The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-01-05 00:00:00

ur gudDit Carrtspoilbtnt,

:,r3 ace= is riot to state that we C.') Int aL all Mud
(ify aarplyes with our Corretpundeiit's opiniouLl

New Year's Day in the present generation does nct
find the nations of Europe in a state of deep anxiety
as to what the ruler of France may say respecting the
prospects of peace and war in Europe for the next
twelve months. A man need not have got into middle
ife to remember that for several years after the close
of the Crimean War, the First of January was a time
of great suspense in every European capital, for on
that day the Emperor Napoleon was accustomed to
receive the ambassadors of the various great powers,
and to indicate in unmi.xta.keable terms what he in-
tended to do if he had any warlike policy under
consideration. It is now within a few days of
twenty years ago that the attempt of some
Italians to assassinate him when he was going
to the opera opened the Emperor's eyes to the
fact that the hopes of aid from France in the direction
of Italian unity, which had induced Sardinia to jein
the Western Powers against Russia, bad not been
altogether realised; and in the autumn of 1858 an
understanding was arrived at between his Majesty
and Count Cavour that something should be done.
What that was to be was not long allowed to remain
in doubt. On the Ist of January, 1859, the Em-
peror, on receiving the ambassadors, turned to
the representative of Austria, and said that he re-
gretted. the relations with the Austrian government
were not so good as formerly, but begged the ambas-
sador to tell the emperor that his personal sentiments
for him were unchanged. These few words, spoken in the
gilded saloon of the Tuileries, were within an hour or
two sent by the electric telegraph to all the principal
cities of Europe, and produced universal consterna-
tion. It was seen that war was meant, and before
nightfall public securities had been depreciated in
value to the extent of a hundred millions sterling.
The people were right; war followed; and in the
summer of 1859, after the French victories A Magenta
and Solferino, the Austrians were dxiven out of Lom-
bardy, and Napoleon and Victor Emmanuel entered in
triumph the city of Milan. That must have been the
proudest time of the Emperor's life, for he was called
the arbiter of Europe. Years waned away ; other
powerful States grew up on the frontiers of France ;
Italy was consolidated; Prussia had beaten down
Austria, and was one vast military camp; the air
was filled with the echoes of the clang of arms, the
sound of trumpet, and the roll of drum. France made
one desperate effort to retain the coveted position she
had so long held, and we all know the result. The
monarch who had humbled the House of Hapsburg
was swept away before the advancing legions of
the House of Hohenzollern. The German armies
poured across the Rhine, and through the passes
of the Vosges mountains, and over fertile Alsace
and Lorraine, like an irresistible torrent. Past
Metz, Verdun, and Chalons, they invested the proud
capital itself, and starved it into surrender. The
mighty master of legions was dethroned and exiled,
and on a gloomy January day in 1873, breathed his
last in a quiet mansion in the county of Sent, amid a
scene totally different from that which used to be
enacted in the splendid Palace of the Tuilleries. So
the peoples of Europe now have peace on New Year's
Day.

