The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1876-05-27 00:00:00

Our Yonban 6orttsponbtni.

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

The Guildhall welcome to the Prince of Wales on
his return from India was one of the most sumptuous
entertainments which has been witnessed in the annals
of the City of London. Many royal guests have from
time to time been received by the corporate authori-
ties of England's capital, and there have been grander
pageants than an this occasion, but none in which there
has been a heartier greeting. Whatever the City of
London takes in hand is certain to be done well. One
reason of this is that there is never any tack of funds
for any purpose for which morey is required. Here
is a body with an income of £400,000 a year—a sum
which the ruler of many an extinguished Germar.
principality might envy. This immense amount is
expended in great part in carrying out much needed
Improvements, and these are sometime of colossal
extent, such as the bridging of the Holborn-valley
with a magnificent viaduct, and the reconstruction of
Blaekfriars Bridge, both of which were opened by her
Majesty on the same day in November, 1.869. Either
of these great works would represent an outlay of at
least a quarter of a million sterling. Therefore the
Corporation, being well able to afford a display of
splendid hospitality, does not hesitate to do so. The
first entertainment which it ever gave the Prince
and Princess of Wales cost £60,000. This fact alone is
a striking illustration of the enormous wealth of the
comparatively small community included within the
civic limits, overshadowed by the stately dome of St.
c Paul's and lying between London Bridge and Temple
Box.

In addition to the renewed life thrown into the
metropolis by the return of the Prince of Wales, more
animation has been witnessed in consequence of the
preserve of several Royal guests. The Empress of
Germany has scarcely left us before King Geore e of
Hanover, Qaeen Mary, the Prince Royal, and two
princesses arrived, and the movements of there distie•
guished visitors are invested with much interest. The
King, Lice the Duke of Cambridge; is a first cousin-10
our own Queen, is Duke of Cumberland in the English
peerage, and would, therefore, have a perfect right to
pit and vote in the House of Lords. Before the acces-
sion of her Majesty to the throne in 1837, the English
Sovereigns, from the time of George 1., had been rulers
also over Hanover, but as the right of succession there
is limited strictly to heirs male, Hanover reverted to
the House of Brunswick entirely when Queen Victoria
came to the English Crown. All went well for
nearly thirty years, but in the summer of
1863, in the contest between Prussia and Austria
for supremacy in Germany the development of
the Prussian armies was so cleverly executed and with
such wonderful rapidity, that Austria was completely
defeated, and her rival annexed one kingdom after
another; or perhaps it it would be more correct to say,
formed them into what was afterwards known as
the North German Confederation. Amongst the
thrones which the Prussians then converted into
footstools was that of Hanover, although King
George has never recognized the j sstice of the decision
which took his kingdom from him. The conten-
tion of the ruling powers at Berlin was, that in times
gone by a divided Germany had fallen an easy
prey to French ambition, and that a great and
united Confederation would alone interpose an irre-
siatible barrier to the designs of the common and
hereditary foe. The value of this reasoning was
apparent in July, 1870, when France declared war
against Prussia. From end to end of the vast
Fatherland, and from the Danube to the Baltic, there
was one controlling agency—one moving force. There
was also one cry—" To the Rhine!" and every railway
was crowded with troops hurrying towards the banks
of the sacred river to repel the invader. With such
marvellous celerity was this done, that, within a fort-
night from the declaration of war, half a million of
armed men—cavalry, infantry, and artillery—were
upon the French frontier, and the tide of invasion
which had been intended for Germany was rolled back
in devastating waves upon the fair plains of Alsace and
Lorraine. But it would have been impossible to
accomplish such a result had each of the German States
exercised its own military administration. It was the
master mind of eount Moltke which directed the
movements of these gigantic armies as easily as the chess
player is enabled to place his pawns.
The increasing coldness of the summer in these
atitudes is not only attracting the attention of the
learned, but is noticed with uneasiness by those who
remember the old-fashioned weather. Steamers which
have made their way across the Atlantic report that
huge masses of ice are continually drifting down into
it from the Polar Seas, and that in that part of it
which stretches away from the coast of Newfoundland,
navigation becomes increasingly difficult every year.
Of mune, if immense blocks of ice are continually
knocking about in the Atlantic, the water is not
only chilled, but also the winds passing over the
ocean, and these winds do not lose their
frigidity when they blow upon our islands. We are
told by scientific men that the earth is unmistakeably
becoming colder at the Poles, as a consequence of the
sun losing some of its fervent heat; and if the increas-
ing cold were confined to the Poles not much harm
would be done. The latitudes there have no ships of
Tarshish to be frczen in, there are no people with con-
stitutions to be affected and health to be broken, no
summer trade to be ruined. For those lands, in the
language of Milton, "Eternal silence is their doom."
But, as we see, the mischief of the augmented
formation of ice is not restricted to the Poles,
for. it is found floating away into distant oceans,
and not only immediately endangering the exist-
tence of stately ships, but chilling the tempera-
ture with a blast which is carried over busy cities
and fertile lands. Cold is an enemy to life
either animal or vegetable; and less cold and more
heat would act beneficially for man as well as for the
products of his industry. The blow has just now
fallen with particular force upon the poor people of
Iceland. In that country of frost and snow and hot-
water springs, the residents are satisfied with very
little, for even if they were able to earn a lot of money
it would be impossible for them to spend it. Their
bummer is a very brief one, but it is productive; and
fora few weeks the earth and the fisheries yield all
the more abundantly to compensate for the presence of
the iron bands of ice which grasp them during the
greater p trt of the twelve months. Judge of the
dismay of the unfortunate inhabitants at seeing their
fields and gardens covered with frozen snow when they
ought to be bright with vegetation, and their fisheries
destroyed by solid blocks of ice filling their harbours
and their bays, and the waters of their seas as far as
the eye can reach, with no hope of a clearance for two
months at least!

