The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1876-10-14 00:00:00

our Youhn Cerrtsponkni.

[We deem ft right to state that we do not at all tines
identify ourselves with our Correspondent's opinions.]

The great interest felt by the public in the position of
foreign affairs caused all classes to look forward to the
assembling of the first Cabinet Council of the recess
with unusual anxiety. Since the prorogation of Parlia-
ment in the middle of August, Ministers had been dis-
persed in different directions, but all the eleven
members of the Cabinet assembled in London at the
summons to attend the Council. There is invariably
one Minister at Balmoral, with the Queen, for the pur-
pose of transacting the necessary official business, and
at the time of the holding of this Oouncil, the Minister
so in attendance upon her Majesty was the Lord Chan-
cellor. So important was it, however, that upon this
occasion all the Cabinet should meet in London, that
his lordship made the journey to the metropolis for the
purpose of conferring with his colleagues, starting again
for Balmoral by that night's mail, the double distance

representing 1,200 miles. In ordinary times the
Minister at Balmoral does not undertake such a
task, his duty to his Sovereign taking precedence ove:
the neces4ity for consultation with his colleagues.
But clearly these are not looked upon by our rulers as
ordinary times; and so at the Council of which I have
spoken it was considered essential that all should be
present, and that the Lord Chancellor himself, who is
officially styled the Beeper of the Queen's Conscience
should leave her Majesty for a short time in order to
take part in deliberations fraught with so much im-
portance to the public interest. The Ministerial
gathering takes place in a little room in the Treasury
at Downing-street, a narrow thoroughfare running
westward from Whitehall, and there is sure to be a
little crowd at the corner of the Privy Council office to
catch a glimpse of the statesmen in whose hands are
the destinies Of the country.
Another overflow of the Thames has taken place
on the very day that the Metropolitan Board of
Works determined to promote a Bill in Parliament
next Session for preventing these inundations.
Doubtless, the most effectual way of doing this
would have been by building upon the south side
an embankment like unto that upon the northern
shore, for by this means the waters of the. restless
stream would be unquestionably restricted to their
proper channel. But the enormous cost of the
Milidlesex embankment seems to deter the Board of
Works from applying the same principle to the Surrey
side of the river; and so this bill merely authorises
each parish to protect itself from rising tides in its
own way; and if the parishes do not carry out the
work themselves, the Board will do it, and charge the
local authorities with the outlay. And so, instead of
having a magnificent granite wall to keep out the
floods, planks and clay and other rude appliances
will have to be periodically resorted to; and if, as
last November, heavy rains come simultaneously with
a spring tide, planks and clay will not be found the
beat means of doing battle with the encroachments of
the river.

The exhibitions of costumes at the Crystal and
Alexandra Palaces have attracted considerable atten-
tion. The idea of a competition of this kind was first
practically developed at the Alexandra last Easter, and
the success then attained was so great that an Association
was formed, by which these exhibitions have been
organized. With regard to the question of price, which
to many persons is a material one, it may be stated
that of the more expensive costumes the large majority
are between ten and twenty guineas, while there are
many considerably below the fosmer figure. One of
the most remarkable features of the Crystal Palace
exhibition was a Bulgarian lady's fancy character
costume of gold; and from the prominent way in which
Bulgaria has lately been brought before the people of
this country, much notice was bestowed upon this
ornate article of dress.
For the time the experiments with the monster gun
have come to an end, and their results are regarded as
having been upon the whole satisfactory. Many
references have lately been made to the Crimean war,
and I remember well when Sir Charles Napier sailed
from Spithead with the Baltic fleet in March, 1854,
naval artillerists were delighted to relate how many of
the ships in the squadron were capable of throwing a
96 lb. solid shot. A little more than twenty years
have rolled away, and those who are in charge of
the eighty-bon gun inform us that it easily throws a
shot of 1,750 lbe. Such has been the progress in the
art of naval gunnery vaithin a quarter of a century of
the Great Exhibition of 1851, which was hailed as the
ushering in of an era when men were to beat their
swords into plonghshares and their spears into pruning.
hooks, neither were the nations to learn war any
more. Each discharge from the vast new piece of
ordnance costs the nation about thirty pounds sterling,
and it is estimated that the outlay upon the gun from
fret to last must have been little short of £50,000. Four
of these eighty-ton cannons are in course of manufac-
ture at Woolwich for the new iron-clad Inflexible,
which was launched at Portsmouth a few months ago
by the Marchioness of Lorne.
The noise of a crowded thoroughfare is declared by
those who should know best to be not only deleterious
to health as tending injuriously to affect the nervous
system, but it has an adverse influence upon business.
So at least a deputation of tradesmen in the Strand has
just told the Vestry of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields,
whom they asked to replace the granite roadway
by one of wood. It is affirmed that those with money
to spend would rather enter a shop where the roar of
the street traffic is deadened by a wooden pavement,
than go into a street where they cannot hear them-
selves speak, in consequence of the din created by the
Incessant rattle of omnibuses over a roadway of
granite. Certainly through this cause the Strand is
one of the noised places in London, and conversation is
Impossible unless you raise your voice to an un-
pleasantly high pitch. And so we have the shop-
keepers there asserting positively that the din of the
street traffic is driving their customers into Did-
gate Hill, where there is a roadway of wood, over
which vehicles glide almost noiselessly, and a lady can
put a question to a shopman in ease and comfort, and
without the visk of making herself hoarse. The
Inhabitants of the Edgware-road, too, are asking their
loc-al authorities for a wooden pavement, for similar
reasons as those`urged by the residents in the Strand.
The elections to the School Board for London will
take place on Tuesday, the 28th November. When Par-
liament called into existence the municipal corporations
it decided that one-third of the town councillors
should go out of office every year, so that at no time
would a town be left without a governing body, as
even while the elections were onwards two-thirds of
the Council would still be in office. The restora-
tion of the School Board is arranged upon a
different principle; and instead of one-third of its
members vacating their seats every twelve months, the
entire body is dissolved every three years. While
therefore the composition of a Town Council is under-
going a constant change through the annual contests,
a school board does not vary from the time of its
election to that of its dissolution. Of counse
yearly contests tend to keep up the public interest in
the composition of any particular asseathly ; but par-
liament adopted the biennial system in the case of
School Boards so that there might be fewer occasions
for those differences which religions controversies often
stir up.

