The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1876-09-02 00:00:00

Our Foithn 0: or rtspo ithent.

[We deem it right to state that wo do not at all tims
Identify ourselves with our Correspondent's opinions.]

Byron has cmpared th 3 destruction of Sennacherib's
army with "the leaves of the forest when autumn has
blown." The natural decline of life has been likened
to the falling of the leaf. Vivid imaginations have
bracketed youth with May, and mature age wibh the
months of autumn which mark the passing away of the
year. In the one case the days have still to lengthen
out and a bright journey has yet to run its course; in
the other that course haa been well nigh run, and for
decaying vegetetion, no more than for life itself, is it
possible to put back the hand of Time, With the be-
ginning of September it is not unreasonable to expect
that autumnal associations begin to cluster around us
to a very pecceptible degree. The rays of the sun, no
longer vertical, become more and more oblique, and
the greenery of the trees, so rich in its freshness four
mouths before, gradually fades into a dusty brown.
As man clings to life with a tenacity which only the
dissolution of that life can shake, PO the leaf, all dry
and ehrivelled though it he, clings to its sup-
pert, until at length upon some raw and gusty
night, an equinoctial gala passes over the land,
the trees wring their giant arms in the pitiless wind,
and the leaves, which heve heretofore been things of
beauty, are scattered in thousands upon the ground,
henceforth fit only to be trodden under the foot of
man. Yet there are some pleasures to be found in the
autumnal time—the period of the harvest, of the
ingathering of the kindly fruits of the earth, of
agreeable se %aide trips, enjoyable excursions, and
well-arranged little pic -nice. There may be a transient
ft sling of regret at the disappearance of a long and
selendid snmmer, and at the arrival of the time for
lighting the first fire in the parlour, but dark evenings
are not without their mild delights, and the law of
sompensation never falls to provide for the pleasant
memories left by the departure of this or that par-
Ocular season.

-Many of us remember how, nearly twenty years
ago, the indignation of the people of this country rose
to an insense pitch agaiest the Sepoys for the bar-
haritiee committed during the Indian mutiny. It
broke out at Meerut on the 10th of May, 1857, when
Oolonel Finials, a trother to the then Lord Mayer of
London, was assassinated on the parade ground, and
from that time disaffeotion spread like wildfire in
the ranks of the native army in Bengal. Owing
to the absence of telegraphic communication
with England, several weeks elapsed before the
Intelligence a the massacres reached this country
and then Lord Palmerston's Government took
Instant meaeures for the suppreesion of the rising.
Sending for Sir Colin Campbell, the Premier entrusted
him with the command of the British ermy in India,
and asked him when he could start. "In twenty-four
hours," was the reply, and the brave oid soldier was
as good as his word. The approach of Sir Colin and
his Highlanders to Lucknow on a beautiful summer
evening has been graphically described—how time
quick ear of one of the besieged—a young Scottish
I,l(ly—caught the echoes of the pibroch in the distance,
a welcome sound enough to those who had been shut
by the rebels within Vie city of silvery domes, where
amid Moslem mosque and Pagan shrine, they had
expected to meet with the fate of the victims of °awn-
?ore. "Diana ye hear ? " she exclaimed, as she sprang
ap after applying her ear to the ground, "it's the
slogan of the Highlanders 1 we're saved I we're saved I"
She was right. In an incredibly short time Sir Colin
Campbell had driven forth the rebels who had encom-
passed the city, and aided by Havelock, put down the
rebellion. But the temper of the British people was
such as will never be forgotnen. It was well expressed
when one of our poets wrote—

" Oh ! who shall com'ort England for her daughters and her
Sons,
Her gentle and her generous, and her heroic ones;
Polluted, tortured murdered ; intolerable fates,
To be the sport of demons in their lust and in their hate.
Destroy those traitor legions ! hang every pariah hound,
And hunt them down to death In all the hills and cities
round."
We thought at that time that only such savages as the
native Hindoo could be guilty of such enormities, but
recent events upon our own continent have shown us
that in Europe to-day scenes have been enacted by the
troops of a State recogniz3d as one of the great Powers
which equal even if they do not surpass anything that
occurred in India during the summer of 1857.
National opinion is at length being expressbd as to
the feeling of the British public respecting the recent
events in Bulgaria, and meetings in condemnation of
the barbarities cf the Turkish forces have been held in
prich great centres of industry as Manchester and L7ver •
pool. Bsron, in writing of the siege of Corinth, has
deecribed the veracity of the Turkish dogs, and has
painted in stirring language their tier-like appetite
for human flesh. He declares that beneath the walls
of the Seraglio, at Constantinople, in the little cavities
worn by the Bosphorus in the rocks he has seen the dogs
greedily devouring the dead bodies of men, probably
those of tome refractory Janissaries. He tells us what
Alp the renegade witnessed during the siege of
Corinth :
"He saw the lean doge beneath the wall

