The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1871-12-19 00:00:00

Vaud Ciotti eXiirtos.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 19, 1871•

NOTES OF THE WEEK.
The Prince ! The Prince! No other thought
has had a place this week in bushes', at home,
or anywhere. In the presence of acr great an
anxiety all festivities have been suspended;
gloomy spell has forbidden even speculation in
the City, and there has been on the Exchange
emphatically "nothing doing." Travelling
people talk of nothin.4 else ; the newspapers
rmeoittehrearete
aewdhastieteisre Were
ready totold; weepawt ithhomther;
is
ythielstyblut
The
Queou and Princess, and are eager for nothing
estamveptetheeil;reuitest
oboulolefttinhe.
word " Republic" we never expect to hear uttered
nlaVt ih nt' s o
again in Eugland oven by its fond defenders.
The confidence felt at Sandringham al tO the
progress of the Prince of Wales is testified by
,
the expected return of the Queen to Windsor to-
day (Monday); and we shall now probably hoar
umrupreose ofp
ofaane;: iliy meeting of Parliament
itiii..; a Regent—a course
for nothingtep
that even the death of the Prince would not
have necessitated, unless her Majesty's health
and strength had given way.
English speaking race has never been so
united in thought and desire as through this
week. Since telegraphy has brought us all to-
gether, there has, in fact, been no similar oppor-
tunity for its magical! working. The brief
sentences from Sandringham have reached all
parts of Her Majority's dominions in a brief hour
or two, and hopes and fears corresponding to
those at the bedside of the Prince have alternated
in tho breasts of Englishmen throughout the
world. Never, probably, has our race been so
brought together as in the past week. Wo can
but "go softly" before our God in the presence
of death. Everybody has watched at the bedside
of the Prince, feeling that he lay "sick unto
death," and conscious of the impotence of all
professional skill in such extremities. The
anxiety has boon as intense as the prayer for the
recovery of the Prince has boon universal. "by
these things moo live," wrote Hezekiah when
recovered of his sickness. Such a week is not
lost upon the people.
A book of curiosities from the Tichborne trial
will probably appear hereafter. We may note
one or two, however, in passing. '1 ho lawyers'
avorsiou to punctuation has boon again justified,
and it is to be hoped that the shorthand writer
for the Court and jury will not be led into many
errors like that which, by a semicolon, made
Colonel Stuart Wortle)'a evidence on one point
appear to be the exact reverse of what it was.
Ile was questioned about the effect of exposure
on a certain daguerreotype portrait of Sir Roger,
and his answer, "No mere exposure would
account for what I see on the daguerreotype,"
was reported, "No ; mere exposure would
account for what I see on the daguerreotype."
A very curious iniareudering. The Irish barber's
answer to Mr. Serjeant Ballantine will stand
among the smartest of the trial. "That is your
professional opinion ? ' said the Sergeant inter-
rogatively. "Ye.," was the prompt answer,
"without a foe." It is expected that the
claimant's case will be finished before Christmas,
and that the evidence for the defendant will be
concluded by Easter.
it is very satisfactory to learn that the ques-
tion of the improved unitary administration of
the country is likely to be dealt with by the
Government next session. It is one of groat
difficulty and complexity, yet at the same time
one which urgently demands attention. Speak-
ing at a meeting of the Charity Organisation, on
Tuesday, Mr. Stansfeld said that he should not
be disappointed if an opportunity were to offer
itself to him of putting forward some legislative
proposals next session upon the subject of the
sanitary administration of the coon try ;
and that ho was at the present time busily
engaged, at any rate, in putting into shape
proposals which he hoped to submit to his
colleagues on that subject.
The Morning l'ost contends that it his high
timo that resolute steps were taken for the
gradual extinction of the income-tax, unless the
country is prepared to look upon it as a per-
maneut harden. "The tax is unjust, unequal in
its Incidence, fruitful of gross abuses bath on the
part of assessors and the assessed. It is an
unmoral tax, because it tempts those who
resent its injustice to make false returns, and it
is a tyrannical tax, because it loads to over-
charges which in a great number cannot bo
contested."
In the Tiiii,s of Saturday, as well as in other
