The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1876-07-01 00:00:00

Our Yonban Corrtsycinbent.

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

The season in the metropolis may now be said to
be at its height, and westward the count) of London
life undoubtedly takes its way. Hyde-park is the
trysting place of the nrper ten thousand; and Rotten-
row, between the hours of four and six in the afternoon
Is crowded with carriages and horsemen. 0 ;casionally,
at night, Buckingham Palace is all ablaze with light
and brillancy, for a State Ball or a State Concert is
going on, and the building seems to be clothed afresh
in the glory which distinguished it in days of yore.
In Belgravia and Tyburnia, balls, parties, receptions,
and "at homes," are the order of the night. By day
there are garden parties, and pleasant drives, and
hours devoted to that interesting recreation known as
shopping. Piccadilly and Regent-street axe as impass-
able as London Bridge—two rows of vehicles on either
-11111 e— side of the thoroughfare, and the pavement crowded
with pedestrians. At times a burst of fierce heat
sweeps down upon the place, and in the narrow ways of
the City the people pass along with weary and
languid looks, as though they would give a
great deal for a breath of that breeze from
the sea which many find so health giving
and invigorating in the autumn. There is, of course,
the Thames, and a great blessing is the famous me-
tropolitan river, as it cubs into two vast sections the
myriads of homes of three millions and a half of people.
See it when the tide is at its height, and no one can be
surprised at the admiration which Londoners have for
their historic stream. It has often been objected to
the Thames that although it bears upon its banks the
metropolis of a mighty empire, it cannot properly be
called a great river. Well, we know it is not a Missis-
sippi, or an Amazon, three thousand miles long; but
It would be difficult to find another river within our
own latitudes with the width and depth of the Thames
at London Bridge at the same distance from the sea.
Take the Tyne, the Severn, the Mersey, or the Trent,
and say whether, at forty miles from its month, either
of these is capable of receiving ocean steamers and
liners such as those which may be witnessed in the
miles of docks which London boasts. I spoke
above of the blessing which the river was, and at
no time is this more appreciated than on one
of those very hot days which fell upon us
last week. That was the time to see the crowds
thronging the decks of the steamboats, eager to catch
the air currents caused by the motion of the water.
And as the fare from Lambeth to London Bridge—at
least four miles—is but a penny, no wonder that the
steamers are so popular in the summer, and that this
mode ef locomotion is preferred to the underground
railway, or indeed to any other.
Appropriately enough the review of Volunteers in
Hyde Park, by the Prince of Wales, will precede the
opening af the great annual competition at Wimbledon.
Vet us hope the weather will be better for the Volun-
teers than it was last year. The second week of the
meeting in 1875 witnessed that extraordinary down-
pour of rain which, on the 14th and 15th of July, con-
verted hill-side rills into rushing torrents, and made
our vallews so many inland seas. Anything more de-
pressing than the aspect of the camp at Wimbledon
on a wet day it would be difficult to imagine.
The soil is turned into a quagmire, and earth
and sky are blended in an undistinguishable
mass of soaking cloud. -And while there is
all
,this dreariness in the surroundings, the actors
In the scene, dree.ehed through and through,
move noiselessly about like so many unhappy phantoms,
very different from the air of blitheness and gaiety
which seems inseparable from genial and cheerful
weather. In 1868 the volunteers suffered from un-
interrupted and fervent heat; while last year the rains
descended and the floods came, and the men would
have given a great deal fcr a little of that sunlight
which poured upon them with such fierceness seven
years before.

Lord Sandhurst, whose death has been announced,
was better known by the name which he bore before he
was raised to the peerage—Sir William Mansfield. He
was one of the most distinjuished military adminis-
trators of his time. He was Commander-in-Chief of
the British forces in India for several years—a
post of great importance and responsibility in the
face of the everlasting scare over the advance
of Russia in Central Asia, and of the hoe-
tility of unsubdued tribes on the frontier.
He rendered such good service during the Indian
mutiny inilBs7 that he received the thanks of both
Hnuses of Parliament; and since his return from the
East be has given valuable aid to the war office• in
carrying out those mili'ary reforms which were made
necessary by the results of the last continental war.
The German system of organizltion was then seen to
approach EO nearly to perfection, that sweeping
changes were required; and Lord Sandhurst, as a
practical man, was called in to do the work. He has
been removed from the sphere of his labours at a
comparatively early age, 57; but the climate of India
is a very trying one, and Lord Sandhurst had spent
_ _
t_t,". Jana/16- yr

