The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1869-05-01 00:00:00

Ifittropolitan 6ossip.

7AT OUR Owe(

'The remarks under this head are to be regarded as the ex-
Dression of independent opinion, from the pen of agentlenaaa
ID whom we have the trreateat confidence, but for which we
n:vortheless do not hold ourselves responaiblej

The progress which the Government had made with
their Irish Church Bill is of good augury for the success
of the measure in another place." Government
majorities fluctuating among the small figures over
100 must be highly gratifying to the authors of the
bill and those who advocate the policy embodied in
it. It, of course, remains to be seen how the
House of Lords will treat the measure when it
COTIWS before them. It is certain that the Con-
servative element is stronger in their lordships'
House than in the Commons, but it is equally certain
that the bill will come before the Lords backed by such
a majority on principle and such repeated majorities
on matters of detail, that it would excite no little sur-
prise generally were the House of Peers to reject it.
Meanwhile, looking at the discussions in committee
without party feeling, it ought to be added that the
Conservative party in the Commons have shown a
highly creditable abstinence from anything that can be
cllrd factious opposition.
•

If those intelligent foreigners who are always sup-
posed to take great interest in English institutions
have watched our action and inaction with regard to
the new Palace of Justice that we have been talking of
for years, they must laugh consumedly at this last and
greatest illustration of the bungles of our Circumlo-
cution Office, whose chief business is useless talk, and
who are always showing us that they know "how not
to do it." First a million and a half of money
is
asked for the new haw Courts, and then it in found
that four millions are required. We spend years in
arranging for the site, clear away a MASS of houses,
and then talk about building the palace somewhere else.
We have a monster debate in the House of Commons
on the relative merits of the original site and the pro-
posed site, and then the Chancellor of the Exchequer
proposes a third site. What is to be the result of all
this is still rather doubtful, though this third site will
probably be adopted, but it is evident that there is
something radically wrong in the mode of not deciding
where our public buildings are to be, and how and by
whom they shall be built, and it is doubtful whether
the Continental despotic system be not in this; matter
better than our own no system.
- -

----- ---
I noticed the other day, for the first time, that we
have a Commons Preservation Society. Whether it
bas just sprung into being, or whether it has been
hiding its light under a bushel, matters little, but at
all events it is doing good work in trying to preserve
Epping Forest, which every day lees and lees deserves
the name: The difficulty that any society aiming to
preserve our commons must labour under is in not
knowing how to go to work or whom to appeal to.
One would think that the Office of Woods and Forests
would be the right department to apply to, but it
seems that this is but a mere revenue department,
the head of which has nothing to do but to get as
much as possible out of the lands under his care.
But it appears also that the care of Epping Forest
I. Ls been transferred to the Board of Works; and yet,
H.'range to say, Mr. Layard, who is at the head of this
lloard, says that he is dependent on the Treasury for
funds to prosecute those who have usurped the rights
of the Crown (virtually those of the people) in relation
to the forest. And so any society that would do the
public good service by trying to preserve what few
commons we have left near London finds itself driven
from pillar to post and poet to pillar. All the more
thanks to them for engaging in such difficult work.
The initiatory proceedings taken by the Government
to put down the sporting lotteries—the " specs "
as
they are called—raise the hope that sooner or later
they will be abolished, but at present the prosecution
is singularly disproportionate to the extent of the evil.
These "specs" are so numerous and so largely supported
that it will re,jaire all the energy of the executive
government to crush them, but it is to be hoped that
this energy will not be wanting. The evil that these
sporting lotteries do is incalculable. If betting be
morally and socially injurious, of which there can be
no doubt, surely that which brings betting "down to
the meanest capacity," and which spreads and developes
the passion for gambling, must be intrinsically bad.
The Government have shown strange apathy in so
long delaying the prosecution ; but it is never too late
to mood. In this matter, at least, we have what we
so often sneer at, a paternal Government, and certainly
parents have good cause to hope for the success of its
tardy action. If ever the Government succeeds in
putting down these sporting lotteries, they will turn
their attention to numerous other lotteries which exist
in spite of their nominal illegality.

- _
A paragraph is going the rounds to the effect that
1)r. Coleus° has finished a volume in continuation of
his work on the Pentateuch, and that he is in doubt
whether he shall come to England to publish it or
intrust it. to friends here and continue in the colony.
If I were a Zulu sitting at the feet of the learned
bishop, I fancy I should pop to him the impertinent
question whether it would not be best to do neither.

