The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1876-12-02 00:00:00

eitz fenban Carrezponbmt,

pre deem it right to state that we do not at all timel
identity ourselves with our Correspondent's opinions.]

Nothina connected with tbe negotiations upon the
Eastern Question has been read with more interest in
this country than the despatch of Lord Auristuh
Loftus, the B:itish ambassador at St. Petersburg,
giving an account of his recent clnversations with the
Emperor of Russia at Livadia. Between these con-
versations and those held by Sir Hamilton Seniour
with the late Czar Nicholas previously to the outbreak
of the Osirnean War, thire is a parall,l and a contrast.
The parallel lies in the fact that the subject of the
talk was Turkey, and that those wh held converse
were the Czar and the Ambassador of Great Britain
accredited to his court. The contrast lies in the
diverse declaratiots of the two emperors—the con-
Rioting views of the father and the son. While
Nicholas was emphatic upon the manifest destiny of
Holy Russia, and made no secret of his desire to be-
come possesred of Constantinople, Alexander has
assured our„representative that the will of Peter

the

Great, of which eo much ha e been. ml., Wf•R all a
myth; that the fears founded tip4l;the aims of
Catherine the Sc ,nd are a 9 une.nbstantial SR moon-

beams; that, so far from wishing to plant the Imperial
eagles upon the shores of the Bosphorus, Constanti
nople, instead of being a gain, would be a source of
very considerable embarrassment to him. And while
that which was said by the Emperor Nicholas was to
have been regarded as strictly confidential, his son
actually goes so far as to request the publication in
this country of the expression of his views,
in order to allay the distrust which seems
perpltually to surround the designs of Russia.
Time alone can show whether it will have this effect.
But whatever may be :done at the eonclturion of the
armistice, one thing is clear—that an absolute neu-
trality will be maintained by both Germany and
-•• France. With the distant murmurs of "Revanche!"
constantly btrne towards Berlin, sometimes from
Paris; and at others from Vienna, it behoves the
Germans to have nothing to do with the quarrel be-
tween Russia and Turkey. They held aloof in 1854,
and have far more reason for doing so now.
• The return of the Court from Balmoral to Windsor
is an event which has bien,. for rome years past, re-
eorded about the same time in every autumn; and the
feeling amongst loyal subjects is long may those

chronicles continue. The announcements read so
naturally, and are of jest the character to which we
have been regularly accustomed, that the flight of time
Is liable to be overlooked. It is only when we see a
Royal proclamation, closing with the words "Given
at our Court at Windsor [or at Osborne, or Balmoral,
the case may be] in the fortieth year of our reign,"
that we at all realize the length of time during which
the Cieeen hae ruled over her people. Forty years
will have elapsed on the 20'h of June next since that
splendid summer morning when the Arclihiehop of
Canterbury area the Lord Chamberlain posted from
Windsor Castle to Kensington Palace, caused the
Princess Victoria to be aroused from her slumbers, and
informed her of her uncle's death. The aged Monarch
had died at two in the morning, and as there were no
railwajs then, a chaiee and post horses had to be got
ready. Between the time of the king's death and the
artival of the Primate and the Chamberlain at Kensing-
ton three hours elapsed, a period which we can now
make the run frcm London to Birmingham. But the
affairs of State cannot stand still, even for the demise
of a Boverien. "The King is dead, long live the
Queen!" The crown and the sceptre had passed from
the hands of an old man of seventy two to those of a
young girl of eighteen; from the possession of one who
had been removed from the world full of years and
honours, to be the heritage of a princess with a long
life before her, and into whose reign has been com-
pressed come of the most remarkable incidents of our
national history. The Ministries which have been
formed and the •Parliattieets diesolved since that Mae
morning when Lord Melbourne and his colleagues took
the oath of allegiaace to Q leen Victoria could easily

enough be numbered by the political statist; but one

fact will speak volumes in idustration'of the enormous
changes which • have been weoneht singe !!7criolurfa--
R." first appeared upon the Royal sign than* ' 01.
the 658 members of the House of Pc4afons wh
obeyed the ruling of ,Mr, Speaker AbercroMby at the
time of her Majebty's Accession, only ten are there,
now to Laten to the voice of Mr. Speaker Brand;.
and amongst those ten you will find Mr. Gladstone.
Death, resignation, elevation to the peerage, and the,
manifold vicissitudes which surround a political career,
account for the disappearance of all the rest. At home,
a population equal to that of the entire United King-
dom has passed away, for the world's inhabitants are
replenished every generation. Those of the strong
men of that day who survive are now whits with age;
the young men of that time are rapidly advancing into,
middle life; the schoolboy at Eton, at Harrow, at
Rugby, and at Westminster long ago took his place
upon the great stage of human life. Slch have been
some of the effects of Thrte in our mirlet, but what are
thee ci rnpr.red with the events which have happened
abroad?

