The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-01-26 00:00:00

,
Our Vonbart eieritspithtnt,
(We deem it right to state that we do not at all times
identify ourselves with our 4iorrespondeat's opinions.]

It necessarily takes Parliament some days after its
meeting to settle down to the ordinary run of work.
It is a long time to be absent from duty those five or
six months which make up the recess, and as members
of the Legislature are but human, and feel the effects
of that lassitude which creeps over ordinary mortals
after a lengthened period of relaxation, not much
business of importance can be transacted during
the first week, at all events. Indeed, even if
members were ever so much disposed to work,
they would not have it to do. The first night
of the Sessien is, of course, occupied with the
debates on the address in answer to the Speech
from the Throne, and in times of great political
interest one night is not sufficient for this pur-
pose. When this is over, a large number of bills are
introduced by ministers and by independent members,
the explanation of their principles being invariable
reserved for the next stage, the second reading. some
ten days afterwards. Night after night of the first
week of the session measures for all conceivab:e pur-
poses are brought in and forrnaly read a first time.
The ceremony occupies but a minute or two, so that a
hundred bills may be introduced in a night. By-and-
bye the t:me comes on for second reading and
debate, the different measures are gradually got into
blue water, and the business of Parliamentary lie, so
far as the House of Commons is concerned, is in full
swing. The Lords have never much to do until the
Easter Recsss, when the Bills begin to come up* rom
the other House ; while, on the other hand, at the end
of the session the hereditary branch of the Legislature
has to sit at unwonted hours in order to accomplish
the work which the representatives of the people send
up to them in great quantities, often hastily and im-
perfectly (lore.
One of the advantages of the Legislature being in

Session was apparent before it had been sitting
twenty-four hours. Ever since the announcement
of the early call of Parliament was made on the 19th
December, the country has had an idea that the meet-
ing of Lords and Commons three weeks before the
usual time must portend something abnormal and out
of the ordinary course of public affairs. At the first
intimatioa Consols fell—a certain indication of un-
easiness in the public mind. After reading the
Ministerial explanations, the public seemed to have
become satisfied that greater confidence would be
engendered when the Cabinet and the Legislature
were face to face, and that the former could take
the latter 'into its counsels so far as the public
service permitted. For it must be remembered
that the deliberations of the Cabinet are kept as
a profound secret even from their colleagues who

are less exalted in office. The summonses which are

issued to each minister request him to attend a
meeting of "Her Majesty's servants," at the place,
day, and hour named in the document. These sum-
moases are sealed with the seal of the Fret Lord of the
Treasury, and the left hand corner of the envelope
bears his autograph. Sometimes, when a Prime
Minister is indisposed, the Cabinet Council is held at
his house; but as a rule these meetings take plaoe at
the official residence of the First Minister of the
Crown in Downing-street, a special room being set
apart for them, the doors within doors, and the
wirfam's within windows, effectually preventing any

sound of what is uttered from being heard outside.

The land over which the Russian armies have been
marching in the direction of Adrianople may truly
enough be called classic ground. Roumelia was the
original Thrace, and according to the mythological
history of the ancients the founder of that people was
Thrax, the son of Mars. Consequently the Thracians
were a warlike people. Thrace was invaded by
Darius, King of Persia, a monarch who is mentioned
in the book of Daniel, and it was through Thrace that
Xerxes marched to invade Greece, and through which
he retreated. It was ruled by Philip of Macedon and
his son Alexander the Great, was afterwards overrun
by the Gauls, taken by the Romans, seized by the
Syrians, invaded by the Goths, settled by the
Sarmatians, and at length conquered by the
Turks, who made 'Adrianople for a time
the capital of their empire. This city received
its name after its restorer, the Emperor Adrian.
New here was fought the battle in which Con-
stantine gained the empire, and here also the Em-
peror Valens was defeated and slain by the Goths.
After it had been taken by the Turks under Amara,th
in 1361, it remained the capital nearly a hundred
years, until the capture of Constantinople, to which
the seat of government was transferred in 1453.
For many centuries this fair city had been
the witness of scenes in which it hatl4, under-
gone many singular vicissitudes ; and not the
least noteworthy was that remarkable incident
in modern liistory in which the Thusian armies
entered it in triumph in August 1820. Two years
before, England and France had joined with Russia
in punishing the Turks for their misgovernment of
Greece, and the destruction of the Ottoman fleet at
Nava.rino was the result. That was declared to be
"an untoward event" by the late Duke of Wellington,
who had a great distrust of the Muscovites, which he
never hesitated to express up to the time of his death,
about eighteen months before the outbreak of the
Crimean War. The Russians did not, however, long
occupy Adrianople in 1829, for peace was soon made,
and the city was again given up to Turkey.
The descriptions of the funeral of the King of Italy
show it to have been one of the most imposing
pageants of modern history. Indeed there was every

association calculated to make it so in the Eternal
city. At the time when our ancestors roamed over

