The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-06-22 00:00:00

eur ,ooon Corrtsponkitt.
tllre dlem 'A, right to state that we do not at all times
identify ourselves with our Correspondent's opinions.]

There can be no doubt that the assembly of leading
statesmen and diplomatists of the principal European
Powers at Berlin is the most important gathering of
plenipotentiaries since the famous Congress at Vienna
sixty-three years ago. In some respects it is an even
more august assembly, for it deals with much more
extensive interests, which are not confined to Europe,
but affect a great portion of Asia. The historian of
the reign of Queen Victoria will have very much to
say of this memorable meeting in the German capital,
whether the result of the deliberations be peace or
war. The scene is undoubtedly a great and im-
posing one, for the actors are the most consider-
able personages at the present time engaged in
the arduous task of govereing great nations. There
are the Chancellors of the three great military
?monarchies of Europe Prince Bismarck, Prince
Gortschakoff, and Count Andrassy ; and the Prime
Minister of England has also left his official duties at
home to attend these sittings. It may indeed be
safely said that suoh a number of principal ministers
and diplomatists never before sat round a green table
The names of most of them have been indelibly
"-* V" 'stamped upon the history of their respective countries;
ireessess
it would be a sad comment upon the statesman-
wet ship of our times if so much surpassing ability, con-
centrated at one point, failed to settle the questions
' which now press for solution as to the future of the
•. south-east of Europe.
,ess.
f The mention cf the name of Prince Bismarck, and
surisse.. the death of King George of Hanover, irresistibly
e. remind us of the stirring events which were taking
r .115- place in Germany just twelve years ago. When war
broke out between Prussia and Austria in the summer
of 1866, the King of Hanover sided with the latter,
• and the Prussians entered his kingdom on the 12th
of June. The result of the struggle between the two
German Powers is well known, and as one of its con-
' sequencts Hanover became a part of the Prussian
dominions. King George, who paid a visit to this
country two years ago, would never officially recognise
the altered state of things; and died in Paris on the
twelfth anniversary of the Prussian army entering his
kingdom, claiming the full sovereign rights which he
had enjoyed before the annexation. His sequestrated
estates were therefore never restored to him by the
nation with which the Emperor Napoleon waged war
in 1-70 in order to prevent Prussia from becoming an
all-absorbing, all-conquering Power in Europe.
Every schoolboy knows the association connected
with the 18th June, when sixty-three years ago the
great battle of Waterloo was fought, which brought to
a conclusion a war that had lasted three-and-twenty
" ears, and gave Europe forty years of peace. The
Congress of Vienna, above alluded to, was sitting
when the news reached it in March, 1815, that
Napoleon had escaped from Elba, and was again
collecting an army to disturb the peace of the
Continent. It was unanimously resolved to put him
down at any cost, and the British Parliament voted
a large sum of money for his overthrow. How that
was accomplished by the Duke of Wellington and
Marshal Blucher is told in the pages of history, and
need not be recounted here. But it is well to
call attention to the comparative ease with which a
great general can raise an army, as contrasted with the
time occupied in preparing a navy. Notwithstanding
Napoleon's enormous losses in Russia in 1812, and at
Leipsic in 1813, he found no difficulty in calling an
army to his standards when he escaped from Elba.
• That army was defeated, after a tremendous struggle,
on the plains of Belgium; but that it had a very
material existence, both 'Wellington and Blucher
found. Compare this with the experience of the navy.
Travellers to Paris by way of Boulogne will seethe
Napoleon Column there, raised in commemoration of
,Bonaparte's stay in that town in 1804, when he gathered
there a vast military force with the intention of invad-
ing England. Morning after morning he would come
down to the beach, and gaze abstractedly across the sea
towards the only land which had successfully defied
him, and raised its white cliffs above the waves, proud in
the possession of that liberty of which for centuries it
had boasted. Lord Nelson put an end to the scheme
of invasion by sweeping down upon the French fleet
at Trafalgar, where it was utterly destroyed. The
French never renewed the conflict upon the sea, for it
takes many a long year to build a navy; but
Napoleon showed that he could lose army after army
and still take the field. He was only suppressed at
last by being made prisoner and 'banished to St.
Helena, where a British man-of-war, continually
crutSing off the island, effectually prevented his
escape. He had indeed come to England, but not as
a conqueror; for in July, 1815, he was brought to
Portsmouth in the Bellerophon, to the oaptain of
which ship he had surrendered at Rochefort, and was