Akker.lll

How easily the world overlooks great things is shown
by the scant notice which has been taken of the des-
tructive cyclone which lately devastated a part of
India. In our own latitudes, where a few extra inches
of rain floods the watercourses, and converts the
valleys into inland seas, we cannot bring our minds to
the contemplation of a rise of twenty feet
in a few minutes, as in the eruary of the Meghua,
carrying away with it whole villages in its rush, and
drowning a population equal to that of many a flourish-
ing English city. It is rewarkable to note that these
visitations mostly occur in October or November. Just
nine years ago reports reached this country that
Tortola had been submerged, and that all living things
t a-3 perished. This alarming statement gradually gave
way to a loss of eight or ten thousand persons; and,
as the Virgin Islands are r. long way off, the people
of Great Britain were thus enabled to draw
3 sigh of relief, and to express thankful-
news that the matter was no worse. It was in
November, 1861, that the great cyclone passed over

Calcutta; and then again enormous damage was done.
and thoueanda of lives were lost. Macaulay once
declared that a broken head in the Tower Hamlets
created more sensation than a mutiny in Benares,
and partly because India is such a long way off,
contains such a vast population, and the desola-
tions by famine and by storm are on such a huge scale
the interest in these catastrophes is not commemn-
rate with the destruction wrought. Yet the latest of
these hurricanes was one of the most fearful which ever
decimated any part of Hindostan. At the same time,
its range was not large, and in its centre everything
was calm, so that only a few hundred yards from the
scene of so much loss, not a leaf was stirred
The whiaiwind and the storm were raging within
sax-shot; yet in the very middle of the circle
there reigned the still small voice of peace.
While the British tourist has been paying so much
attention to Paris and to Vienna, to the passes of the
Alps, and to the beauties of the Italian lakes, a
country which lies very near to our own shores has
received Fcarcely any notice. Yet then must be many
objects of interest in the kingdom of the Netherlands
which would amply repay a visit. A land lyiug so

below the level of the sea that enormous dykea
have to be kept in the best of repair so as to prevent
the country from being overwhelmed; quaintly con-
structed whose streets are canals; here would
be a change of scene for those who have always been
accustomed to witness the lashings of the sea against
giant cliffs, and to. watch the rush of tiaffic through
busy and crowded thoroughfares. The Amsterdam
journals now announce that an International Exhibi•
tion will take place in- that city in May next.
It will comprise stove and garden plants, fruits,
vegetables, and seeds. Fine art as applied to horticul.
tare, and the tedence aud teachirg of agriculture, are
amongst the programme. As Amsterdam can be
reached from England almost as easily as Paris or
Brussels, and much more easily than Vienna,. Berne, or
Cogno,,itpini
_Y faichsbq exptoted that many a Briton
will aVainiinselfAsiktbd otSportunity of seeing for him-
elf an historic country, which, ae our naval aonals tell
us, once competed with Great Britain for the supra-
mac cy of the sea. sO 4I- ftt J..)
Visitors to the House oP Lords during the time that
august ieotembly is sitting will not have failed to notice
he lighted lamp over the entrance set apart for the
public—lighted whether the sin be at his meridian,
and sending down his scorchinisrays over the metro-
polis, or whether the capital be enveloped in such a fog
as to render artificial light absolutely • necessary.
That is the ever.hurning flame typical of the
eternal interests of truth and justice which
are held to be constitutionally ;warded by the
House of Peers; for it is a court of justice as
well as a branch of the legislature. Up to within a
few days ago, one branch could not sit -without the
other; but it bas been felt for von put that if the
How, of Lords insisted on4etaining ha ftinctiolie as a
Court of Final Appeal, it ought not to close its doors
to suitors more than half the year. At length the
block of legal business became so serious that on of
two alternatives had to be faced—either to transfer the
appellate jurisdiction to a tribunal which would be open
as lorg as any other court, or submit to the creation of
life peers, so that the House as a court of kistice might
be as accessible as the Queen's Bench or the Elchequer.
The last-mentioned plan was adopted, and under the
proviiiions of an Act of Parliament passtd last Peesion,
two life peers have been created—Lords Blackburn and
Crdon. These are now sitting with the. Lord
Chancellor said the ether law lords in the House itself,
Aeyiejmusing -of
.sitpeals. On mob of:calliope, only the
ieedilkaneellor appears In °Motel eoeetune, the other

.41001ACtiir.10TL0

peers wearing neither wig nor robes to indicate the legal
nature of their duties.

In the world's history cities have been destroyed by
various cause such as earthquake, hurricane, inunda-
tion, volcano, and the vicissitudes of war. The fate of
Herculsneum and the destruction of Carthage have
been matters of hite.ory for centuries, but it is only
lately that Sir T. Douglas Forsyth has told us of the
kind of devastation which overtook the buried cities of
Eastern Turkestan. Built upon the confines of the
desert these communities, once flourishing and prosper-
ous, seem to have been overwhelmed by clouds of sand,
as irresistible as the streams of lava which eighteen
hundred years ago poured down the sides of Mount
Vesuvius, Mid burnt up the cities at its baze. But the
pr,ceßs of afacement was much more gradual, and the
finding of skeletons in tome of the houses of
those Turkestaa cities clearly enough showed that the
inhat-

,bitants, after rtmaining in their homes hoping
against hope for the subsidence of the storm, had been
suddenly destroyed at last, and that without remedy.
To-day, while the sun is shining upon the mosques and
shrines, the public buildings and the bazaars of many
a busy Indian city, the sites of those former towns in
7urkestan ars surrounded by a silence which is oppres-
sive and mournful. There is no chirp from the grass-
hopper, ma song of birds, no bwing of cattle, no rust-
ling of the wind amongst the foliage of trees, no voices
of the rivers making their way through the valleys
Nothing meets the eye but a vast expanse of yellow
sand, painful in its monotony, and the only sign of life
is found in the presence of a number of lizards, whose
aluggida progress. over the arid plains is ind:

icated I-

dearly en-ong-la upon the soft surface of the sand itself.
Indeed, that "abomination of desolation" foretold in
the Bible for Babylon and Nineveh cannot be more
complete upon the banks of the Euphrates and the
Tigris to-day, than upon the site of those huge tepul-
cbree described by Sir Douglas Forsyth.