The Chinese, as we all know, have for thousands of
years looked upon all other nations as barbarians, and
there was a time when they might have been juitified
to some extent in doing so. When the present busy
area of Great Britain was covered with primeval
forests, and centuries before the Druids bad
ceased to worship at Stonehenge, the Chinese,
enclosed within the vast wall which they
had built to protect themselves from the
depredations of the Tartars, were masters of many
of the arts of civilization. They were not so
warlike as the ROMADP, rrr so polished as the
Athenians; but their philosophy, as exhibited in the
works of Confucius and Mencius, was of a very pro-
found type, and they knew the art of printing ages
upon ages before the foundations of Westminster
Abbez, were laid. Yet where are the Chinese in the
world's race to-day? Wrapped up in their own self-
sufficiency, they are paying the penalty of that
narrow-mindedness which is certain to follow seclu-
sion from the world. Now, when our own island,

which was a desolate solitude at the time of China's

glory, is covered with railways, the Celestials have
just ,opened their first line, eleven English miles in
length, connecting Shanghai with the village of
Oucsoon. It runs along the banlis of a river, so that
there were no great engineering difficulties in the way
of its accomplishment, such as those which at home
have been overcome by the ingenuity of Brunel, and
had to be encountered in the construction of railways
anderneath the crowded streets of the British capital.
The time is approaching when the reports of harvest
prospects will appear in the papers; and, as we are no
longer so dependesit upon our home supply as was
formerly the case, our people look with interest upon
the grain-producing facilities of other countries. It
appears that three successive bad harvests have
plunged Southern Russia into distress, and caused
an alarming falling-off in the exports of wheat.
Previously to this, however, the exports of America
had taken the place of those sent out by Russia, and
the defective harvests in the latter country have
enabled the United States to increase this advantage.
In the brief space of six years, the American exports
of corn to England had trebled, while those of Russia
had fallen to one•half. The growth of the American
grain market had been nine times more rapid than
that of the Russian—a fact perhaps attributable to
superior intelligence, skill, enterprise, capital, and
facilities of conveyance. There is no doubt that the
Mississippi Valley alone is capable of producing food
enough for all Europe. The only obstacle in the
way of the Americans is their great distance
from the market, and the consequent cost of carriage.
To•overcome this they have been improving their canals,
extending railway communication, and utilizing the
St. Lawrence. Of late considerable attention has been
paid to the deepening of the mouths of the Mississippi,
for a great sandbar at the pencipal of these has
hitherto prevented the exportation of corn that way.
The prodigious volume of water brought down bears
with it a vast quantity of alluvial deposit; and if the
Americans can prevent the silting up of the Channel
at New Orleans, and open the port to the shipping of
great cargoes of grain, they will perform a service not
only to themselves but to the world at large.
The life of a special correspondent of a newspaper
must be a curious and a diversified one, and a thorough
knowledge of climes and peoples must be his. A
January day one year finds him in the Winter Palace
at St. Petersburg, describing the scene at the Duke of
Edinburgh's wedding; a November day in the next
year sees him in India noting the reception of the
Prince of Wales. An extraordinary journey has lately
been undertaken by a party of what are
called in America "globe trotters," that is to say a
band of perzons who are doing the tour of the world in
eighty days. The Times, Illustrated London News, and
New York Herald have sent special correspondents
with this party, which left New York at one o'clock
on the morning of the let of June. They travelled
441,9pitleifilythant a halt, and reached Pittsburg two
rniriaktheprd)l4e-appointedAina The average speed
was 44 larritop ifser, ank the rakeio. •• 68. The
train arrived tr C hica,g cP24*-traiii tztes_bef, ..•
and , and a
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• of 39 liatrathetraia42A4llf witacross the4onti
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