this island, savage barbarians of the rudest type,
Rome embraced in her all-powerful grasp the larger
portion of the known world. Italy, France, Spain,
Portugal, England, Belgium, Switzerland, large por-
tions of Germany and Austria, Greece, nearly the
whole of Turkey in Europe and Turkey in Asia,
Juda, Egypt, Assyria, and Algeria, formed an
enormous empire acknowledging the sway of the Cmsar.
The influence exercised by the Roman in spreading the
arts of refinement and of civilization, was immense.
They supplied us with a large portion of our language
and with many of our institutions, while some of the
continental languages, such as French, Italian, and
Spanish, are really dialects of the Latin. Everything
undertaken by the Romans was on a gigantic scale.
The Colosseum, the most stupendous relic of the
Imperial city, was a semicircle of about a third
of a mile in circumference, 160 feet high, and could
seat comfortably 87,000 persons. Then there
was the palace of the Cxsars, perhaps the greatest
collection of buildings in a city ever yet put
together to shelter the head of a despot. St.
Peter's cathedral was erected at a probable cost of
thirty millions sterling, it covers eight English acres of
ground, and it costs in repairs about £7,000 a year.
The treasures of art in the Vatican are -unrivalled ;
the statuary, the paintings, Raphael's masterpieces,
and Michael Angelo's frescoes, would require months
even to skim the surface beauties of. It contains eight
principal staircases, twenty courtyards, 4,422 rooms,
with a garden or park outside. Such are some of the
characteristics of a city into which a vast population
had poured from all parts of Italy for the purpose of
witnessing the funeral obsequies of the king.
During the progress of the siege of Sebastopol, an
enterprising meteorologist at a distance from the
scene of conflict was accustomed to conclude that a
fierce assault upon the batteries had taken place if
there was an inordinate quantity of rain. There is no
doubt that the reverberation caused by the firing of
artillery shakes the clouds, and induces them to fall,
and to dissolve in rain when they would otherwise
have held together. But no one has yet explained
the connection between an invasion and a terribly
severe winter. The awful weather of 1812, when
Napoleon's grand army perished amid the snows of Rus-
sia, has a prominent and startling place in history. The
Russians had no sooner set fire to the sacred city of
Moscow, and thus deprived the invading army of com-
fortable quarters, than the winter set in prematurely
and some time before its wont; and to this day the
people of that great northern empire believe that a
Divine judgment fell upon the French legions. They
have a similar belief with respect to the invasion of
the Crimea by the Western Powers. The winter of
1834 and the early part of 1855 was the hardest which
had passed over Europe during forty years. The Em-
peror Nicholas, in oneof his proclamations, spoke of it
as an interposition of Providence on the aide of Holy
Russia, an instanced the case of 1812, when the
Most High had caused the unhallowed invaders of
her sacred soil to perish in myriads amid ice and
snow. The early part of 1861, when war broke out
between the German Powers and Denmark, was very
severe. So was the winter of 1870, when Germany
and France were fighting out their battles. Again, at
the present time, when the British islands have been
under the influence of mild breezes from the south-
west, the fearful cold both in Bulgaria and Armenia
has once more brought to the minds of newspaper
readers the association between a severe winter and
the perils and the hardships which it entails upon the
progress of an invading army.
The application of the Telephone to the practical
work of life is one of the most remarkable develop-
ments of science which has been witnessed in recent
years. The subduing of electricity to the will of man
was justly regarded as a marvel, but very few could
have been prepared for the transmission of sound
.some scores of miles. Every one must have read
the very interesting description of Professor Bell's
exveriments before the Queen at Osborne, where
ago ts,lking and laughing of people in London

could be distinctly heard. It had been carried
through the counties of Surrey and Hampshire,
and then across the waters of the Solent to
the royaL residence. As there is no engineering
difficulty in making a railway throagh the bed of

the English Channel, and as the electric wire
was safely laid at the bottom of the stormy Atlantic,
so there seems no reason why distance should interfere
with the working of the telephone. If experiments
can be made between Dover and Calais, or London and
Osborne, why not also between Liverpool and New
York? How long would it take to send the sound of
a voice under three thousand miles of ocean? We all
know how speedily it dies away in the open air, and
thus far can only wonder at and admire the ingenuity
which grasps it so effectually as to send it safely
through the rolling sea.
What did the people of London do for means of
locomotion before the construction of the underground
railways ? The earliest of these, the Metropolitan
proper, was opened in January, 1863, half a generation
ago, and it has been followed by the Metropolitan
District, a line also running east and west, but taking
a different route. Sir Edward Watkin, M.P., in pre-
siding at the half-yearly meeting of the Metropolitan
a few days ago, mentioned that, during the past
twelve months, between fifty-six and fifty-seven
millions of pa,=sengers had been carried over
their line, which, it must be borne in mind,
is only a few miles in length. This number is
nearly double the population of the entire United
Kingdom of Great -Britain an 1 Ireland. Let us as-
sume that the Metropolitan District carried forty-
three or forty-four millions, a very reasonable esti-
mate, and we have two lines of railway in London
conveying annually a hundred millions of passengers.
What a tale does this tell of the vast size of the place,
and the moving to and fro of its enormous popula-
tion. The hackneyed description of the British
capital as "the modern Babylon" is one which is
totally inadequate to convey the idea which is in-
tended. Babylon, at the time of its utmost greatness,
could never have possessed anything like the number
of inhabitants now in London. It had its hanging
gardens, its walls sixty feet in thickness, and its
hundred gates of brass. Like London, it was inter-
sected by a great river, but the Euphrates could never
have presented the appearance so familiar to those
who look upon the miles of shipping in the docks upon
either bank of the Thames.