Hold o'er the dead their carnival;
Gorging and growling o'er carcase and limb,
They were too busy to bark at him! r
From a Tartar's skull they had stripped the flesh
As ye peel the fig when the fruit is fresh,
And their white tusks crrusch'd o'er the whiter skull
As it slipped through their Jaws when their edge grew dull
As thes I,ztly mumbled the bones of the dead,
They could Ecarcely rise from the spot where they fed,
So well had they broken a lingerissg fast,
With those who had fallen for that night's repast.
The scalps were in the wild dog's maw,
The hair was tangled round his J tw ;
But close by the shore, on the edge of the gulf,
There sat a vulture flapping a wolf,

Who had stolen from the hills, but kept away,
Acared by the dogs from the human prey;
But he seized on the share of a steed that lay

Picked by the birds on the sands of tLe bay."
Readers of Byron must have often regarded this
description as being exaggerated, but the letters of the
special correspondents despatched by the London
newspapers to Bulgaria amply testify to the fidelity of
a picture which mast have tasked all the graphic
powers of the poet in its delineation.
Often as the variations in the temperature in these
islands have formed a suhject of remark, no more
extraordinary fluctuations have been witnessed for a
long time than those which were compressed into
a few days in the month of August. We have had
some hot weather in recent years, not a long spell
truly, but now and then a burst of fierce heat, which,
unaccustomed as we are be sueh a visitation, prostrated
the peoule mentally as physically. On one or two
days of Jane, 1870, and again in the summers of 1873
and 174, there were brief interludes in which the sky
appeared to be of molten brass, and the elements
seemed to melt with fervent heat. This season we had
gone thr,ugh a very hot time until the middle of
August, when warmer days descended upon the land
than any which load been known since the summer of
1868. The earth retained the heat to such an extent
that the very ground became scorching, and night
brought no relief, for the slight breeze was like the
breath of a Eimoon from far distant Sahara. As the
days wore on, however, the wind changed to the west,
bearing upon its wings the breezes of the Atlantie, the
firmament became black with vast banks of cloud, the
thunder pealed with a terrific crash and rattle, the
lightning darted hither and thither along the pathways
of the skies, and torrents of rain cooled the overcharged
atmosphere. The spell was broken, and the dorm
not only drove away the hot weather, but introduced
into our latitudes a current of such abnormally cold
air that those who a week before had been living in
an Indian temperature actually shivered under the
influence of frost. Yes, frost in August! In ten days
the thermometer heal run down the enormous number
of sixty degrees. The heat which the earth should
have retained evaporated almost as rapidly as it flies
off from the sea. Such sudden and rapid descents of
the mercury are trying to many a constitution, and
'materially affect the returns af the Registrar-General,

The exhaustive and protasoted Inquiry into the
cause of the disasteron board H.M.S. Thunderer has
elicited some valuable scientific evidence which it may '
be hoped will if actei upon have the effect of prevent-
ing a recurrence of such catastrophes. It was clearly
shown that the safety valve of the exploded boiler bad
stuck in its seat, and this, coupled with the fact of the
stop-valve being closed, led to the explosion. A
system of competent periodical inspection would, in all
probability prevent such calamities. There are
Government inspectors of mines, and socidents like
those on board the Thunderer might well suggest the
Appointment of such functionaries for steam boilers,
at all events so far as Her Majesty'd Navy in eon.
ce med. Had the Thunderer been engaged in a severe
battle, 45 deaths—the number lost in the recent mis-
fortnne—would have been quite a large proportion.
45 by 20—the number of our ironclad* now
in
nuthltei
lediterranean, and imagine that squadron to
come out of a seafight with a lode of 000 mcni
killed, to say nothing of the wouuded, and you
will have some idea of the destructiveness
of the disaster. And if the sailors in the Royal Navy
are prepared to lay down their lives in the service of
their country, that country ought to be prepared to
spare no expense and to omit no precaution which
shall ensure the security
of life when it ought not to
be placed in peril at aIL

The annual report of the Commissioner of the
Metropolitan Police is always a document of great
interest, telling as it does of the gradual growth and
development of bile great city guarded by the civil force
et which Colonel Henderson is the head. It might
aotenish even those with whom the vast size of London