The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1882-12-12 00:00:00

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Pant emit' Express.

DORCHESTER, DECEMBER 1211, WM

Even the urbanity of Earl Granville is tried
by the pettishness of the French Government,
which is bound in • measure to reflect the
pettishness of the Parisian press, with regard
to the defunct Dual Control. There is probably
a vast amount of diplomatic difficulty ahead
with regard to Egypt, yet, indirectly, the
French grievance uuty be troublesome even
more than directly. The ridiculous pretensions
of our neighbours in Central Africa and
Madagascar are confessedly based upon the
principle of " compensation.' A leading
Parisian journal, by the way, with characteristic
eilgnorance, ascribes the disfavour with which
claims in Madagascar are regarded to the
machinations of "the Methodists." The
Malagasy Envoys will be mush lionized during
their stay here. Another lion is Count de Lisle
Adam, wh wildly demands money from our
Governmenton the ground of being • descendant
of Adam—not the father of us all, but Count
Adam, the last hereditary Governor of Malta
We are having a cycle of fires, as we recent',
had a cycle of floods. It is a bad time for the
Insurance Aloes. The destruction of the
Alhambra attracted perhaps the most attention.
As a speculation it has paid well since it com-
menced its career as • theatre. It has latterly
paid 17 per cent., and a couple of Dukes were
members of the proprietary Company. From
the time that the Lord Chamberlain's temporary
ban was removed, its performances have been
not lees decorous than those of the majority of
other London theatres. The air of scandal
which continued to hang round it was not
associated with anything which met the eye or
ear.

A sad tale comes from Essex of agricultural
distress, and it is probable that in that low-lying
isount , a kind of Great Dismal Swamp between
the Thames and the German Ocean, the effect
of a succession of a bad seasons is felt with
unusual acuteness. Land is in many came
going out of cultivation, and farms will not be
taken even on the terms of having them rent
free and paying the taxes. What is more dia-
creasing still is that the went is apparently net
over, and the present Autumn has been so wet
that there will be little wheat sown till Spring.
Fresh from the simple grave of the late Arch-
bishop of Canterbury, whose quiet funeral
obsequies, without • taint of vulgar display,
furnish a singularly appropriate closing scene
to a useful and unostentatious life, many a
thoughtful mind will recall what are said to have
been the last words which fell from the dying
Prelate's lips, "The Church sad the World
seem entering on totally new phases." This is
especially true with regard to the Church which
during the year that is now drawing to its close
has sustained the lass of so many of its bright-
est ornaments. Dean Stanley, Dr. Pussy, and ,
Archbishop Tait have followed one another in
rapid succession, and, whatever may be the
popular estimate of their different views, no
one can deny that they were all genuine
workers, thoroughly consistent in their lives and
teachings. The English Church had not even
then recovered from the shozik occasioned by
the secession of Newman, and needed some
man of more than ordinary powers to deal with
the conflicting forces then agitating public
opinion. Archbishop Tait, moderate and clear-
sighted, was about the pettiness of party battles.
His views are beat explained in a few words of
his own, spoken but a short time before his
death, and which reveal the mainspring of his
action, and account in a great measure for his
widely-diffused personal influence and power.
" I believe," he said, "that the best men of the
time hare a dislike to all Schools of Theology."
They desire a religion that shall serve them
and their neighbours in life and death, without
tying them up to unnatural phrases or locking
up their feet, whether they will or no, in the
stocks of some antiquated system of discipline."