Perhaps there is no distect in London so well
knowniby reputation to the general public throughout
the kingdom as South Kensington. For years it
has been the headquarters of important social and
educational movements the influence of which have ex-
tended throughout the kingdom. Every schoolmaster
in the land knows something about the department
of Science and Art at South Kensington; Mr.
Buckmaster's lectures have brought tens of thousands
acquainted with the work of the National School
of Cookery there; it was the site of the International
Exhibition of 1862; the South Kensingtm Museum
is a place of interest to all visitors from the
provinces; a series of annual exhibitions have
been held there since 1871 ; her Majesty has just
opened a Loan Collection of Scientific Apparatus
there; in South Kensington stands the Royal Albert
hail; and the latest addition to its attractions is the
National Training School for Music, which has been
opened by the Dukes of Edinburgh and Connaught.
It has often struck many as remarkable that while the
Royal Academy of Arts keeps Itself so prominently
before the public, the Royal Academy of Music was
but little heard of, although the admirers of music as
compared with art would be twenty to one. That is
to say, there are immense numbers who, although un•
able to appreciate one of the masterpieces of Michael
Angelo, would be stirred to the soul by the
sublime strains of the "Hallelujah Chorus."
Therefore it is not easy to account for the
comparatively inferior position which the Royal
Academy of Music has so long occupied, and it is hoped
that this national Training school inaugurated so
quietly and unostentatiously by two younger sons of
the Queen will assist in popularising an attainment
which is such a general favourite, and whose soothing
influence has been the theme of song by poets in all
ages.

Those who can look back upon the great railway
contests before Parliamentary committees 30 years
.go, will remember the very familiar expression then
in use—the "Battle of the Gauges." It was a contest
between Broad and Narrow—the seven feet track of the
former against the 4ft. 7in way of the latter.
Isambard Brunel was the champion of the
broad, Robert Stephenson of the narrow. From the
first the advocates of the seven feet guage had one
great difficulty to contend with—it was more costly in
every way. Engines, carriages, permanent way, em-
bankment 4, tunnels, cuttings, viaducts, bridges, plat-
forms, stations, must mcessarily be all vastly more
expensive than if they had been male upon a smaller
scale. It did not make so much difference in districts
which were sparsely peopled, and were obliged to be
content with a single pair of rails; but when there were
four lines—two up and two down —the difference in
the quantity of land to be paid for came to he enor-
n?ous. So Stephenson and the narrow guage won the
victory: for the London and North Western the
Great Northern, the Midland, the South Eastern, the
Brighton, the Chatham and Dover, the Great Eastein
and the Beath Western, were all constructed upon the
narrow gauge, The Great Western was the only line