion she was more than "smothered
in flowers." Such extravagant adulation if
somewhat nauseating.

Young men in search of wives may with
advantage visit London. There the female
population came& the males by more than two
hundred thousand (220,168). At the Census of
1871 there were 226,393 women and girls, or
more than one-eighth of the whole, occupied in
domestic service; while the milliners, dress-
makers, and sempstresses amounted to less than
half that number. The excess of women over
men appears to be due to an incursion of the
former in search of work; for, as influenced by
births and deaths alone, the sexes would be
nearly equal. The number of males born is
greater than the females, and the difference is
almost exactly corrected by the greater male
mortality. The efforts which have been made
to open new kinds of industry to women have
probably added to the inherent attractiveness of
a great centre of population; and it is even
possible that these efforts may tend, for a certain
time, to increase the keenness of the competition
which it may be hoped they will ultimately
abate.