immediately despatched by a resolution of the allied
Powers to the lonely rock where he passed the remain-
der of his days.
There are more who remember the 18th of June
in connection with the battle of Waterloo than with
an event which happened on that day forty years later.
By that time England and France had become
friends, and had joined together in a war against
Russia. The siege of Sebastopol was being prose-
cuted with great vigour, and it was resolved to make
a decisive attack upon the batteries on the 18th of
June, 1855, by way of cementing the Western alliance.
Unfortunately the enemy was on the alert; and when
in the grey dawn of the summer morning the British
forces advanced towards the Redan, and the French
in the direction of the Malakhoff, they were re-
eeiled with such a storm of shot and shell, that a
repulse was the result. In London the Past and Tower
guns had been loaded in readiness for a victory, which
was, however, celebrated less than three months later,
when a successful assault was made upon Sebastopol,
and the city which had been •so ably defended by
General Todleben fell into the possession of the allies.
Aserociated with the anniversary of her Majesty's
Accession to the throne are memories which every suc-
ceeding year must recall agreeably to the minds of
their possessors. The strong men of that time are now
white with age, and are bending beneath the weight of
advancing years; but those who survive can tell us of
the joyful acclamations with which the Princess
Victoria was hailed Queen of England. It seemed as
if the nation, under its young Sovereign, was about to
enter upon a new and vigorous life. For well nigh half a
' century previously the people had been accustomed to
see the wearer of the diadem a mature man, if you
A. go back to 1790, you then find George 111. fifty
years of age; come on to 1810, and he celebrates his
jubilee; go on to 1820, and you find the old king dead at
eighty years of age, and the new king a man of sixty.
F Go on to 1830, and the king again dies, a man of 70, his
' successor being then 65. Therefore, when, on the
morning cf the 20th of June, 1837, the firing of the guns
1.• proclaimed that the Crown and sceptre had passed
•om the aged monarch of 72, into the hands of a young
•• _sir of 18, great was the public rejoicing. There was
a quickening of the pulses of the national life which
was very speedily perceptible. There can perhaps be
at better illustration of the altered spirit of the times,
than in the fact that the Archbishop of Canterbury
I nd the Lord Chamberlain, bearing the news of the
king's death, travelled from Windsor to London by
coach, and arrived at Kensington Palace, where the
Princess Victoria resided, with her mother the Duchess
of Kent, at five o'clock in the morning. They had
ft been nearly three hours in the journey, the king
r having died about two. Now Windsor has two lines
of railway to London, and when the Prime Minister
finds it necessary to have an interview with his
Sovereign, he goes by special train. Queen Victoria's
reign of forty-one years embraces a wonderfully
-
onward march of the moving forces of social
and it is certain that never in the history of any coun-
try has so much enlightened advancement been wit-
nessed within the same time.
Both Lords and Commons are now, having re-assem-
bled after the Whitsuutide recess, bending to their
oars (to use a nautical simile) in order to get through
. the necessary business of the session. In connection
with the time selected by our • legislators for their
work and their recreation, it may not be out of
place to remark that the French Chambers have
adjourned until the 30th October, when they will
come back to their labours. The British Parlia-
ment, should it not be dissolved, will sit on until
the beginning or middle of August, and then
separate until February next. The French legislators
take the summer for their holiday, and ours the
autumn. When the summer is a genial one, which
hitherto it certainly has not been, one would be in-
clined to say that the French Parliament had chosen
the better part. Those who are accustomed to the
galleries of the House of Commons during hot weather,
when the stagnant atmosphere is unaffected by the
st- breezes from the river, long for the open country—for
the fields and the woods which lie beyond the bound-
- series of the busy town. But owing to the custom
• which time has consecrated, Parliament sits throug•
h
the season when the days are at their longest,
and when the holiday keepers is enabled to make
• the best of the extended spell of daylight. It
adjourns when the days begin to contract, and
the first chills of autumn steal over the
land. The French Parliament goes to its vacation
when the trees are rejoicing in their luxuriant foliage,
and when that foliage is at its richest and its,best; our
. own senators set out in quest of recreation when the
a- /eaves 'are Withering, and a strong wind often corn-
▪fl es of destruction and decay.
Itean bseito matter for surprise that the weather is
the national topic of conversation in our latitudes.
Time was when the seasons used to be sharply defined

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