The movement in favour of reducing the postage on
newspapers and printed matter is acquiring increased
weight and importance. The Society of Arts has now
appointed a committee to aid the advocacy of this
reform, and the action of Mr. Edmund Yates in the
matter would seem to indicate that the Post Office is
willing to be convinced. The more the question is
examined and argued the more likely are the advocates
of the proposed change to succeed. There is indeed
very little to be said against it, but a great deal to be
said for it.

There is another movement which is progressing—
the Velocipede movement. Quite a new department of
manufacture has sprung up, and the makers of veloci-
pedes are all high busy. The new vehicle is now
frequently to be seen in the suburbs, and we have had
also a display of water velocipedes on the Thames.
These nautical carriages are simply an adaptation of
the paddle principle, and an improvement on the
canoe. There is no reason whatever why they should
not succeed, and in fact their success has already been
demonstrated on "the silent highway."
I have just been reading what I will call an unsom
fortably clever article in one of our daily papers, on
"The noise of London." We are reminded f " foot-
men who thunder at doors and tear at bells like Leo-
cork's demon-lover; and the postman's terrifying jerk
eight times a day, and the organs and the hurdy-gurdies,
and the brass bands, and the banjo niggers, and the man
with the bear, and the man with the pony, and Punch,
and the sweeps, and the dustmen," and many other
noises. Assuredly this London of ours must be the
noisest place in the world. "I've journeyed over
many lands," but never heard anything approaching to
the constant din and clatter of the metropolis. And of
all the horrors of noise undoubtedly the worst is that
presh Iced by the barrel-organs. "Music! what crimes
are o 'omitted in thy name," it may be said, to parody
the words of Madame Roland. The noise of a
barrel-organ is no more music than the sweetest mimic
ever heard is" sound and fury signifying nothing."
And yet there are maniacs in existence who accuse you
of not loving music because you object to the wailing
and droning and groaning and wheezing of these instru
meats of torture. There are neighbourhoods in London
cruelly and facetiously called quiet neighbourhoods,
where these (here imagine a strong adjective) organs
are a perennial nuisance. They come with persistent
punctoalty ; you endure the whole set of tunes, all
necessarily in the same key, and then, after an interval
of ten minutes for refreshment, another comes, and
still another. The popular theory is that you can send
them away if you don't like them; and so you can;
but the unhappy man who drags abaut this wretched
burden need only go a few doors off, where the sound
in quite as bad if not worse. lam ready to admit,
with Congre7e, that
Music hath charms to soothe tho savage breast,
To soften rocker, or bend the knotted oak
—figuratively and poetically ; but the combination and
disc rd of anything but sweet sounds which the
barrel rgan produces are enough to make anybody's
breast savage. The poor fellows who are doomed to
carry about these boxes of torment are sorely to be
pitied. They are a harmless, inoffensive body of men,
grossly ill-treated by the padroni, and in more senses
than one have to endure a grinding tyranny. Would
that Cob Henderson, if he has the power, would put a
stop to this organ nuisance; would that he had the
power if he has not ! Of course we must not even dare
to express a wish that the costermongers, who so
stupidly, because needlessly, bawl always at the top of
their lungs, were prohibited from making ouite so
much noise, for any one doing so would be liable to an
overflow of cant about oppressing the poor; but
perhaps I may be permitted to say that if I might ex.
press such a wish I would!

A JOE, AND In RE/WM.—The Pall Mall
Gazette says:—
Two young Englishmen have last favoured the inhabitants
of Stuttgart, with another example of that high spirit and
fgentlemaniike behaviour which have made English tourists
so universally respected on the Continent: and we are happy
to be al,le to add that their exploits have met with due ap-
preciation. On the Schloss Plate stands a statue of the late
King, flanked by twe weeping female figures, and great was
the consternation of the loyal townspeople on discovering
one in.rning that some daring miscreants, regardless of the
divinity that doth hedge a king," had painted the trio all
oolocrs of the rainbow and crowned them with domestic
vases unmentionable to ears polite. A reward of 1,200 florins
Offered for the detection of the offenders at once led to the
arrest of a retired officer of the :ith Lancers and his brother,
whom the German police, with the national slowness at
understanding a joke, confined In the common gaol, and put
on prison diet, with a German Bible apiece to beguile their
leisine hours. After three days of this regime they were
mu-I...Led by two gendarmes to the frontier, and dismissed,
with .in admonition, which they are hardly likely to forget,
never to re-enter the kingdom of Wurtembrirg. Last year,
It will be remembered, a similar jeu cresprit was played by
ome Oxonians at Mims.