journals, the sale was advertised of the contents
of the cottage formerly inhabited by the poet
Wordsworth at Rydal Mount. "Amongst them
may be enumerated," says the advertisement,
'the carved oak bedstead mode for James I
wit'i the rare old tapestry hangings; a auo old
carved oak altar screen ; a miscellaneous calico-
tion of interesting items from the Keswick
Museum; a grand pianoforte by Wornuin,
formerly belonging to Charles Dickens ; a collec-
tion of stuffed birds and animals, and numerous
articles." Another advertisement tells us that
among the effects are comprised the table upon
which Dickens wrote the fragment of Edwin
Brood and the bedstead upon which the great
novelist died. But none of the advertisements
mention that the recent proprietor of those
articles of virtu and occupant of Wordsworth's
residence was the notorious James Hitch:nu],
otherwise Percy Montgomery, Vernon do Mont-
gomery, and Viscount de Montgomery, well
known to newspaper proprietors as "Hamilton
and C 0.," and who is now undergoing a sentence
of twelve mouths' hard labour in Coldbath Fields
Prison for conspiracy to defraud. Sic transit
gluriu Inundi—especially when the glory is
founded on false au d franduleut pretences.
The early closing of shops, the Bank Holidays
Act, and its growiug adoption by the commercial
community generally, the Factory Acts, aud the
tYorkshop Regulation Acts, are apt to foster a
notion that we English people are a dreadfully
overworked race, and that holidays are the one
thing needful to make us joyous and free. But
there is another aspect of the question which it
may be useful to remember. Work brings
pleasures of its on which no merry-making
affords, in addition to its obvious benefits which
are indicated in the maxim "No work, no
supper." The Saturday lieriew expresses senti-
ments on this topic which we cordially endorse
iii the following eloquent passage There is
a time for most men when work assumes to it-
self an aspect of pleasure and delight quite above
any pleasure so called. For the greater part,
indeed, of our life, work is happiness in disguise;
we don't know it for what it is, and, in fact,
mistake it for something absolutely different.
So long as cessation from work comes to us as
an interlude, rest and play and leisur3 are the
delights of life ; but when once it is realized
that work is over—when once, indeed, the mere
doubt of being Able to resume it crosses the mind
—then work takes the form of toe sunituion
bon it in. Of all past joys (we are not speaking of
the affections), it is that which awakens the
most exquisite regrets. The used up labourer,
condemned to compulsory inaction, will not
stitouit to the decree that his work is over,
that the fields which he has so painfully
trod must now be tilled and harvested by
others, that his aching bones may rest
themselves henceforth in the chimney-corner.
Aches and pains which can be kept under in
work, and in the serenity which work brings,
take possession of him mind and body when he
has nothing to do, and induce a poignant regret.
Thu crippled Gld bricklayer drags himself to the
ot hoarding, that the familiar tinkle of the
tiowell may gladden ins oars, and that he may
recount to any.one who will listen the many along
day's work ho has gone through, the buildings
he has helped to raise, the achievements of his
youth and manhood. It is his way of saying.
ith King Arthur, '1 have lived may life'; and
moreover ho now realizes the delight of earning
wages, eveu in the process of earning them, as
perhaps he never felt it before. lhe publican's
daughter, whose only share in her father's calling
has been its toil and moil and ceaseless bustle,
languishing on her death-bed, looks back with
longing, net on occasional holidays and junket-
lugs, but ou the work of every day. How she
was always on her feet, always running up and
down in ceaseless activity, how tired she was at
night, and how 1 slept—oh, how I slept!' There
are people, of course, who have never worked
with a will; those don't regret work when they
have by any moans shuttled out of the yoke.
But we find that work once fairly buckled to,
once accepted as a duty not to ho shirked,
becomes the most familiar of all necessities, and
creates, when the last stroke is done, a hankering
and yearning which the loss of no sport or plea-
sure can equal in pathos."

The

BISAMINSTEkt.

The Lord Bishop of Salisbury hits appointed the Rev.
Alfred Codd, olerk, ILA., Vicar of Dominator, to be
Enrol Doan of the North portion of the Deanery of
BridPort. Via 800. aud Rev. A. It. Spring Moe,
rosignud.