The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1867-09-03 00:00:00

JOurset Crituttg (Expreo
TUNIMAY. SEITEMBER 3. 1867.

'NOTES OF THE WEEK.

If language is not to Emperors what it has been
said to be to diplomatists— a means of **Dowding
their thoughts'—we might certainly to be reassured
no respecting the Salzburg mailbag. The Imperial
Sphine hes apoken with no uncertain sound, and his
last utterance at Lille is especially noteworthy,
delivered as it was at the Bourse, the head-quarters
of commerce :—" Business would progress better if
certain journals did sot exaggerate the situation. I
hope that commerce will improve with the certainty
of pesos, and I shall do everything to my power to
re.establiah confidence." Surely, the form of
language can no further go, whether as • sincere re-
assurance or as a mesas of concealing thoughts of
opposite chancier. Napoleon's words are generally
accepted in the former light Perhaps each would
not be ills cam' only It seems clearly not to be the
interest of Pranoe or Austria to interfere iu
Germany, end the* provoke the South Germans to
throw themselves precipitately into the arms of
Prussia. We may therefore believe in the dis-
claimers of any intervention policy which France is •
a .id to have addressed to Prisms, and Austria to
the Smith Gorman States, and is the "certainty of
peace," for the present at laud. But there is one
point connected with Napoleon's utterances at Lille
which is worth a remark. The Emperor admitted
that mistakes had been committed and revere.,
sustained by his Governm.nt in its foreign policy,
which must be rather •nnoying to U. Rather, after
his energetic denials of any such mishaps all through
the late &anion of the French Legislature. The
Emperor, also, in intimating that his Government
was too strong to wish to turn the national attention
from domestia troubles by waging war abroad,
acknowledged the existence of each troubles, which
hi. "talking minister" has done. The French
Opposition papers seize on these discrepancies to
reeks some rather Implement comments, and it is
surely a riga of the times that the Paris journals
now plainly give expression to political criticism,
which five or air years ago they would not have
dared to convey in the most obscure hints
The first report of the Ritual Commirsion bag
shooed ointments of • very opposite character. The
Times, for instant*, looks upon it as "exactly ex-
pressing the general feeling of the public;" the
Telegraph thinks that 'the commissioners have not
grayed the problem mbniitted to them '•" the Daily
Nears considers the report "at once halting and
arbitrary ;." the Star generally approves of the re-
port, bat makes the odd proposition that, after the
law hae been declared and defined by Parliament,
ritualistic cams should be tried by County Courts!
The Advertiser considers the report as "on the
whets satisfactory," but expects that Coavooation
will not comer in any repressive legislation. Still
the Government "will be obliged to overrule the
decision of Couvecation, and to ask Parliament to
disregard it." For oOreelVeS we regard the report
a. eltegmber shallow and beside the mark. 'The
epieetion of vadnieuts, •ith which alone it deals,
is of very minor importance, and any ordinance
about mere colour will by no means tend
te the esttlenissit of this grave controversy.
The life and essence of the recent innovations of
dress and ornament lis in ths consistent body of
doctrine, the special Catholic dogmas, which they
symbolise 111 their advocates have from the first
strenuously insisted. The moat earnest of the
Ritualistic clergy have all along maintained that the
vestments were unessential, were altogether intim.
portant, indeed, sleet* from their symbolic aspect
ant office, ae helping to give visible emphasis to the
eac,rdotal theory they inculcate in their public
ministnitioes and private teaching. Numbers of
them have, moreover, mad on MU view. The greet
majority, probstily nine-tenths of the clergy who have
*beamed the Protestant section of their parishioners
by preaching the doctrines of the real peewee end
priestly absolution, have n 0,,, introduced the vest-
mettle at all. They satisfy Maenad v es with the melons
and reiterated exhibition of what they regard..
Catholic troth; and this is throughout the oouetry at '
the present mocaset a fee more prolific mums of local
attire and division than the subordinate and
iusigniticaut question of coloured vestments. The
more .1, because in the few mass where them vest-
meats have been actually introduced • majority of
tile congregation haa usually supported the innova-
tion, No doubt coloured vestments have • definitel
importance as the reflex of a theory, the viaibls
expression of Romanist dogma,; but it is not is
this aspect that the Collimation has dealt with them.
And to suppose that the Romanist movement in
the °lurch will be arrested by cutting off a
superficial outgrowth whilst the root of Catholic
doctrine is left to Sourish in unabated strength, is
as foolish and shortsighted as to imagine that •
vigorous tree would be destroyed by pruning.
Woolwieh is busy with preparatioos for the
Abyssinian nnPodision- All sorts of special
appliances are being oonstroetod, amoug which
may be mentioned a Dm:ober of pack-meddles for •
camels, upon which are to be manned light steel
seven-pounder goes, which are being specially made
fur the purpose. In foot, the whole army Of 10,000
men, with its camp-followers, 'arms, ammunition,
baggage, provisions, sad even the water required
!Jr its consumption, will be carried acmes the
mountain. which skirt the Red Sea ooest of
Abyssinia, upon the becks of camels and mules,
Tbe troop. will be principally Punjab Is.
fantry--composed of our ancient 100113ies, the
Sikhs therefore, we suppose, breath-loading rifieswill
not be brought much into play, which is • pity.
seeing what a fine opportunity the War Offlos
might have of trying expeeiments with the Snider
upon the vile bodies of AI reinian barbarian& Of
manse, the expedition will be extremely expensive, I
and will insks aconaideirslil, figure in nut year's