Some comment has been made upon the fact that
the Mansion House Eastern War Sufferers' Relief
Fand has not reached a greater amount, seeing that
early in the year 1871 more that £lOO,OOO was raised
for the relief of the starving population of Paris.
It should, however, be borne in mind that the Man-
sion House Fund is not the only one to which the
public are invited topontribute. There is, for instance,
Viscountess StrangfCird's Bulgasian Peasant Relief
Fund, the object of which is to raise £lO,OOO before
winter sets in, for the homeless starving people who
have suffered so terribly, and are in wart of
everything. Cattle, seed, corn, houses, household
furnitn_irs and agricultural implements have all
been 'arts royed, and churches and schools levelled
with the ground. The subscriptions to this very
nearly equal those which have flowed in to the
Mansion Howse. Then there is the Bosnian, Herze-
govinian, and Bulgarian Fugitives' and Orphan Relief
Fund,
which accounts for a very respectable sum. It
is under the care of the Association for Promoting
Education among the Sclavonic Christians of Bosnia
and the Herzegovina; and, like Lady Strangford the
directresses of the organisat A. ion, Miss A P Irby 'and
miss iphnston, have left England for the
frontier,
where it is feared that a winter of terrible suffering
awaits the increasing number of fugitivee from Bosnia.
Lastly, there is the National Society for Aid to the
Sick and Wounded in War, of which the chairman is
Colonel Loyd-LindsaY, ALP., who has lately returned
from carrying out the work of this organisation at the
seat of war.
One of the consequences of the Education Act of
1870, was a great and sudden demand for certificated
teachers, especially those qualified to take the best
schools, and to guide and mould the rather rough
material handed over to them as monitors and pupil
teachers. The government training colleges were quite
Inadequate to provide the large additional numbers
required; and besides it was seen that a necessity
existed for a class of teachers much higher in tone and
culture than could reasonably have been lcoked for
there. These two causes gave rise to a strong wish that
ladies interested in the work of education might be
led to undertake the charge of the best class of
elementary sohools. Systematic efforts have therefore
been made to provide training for ladies as teachers of
such schools. It has been shown that the idea as
first, started was a feasible one, and that it will develop
itself with the advance of time. Yet; notwithstanding
the increased interest which has been taken in the

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work of instruction in recent years, and the higher
respect paid to those who are really capable of filling
such important posts, the payment of teachers of both
sexes is much below that in other responsible positions.
A duly certificated mistress in charge of a National
School has monotonous and trying duties to perform,
from the class of children with which she has to deal.
But at the same time it must be remembered that
almost all ladies who have leisure do the same thing
without reward, as a matter of duty. They teach in
Sunday schools, visit the sick poor, upend much time
and strength in endeavouring to help that class to
help themselves in a variety of ways. Formerly pre-
judice forbade ladies to work outside their own homes;
now they willirgly do so, and cheerfully labour on the
condition that they shall receive neither fee nor re-
ward. All honour, then, to those who, although they
might remain at home in ease on a Sunday, devote
their time to the instruction of the young upon that
day.