The changes 'iwrought by Time in the position of a
great nation are eminently suggestive just now, when
another year has opened full of hope, and expectation.
Another Christmas has left us, the suspension of active
life which marks the season soon passes away and is
gone; and the matter-of-fact waves of every-day
existence speedily roll back again. There are few who
do not begin the new year with some sort of good
resolution that it shall in certain defined respects
be better than its predecessors. The year itself in
its gradual progress, makes its fulfilments far more
stable than are the resolves of many who make to them-
selves sanguine promises at its opening. For as it
advances, the increasing light and the greater length
of day, the departure of cold weather, the approach of
spring, and by-and-bye the appearance of vegetation
and the summer heat, all testify to the working of
fixed and unalterable laws governing created things.
Long before Easter it is too, probable that the self-
denying determination of the first week in the new
year will have been shaken, if even it has not
altogether disappeared. Se great is the difference
between fallible humanity and the omniscient wisdom
which has provided for the regulation of the universe.
'While most of the nations of Europe have done
with the celebration of Christmas once more, there
is one in which the commemoration of the festival has
yet to take place. That is Russia, where the religion
of the Greek church prescribes the 6th of January as.
the proper date for the observance of Christmas Day.
And so, from Archangel to Odessa, and in all the vast
territories between the White and the Black Seas, in
city and in Tillage, Christmas will be kept by shop-
keeper and by peasant. St. Petersburg promises to be
gay enough, for the Czar is back in his capital again,
after his &ght months' experience of actual campaign-
ing. His father, the late Emperor Nicholas, did not
accompany his army to the battlefield; and when
England, France, Turkey, and Sardinia invaded the
southern part of his dominions, and laid siege to the
redoubtable fortress of Sebastopol, he shut himself up
in his Winter Palace, and broke his heart over the
successes of the allied armies. His sons, the Grand
Dukes Michael and Nicholas headed the famous sortie
from Sebastopol on the sth November, 1854, with the
intention of driving the allies into the Black Sea, but
they were pushed back again into the beleagured town
with enormous loss, and in a few weeks afterwards the
proud and haughty Czar was dead. "Russia,"
said the Emperor Nicholas, "has two generals in
whom she can confide—Generals Janvier and FeTrier."
The meaning and interpretation whereof was that the
months of January and February would prove more
destructive to the besiegers of Sebastopol than the
bullets of his soldiers. The fearful cold which swept
over Europe in the beginning of 1855 is remembered
to this day; and thus far the Emperor was right.
But he died in that very month of February accord-
ing to the calendar of the Greek Church, and no one
who saw Punch's startling cartoon, "General Fevrier
turned trait, r," can ever forget it. There was the
King of Terrors in a bitter snow storm laying his gaunt
and bony hand upon the prostrate Czar. It is
January again; Russia is once more at war; and
Christmas in thousands of homes through those wide
dominions will be a mourn'ul one, for battalion after
battalion which marched forth to battle in the spring
time were laid low by storms of Turkish bullets, and
now lie amid the snow mantling the hill-sides round
about Plevna.
A calendar for the year upon which we have just
entered will give Us, amongst other information, the
time of high water at a specified port, and the rising
and setting of the sun and moon for any day in
the whole twelve months. The beginning, totality,
and ending of a solar or lunar eclipse are also
supplied with the greatest exactitude. But who
would venture to say that a time will come
when in addition to such details, the state of the
weather also would be included in next year's al-
manacks ? What an enormous advantage it would be
to know if August were to be wet, or September fine!
How nicely holiday arrangements could be made—and,
to put the matter in a more serious light, how many
lives would be saved by not venturing to sea when it
was positively known that a storm was coming.
This is a subject of great importance which is gradually
forelUg itself into notice. Weather predictions from
Nest York frequently appear in the newspapers, and
n the majority of cases these are fulfilled with mar-
vellous precision. But while Great Britain spends
£4,000 a year in weather telegraphy, the expenditure
of the United States Government is £30,000, and the
organization there is thoroughly creditable to the
spirit and enterprise of the American people. There
can be little doubt that there is a wide and unex-
plored field of information yet to be opened up in an
exceedingy difficult and apparently arbitrary depart-
ment of human knowledge.
There are a few visitors to London who do not know
St. Paul's churchyard. It is not a thoroughfare in the
ordinary sense of the word, for a bar stretches across
the roadway so as to exclude vehicular traffic s ) that
the stream of omnibuses, cabs, carts, and wains inces-
santly flowing east and west, roll round three sides cf
the vast Cathedral to their respective destinations.
In St. Paul's C'dsurchyard there are some very handsome
shoje, containing the best specimens of English and
foreign manufacture; and of an afternoon, when the
weather is fine, the pavement in front of the shops is
crzwded with ladies, who can talk over their intended
purchases to each other without their voices being
drowned in the roar of traffic which is so' deafening
in Cheapside, Lucigate-hill, and Fleet-street. The
Common Council of the City of London are about to
carry out some improvements in the churchyard
proper, which will cost many thousand pounds. The
high railings are to be lowered; the horizontal grave-
stones are to be covered with mould; rend the place is to
be converted into a public garden. It will be a veritable
oasis in the desert—a spot of relief in the heart of
London. Following so closely upon the throwing
open of the western facade by the removal of the
railings, this improvement will render St. Paul's
Churchyard one of the attractions of London; and as.
the northern roadway is still to be closed to carriage
traffic, the ladies will still be able to discuss their pur-
chases amid that peace and quietude which has
hitherto been such a happy characteristic of the
place.

Many years have passed since a Cabinet C nincil was
held in this country within forty-eight hours of Christ-
mas Day, As a rule, the associations of the season
are as strong upon our rulers as upon other people,

and they enjoy the Christmas dinner away from the
cares of State, not coming to London until the
latter end of January. But this is an altogether
exceptional time. Parliament has been summoned
three weeks earlier, and the Sultan has asked her
Majesty's Government to approach the Emperor of
Russia with a view to negotiations for peace. The
Cabinet Council held two days after Christmas decided
thus to use its good offices, so that the Ministers
did not leave their homes in all parts of the
kingdom for nothing. The Home and Foreign
Secretaries came to London from Lancashire,
the Lord Chancellor from Dorsetshire, and the
Chancellor of the Exchequer from Devonshire, to
attend this important gathering. The Duke of Rich-
mond at Goodwood, in Sussex; Lord Carnarvon at-High-
clere, in Berkshire; the Secretary of State for War at
Staplehurst, in Kent; the Marquis of Salisbury at
Hatfield, in Hertfordshire; and the First Lord of the
Admiralty at Henley-upon-Thames, were all oom-
paratively near to the capital, and were very speedily
in town upon receiving the summons. Thus the new
year opens amid efforts to obtain peace on the part of
a neutral Power, at the solicitation of one of the com-
batants ; and all believers in the. progress of civilisa-
tion and in the dictates of common humanity can only
hope that these may not be ma/le in vain.