estimates ; for though oosidwated by the Indian
Governtuenk the cod will be borne by thia country.
We nisi therefore be permitted to bop., that wham
Bing 'Theodore hears of the prewar-amass making,
▪ wdl release hie captives, and wive um farthimt
trouble,

it has has decided by Sir flows@ fiery, ths
Bowutii.i* that tn deliver circulars for
=
tic at • mall le • certain 0003PeaY ID
istidertook to do, is an infringement of tbs
lsgal saoropoly of tlis post-ofilos.
circulars, psriodiaal accounts, societies' sotiesa,
are ves7 largely delivered by baud, sot only
by people's Owe servants, but by insrobsrs of th•
corps of Commisrionarieu Ms, it I. said, is
strictly illegal, but any attempt to meow Us. prac-
tice would and in an %Ostia° for the repeal of Lb,
restrictive law, and probably the same remelt may
arias from the present interfere... of th•
post-
oos with • company very useful to tradieunse.

THE CHOLERA: ITS PROBABLE CAUS&
If, se seems too probable, cholera is Moat to visit
Our shores, lor it is now visiting the sister isle, and
hes mood several deaths at Belfast, it may be well
to glands at the present Sete of our knowledge of
this popelsrlystyled " mysterious diemee." The
feet is notorious, that, if it may be truly mid of soy
disease, much more of this, that "many "
ere men's opinions," and with opinions so diverse,
even among dodo's, what method of managsratint,
when it wean, ma rationally claim oar cionfldnieet
Now, as no pestilence has ever created more con-
sternation, or lese been combated with less moose',
11w. caa help is directing sanction to the.. In-
vestigaticse, which mar probably be et e long crowned
with the discovery of the troth in this matter, we
shall deserve well of the public for whom we eater.
We may remind our readers of some of the most
largely accepted theorise of tbe cansetnic of cholera;
it has been regarded es dependent on atmospheric
olienge, in its oomposition or In it. electrical
condition ; it has been attributed to minim gene-
rated by the Wend action of sun's heat on
the .6411 R has been supposed to arise from
TobbelMs or other action within the earth's crest
--and many ooinoidenose Sennett such isnot'
and the prevalence of pestilence' nay be found in
the work of Noah Webster, and in Hecker's
"Epidemics of the Middle Ages;" it Ise been
ascribed to the sign:Won of istied swarms bye.
(avail and erudite physician in our own times;
and it hes bean imputed to the action of the germs
of fungi in the way of ferments in the fluids of the
human body. And it may be remarked, in peeing,
that this last theory hes become so far • household
word, as to have given its name to the whole en.
of isfactioae disorders to be found in the reports of
the Registrar Generel, who styles them Syne& or
Peristeaties.

Now, Mr. Siam, the health Wiest of London,
has quite meetly promoted a report, embodying !
the researches of Professor gainer, on the eminence
of microscopically minute fungi to be found in the
fluids of the human body in oholera. This report
has been publiabed in the London papers, as one of
great importance, and the mafiosi press ars bestow.
tog Enoch attention upon ik To be Blurt, at a
cholera oonfemos held at Weimar • few months
sines, • committee was appointed to esquire into the
significsooe of the presence of miorosoopio vegetations
in cholera. They reported that such were actually
to be found in the fluids of cholera patient.; and one
of them toe since published hia further investigations
in a separate form. Thies litter caostitute the sub.
statue of Mr. Binion's report
We propose to give an &hotfoot of these fads In
soother number; meanwhile placing before our
readers the opinion of one of our leading medical
periodicals as to their probable importanos, and also
alto their value in the hietory of this most interest-
ing question. The Lancet asys, "We feel that in
some such direction as we have indicated results of
paramount Importance are to be obtained by further
careful experimental research." It also writes,
"For the asks of oompleseness it may be well to
reknit) our memories as to past *venni In the
year 1848, Dr. Cowdell,• (of Dorchester), and in
1849, Dr. /ditchell.f (of Philadelphia, 11.8.), both
&dunned the opinion that cholera depended upon
the somas to the body and the development therein
of micrlsoopio fungi. The researches of Drs.
Brittain and Swain, of Bristol, lent ooneiderable
support to this theory. . . . Dr. Budd likewise
observed similar bodies in the drinking water
obtained from localities in which cholera prevailed.
, . . . . It appears that nothing similar to that
! recently brought to light by Professor Hillier, if we
except the forms depicted and described by Boehm
I in • little work published in 1838, who seems to
have been cognisant of the existence of minute
!vegetations, bat they possessed the features of a
torala, has been found by any observer."
(To be couninsed.)