The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1860-11-13 00:00:00

BLANDFORD.

i)ORSET CENTRAL—We hear the traffic returns
are not, as yet, very satisfactory. The intention of
all persons to continue to have their heavy goods by
wagon, on account of the high charges per ton for !
carriage made by the South-Western Company on
the section leased to them, must seriously operate
against the traffic returns assuming a more favo
character. The station being a mile (rein the town, '
the cost of transferring heavy goods from the line to
the wagon for conveyance home, combined with i
high railway charges, make the total cost of car-
riage from Poole to this place by wagon even less
per ton than by railway. It has been suggested to
lay down a tramway into the town, and if this lug.
gestion be not carried out we are assured on all sides
the line must be immediately brought into the town,
otherwise the section of line will not pay, and trade
railway advantages cannot be said to be secured.
M.ORKING NIAN'S CLUB. —An intelligent and
respectable audience assembled at the Townhall on
Tuesday evening the 6th ult. to hear a lecture from
the Rev. A. Littlewoud, curate in the neighbour-
bond, "On Lecturing and Lectures." Though the
reverend gentleman has been some little time resid-
ing in the neighbourhood the public here have had
a previous knowledge of his ability as a lecturer,
and anticipated a pleasant evening from the
subject chosen, and reasonably supposing that a
clergyman selecting such a subject would be fully
capable of handling it. Never, however, have we
witnessed in this town of lectures a inure signal and
wretched failure. After a quarter of an hour's un•
connected small-talk, in which the gentleman con-
fessed the subject had puzzled his braius
and beaten his powers, the few somethings
about "Lecturing and Lectures" were brought to an
awkward and break-down conclusion. The lecturer
then asked the permission of the honourable
chairman to finish up by narrating a voyage
he had taken in a collier from Cardiff
. round the Cape of Good Hope to India.
The second subject was as bad if not worse than the
first, since the scope afforded for description and
incident was filled up with badly•told trifles of
ordinary sea life in a dirty vessel, less flattering to
the intelligence of an intelligent audience than would
have been the re-told nursery rhyme of Cock-Robin
and old Mother Hubbard. We know not how to
designate this clergyman's effort. If we regard it as
made by one who is a recognized teacher of the
people in secular as well as sacred matters, we cannot
but think that such a misappropriation of such an
! opis,rtunity was a burlesque on the office lie repre-
sented. If, however, we regard it in relation to the
interests of the Working Man's Club, we cannot but
mildly designate the effort as one of wanton mischief,
and the member of this useful and struggling
society may well say " Save us from our friends. '
The Hon. W. H. B. Portuian, M. I'., from a desire
to aid the club, presided on the occasion, and the
manlier in which the Hon, gentleman stated the
course he supposed the lecturer would have taken in
the treatment of his subject, conveyed a rebuke that
it indeed must have been hard to bear. We believe
the lecturer expressed some feeling of shame at the
' part he had played.
LITER/IRV INSTITUTE—David Morse, Esq., late
proprietor and editor of the City chronicle, gave a
lecture on "Chins and the Chinese,' to the members
and friends of the Institution, at the Townliall, on
Wednesday, Nov. 7th. The gentleman abjured all
pretensions to the qualification of a professed
lecturer, and read sonic well arranged matter culled
from different authors, on the geographical features
of the country, its climate, and dynastic, judicial,
social, religious, and commercial history. At the
class, the lecturer detailed the objects *ought to be